Champions League
The Champions League
The Premier League is at the very top in England sporting fixtures. It is where teams like Manchester United and Chelsea play. The Premier League has 20 soccer teams, and each team plays all of the others twice, home and away. Teams get three points for a win and one point for a tie, and the league champion is the one with the most points at the end of the season.
The top four clubs from the Premier League each earn a spot in the next year's Champions League, which pits all the best soccer teams in Europe against each other. The Champions League is spread out from August to May, with teams playing games during days off from the Premier League.
The UEFA Champions League, which evolved from the European Champion Clubs' Cup, is a seasonal club football competition organised by UEFA since 1992 (or overall in its older format since 1955) for the most successful football clubs in Europe. The prize, the European Champion Clubs' Cup (more commonly known as the European Cup), is one of the most prestigious club trophies in the sport. The UEFA Champions League is separate from the UEFA Cup.
The tournament consists of several stages. It begins in mid-July with three preliminary knockout qualifying rounds. The 16 surviving teams join 16 seeded teams in a group stage. Eight group winners and eight runners-up enter the final knockout rounds, which end with the final match in May. Previously only the champions of their respective National League could participate in the competition; however, this was changed in 1997 to allow the runners-up of the stronger leagues to compete as well.
The title has been held by 21 different clubs, 12 of which have won the title more than once. The all-time record-holder is Real Madrid, with nine wins.
The tournament was inaugurated in 1955, at the suggestion of the French sports journalist and editor of L'Équipe Gabriel Hanot, as a continental competition for winners of the European national football leagues, as the European Champion Clubs' Cup, abbreviated to European Cup. The competition began using a two-leg knockout format where the teams would play two matches, one at home and one away, and the team with the highest overall score qualifying for the next round of the competition. Entry was restricted to the teams that won their national league championships, plus the current European Cup holder. Once the qualifiers from the Third Qualifying Phase are known, the make-up of the 32-club UEFA Champions League is complete. Two group phases are completed before the competition reverts to the traditional knock-out finish.
In UEFA Champions’ League Group Phase 1, the 32 qualifying clubs are divided into eight groups of four. In league format, each club plays one another both at home and away, meaning six match days for the participants.
At the end of UEFA Champions’ League Group Phase 1, the eight group winners and runners-up qualify for the UEFA Champions’ League Group Phase 2. Here, four groups of four clubs exist, and, again, clubs play each other on a home-and-away basis, meaning six further match days.
At the culmination of UEFA Champions’ League Group Phase 2, the four winners and runners-up advance to the Quarter-Finals, when the competition adopts the knock-out format. Both the Quarter-Finals and Semi- Finals will be played over two legs, and at the end of this process, two teams will contest the UEFA Champions League Final.
Between 1960 and 2004 the winner of the tournament qualified for the now defunct Intercontinental Cup against the winner of the Copa Libertadores of South America. Since then, with FIFA taking over, the winner automatically qualifies for the FIFA Club World Cup with other winners of continental club championships.