The competition has increased from 32 to 36 teams with a more sophisticated framework, meaning that the conventional manual draw can no longer be relied upon to decide fixtures.
This is the largest change to European men’s football in almost thirty years, since a group stage was added that allowed clubs from other nations to compete, instead of simply their national league winners.
A 36-team league will take the place of the Champions League’s group stage, which consisted of eight groups with four teams competing against each other both home and away.
The top four teams from the previous Premier League season—Manchester City, Arsenal, Liverpool, and Aston Villa—will be represented.
At a ceremony in Monaco on Thursday night, teams will now play eight matches against various opponents, with computers utilizing artificial intelligence to generate pairings around some manual ball drawing.
Conspiracy theories regarding UEFA’s draw processes are not unheard of, and as technology advances, there may be more attempts to discredit social media.
