An agreement has been reached in Vienna between UEFA and the European Club Association on access to the new-look competition.
The proposal to award two places in the new 36-team league phase based on individual clubs’ European performances over five years has been scrapped, with critics arguing it created a safety net for failing big clubs and a Super League by default.
Instead, two places will be awarded to clubs from the countries that performed best in Europe in the previous term.
🚨 From 2024, UEFA will give two Champions League places to the nations with the best performing clubs in Europe that season. That means the end of the previous plan of giving two spots to the clubs with the highest coefficients who failed to qualify. [The Times] pic.twitter.com/pveQdpJAOp
— Italian Football News 🇮🇹 (@footitalia1) May 10, 2022
If applied to next season, that would mean England gaining an extra spot, along with Holland.
It is also understood the number of matches in the new-look league phase per team will drop to eight, with the initial proposal being 10 matches.
Under the approved country coefficient system, England would have secured an extra place in four of the last five seasons, the exception being performance in the 2019-20 season when the places would have gone to Germany and Spain.
New proposals were presented to the ECA in Madrid on Monday and the indications then were that more time would be needed to reach a decision, possibly forcing the decision back until later this month at least.
However, a key meeting of UEFA’s club competitions committee was delayed on Tuesday morning to allow more time for the final detail to be worked out.
UEFA originally approved changes to the format in April last year but the announcement was totally overshadowed by the formation of the Super League hours earlier.
