The Champions League is a special tournament that attracts the best clubs in Europe. It is the biggest and most prestigious club competition in the world, and it’s a place where fans can lose themselves in a team’s glory and enjoy pure footballing brilliance. It’s also a place where loyalty to a particular club can fade and be replaced by a passion for the spectacle and excitement that the tournament offers.
There are two ways to qualify for the Champions League, either as champions of a domestic league or by finishing very high up in a European league. The number of teams each country can send to the tournament is determined by its UEFA coefficient, which is a score based on how well that nation’s clubs perform in European competitions over time.
Once in the tournament, the field is whittled down over two-legged rounds of 16, quarterfinals, semifinals and finally a one-legged final. At the end, only the last two clubs are left standing, and it’s a rare thing indeed for two teams from the same country to meet in the final.
At the end of the group phase, teams are ranked in order of their position and then placed into one of four seeding pots to determine matchups for the knockout round. The top eight teams get a direct pass to the round of 16 while those ranked ninth through 24 play in a knockout playoff, which is two games over a single week, to decide the other eight places in the round of 16.