UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin has said that he finds the current one-legged knock-out format of the Champions League's quarter-finals and semi-finals “more interesting” and that it should be considered as a permanent fixture in the competition.
Following the disruption of the season by the coronavirus pandemic, the one-off format in European club competition was designed to alleviate the pressure on clubs and players, while fulfilling the fixture list.
With eight teams heading to Lisbon to play the remaining Champions League fixtures on neutral grounds, the lack of a home and away tie was unique. However, Ceferin believes that it made for better matches.
“We were forced to do it but in the end, we see that we found out something new. So we will think about it in the future for sure.“[There has been] not so much tactics. If it is one match, if one team scores then the other has to score as soon as possible. If it is two-legged system then there is still time to win the next match," he told Reuters.
“I have to say that this system of one match seems more interesting to me than the other system with two-legged matches, but again it's much too early to say anything about it, let's see."
He adds: “Because the Champions League was interesting before – it's interesting now [too], it's quite a nice experience if you have to think about changing something that works well anyway. So, it's not the pressure that something doesn't work and we have to change it, we don't have to change anything, but we've got some new ideas now.”
The current format of the Champions League is locked in place contractually until 2024/2025 but discussions are due to begin later this year on the structure for the competition for future seasons.
However, the UEFA president expressed some caution on the idea, mainly due to the impact of broadcasters.
“More exciting matches for sure but of course we also have to think about the fact that we have less matches and broadcasters (can) say ‘you don’t have as many matches as before, this is different’ so we will have to discuss when this crazy situation ends,” he added.
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