UEFA confirm three new Champions League clubs as Aston Villa learn potential opponents

News on the Champions League as UEFA events will all have a new format starting in the upcoming season, and Aston Villa, who are fresh to the contemporary period, start to understand who their possible opponents could be

Aston Villa will compete with the likes of Real Madrid and Bayern Munich in the 2024/25 UEFA Champions League (Photo by Marcos del Mazo/LightRocket via Getty Images) (Image: Marcos del Mazo/LightRocket via Getty Images)

As the competition changes, UEFA has announced the teams that will join Aston Villa in the Champions League the following season.

The league’s regulatory body for European football has completely altered the competition’s format as with the 2024–2025 season. A new “Swiss League” structure will be implemented in place of the traditional six “group stage” matches—three at home and three away against the same three teams. Villa and the other 35 players will play eight games—four at home and four away—against as many different teams as possible as part of the new “league stage.”

With two teams chosen from each of the four seeded pots for each match, all 36 clubs—up from 32 in previous editions—will be in the same rankings. In order to select these four extra clubs, UEFA declared that different methods would be used to determine qualifying.

The two countries with the greatest rankings on UEFA’s co-efficient leaderboard received two of these additional berths. All countries, including England, were vying for this position; nevertheless, Italy and Germany were awarded the additional Champions League spot as a result of our 2023–24 cohort’s subpar European results from the previous season.

Consequently, the fifth-placed teams in Serie A and the fifth-placed club in the Bundesliga, Borussia Dortmund, will play in the Champions League the following year. Based on this, if England had placed in the top two of the standings after placing fifth in the Premier League, Tottenham Hotspur would have qualified and Villa would have had a far less stressful season finale.

The country that came in fifth on UEFA’s co-efficient leaderboard—which typically sees just two teams advance to the Champions League—was awarded another slot. This time, France was awarded the additional spot, and Brest took advantage of it as a result of their third-place Ligue 1 result.

The champions’ qualifying road, which will include five teams instead of four next season, will determine the final slot. This position will be filled by a club that will be selected following four qualifying rounds.

Teams like Fenerbahce, Rangers, Red Bull Salzburg, Galatasaray, Red Star Belgrade, Union Saint-Gilloise, and Villa’s well-known Europa Conference League rival Lille are among those contending for this position.