Is there such a thing as too much Football?

Well for all those fans out there who thought there wasn’t enough football competitions or cups in a season you will be delighted with the news, UEFA executive committee have approved a third EUFA club competition. This new tournament will commence in 2021 and will be named UEL2, name is still a work in progress. Pictured below are the UEFA executives in Dublin making this decision.

UEL2 will have the exact same make-up of the UEFA Champions league and Europa League, starting with 32 teams in the group stage. Therefore, there will be eight groups consisting of 4 teams, which on completion of the group stage will then take the competition into the round of 16 (although there is a slight twist here), followed by quarter finals, semi-finals and then the final.

UEFA have decided to change things up by adding an additional knock-out round prior to the round of 16. The way it will work is whichever team finishes first in their group will automatically progress to the round of 16. Teams that finish second will have to play the teams that are ranked third at the end of the Europa League group stage. Due to this the Europa League format will also be tweaked.

The new competition will be spread out over 15 match weeks and consist of 141 matches, identical to that of the Europa League. Whichever team is victorious at the end of the tournament will be awarded an automatic spot in the Europa League the following season. Games will be scheduled for Thursday night again the same as the Europa League, whilst the Champions League will continue on Tuesday and Wednesday night. The finals will all be played in the same week with the UEL2 on a Wednesday, Europa League on Thursday and the Champions League (the LFC Cup) on Saturday.

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One of the reasons UEFA are using to introduce the new competition is to make European football more inclusive. Currently a guaranteed 26 countries are representing in both the EUFA competitions and this new third competition will see a minimum of 34 countries being represented.

So what does this mean for Liverpool FC and us fans, hopefully absolutely nothing because we will be dominating the Champions League. The biggest impact in England will be to EastEnders and Emmerdale Farm, with all those Manchester United, Arsenal and Tottenham fans now being able to watch their teams play against the other European, not so elite teams, the sitcom's viewing numbers will plummet for a few weeks.

So what do we think people, is this a case of too much football or the more the merrier.