Champions League nightmare to send Rangers and Celtic to sleep, as UEFA admits huge draw

European football powerbrokers have decided to revamp all three of their European club competitions next summer.

Celtic and Rangers are being warned to continue to be alert after UEFA introduced it would take “three or 4 hours” to organise next season’s Champions League group stage draw manually due to adjustments in the competition’s format.

UEFA is rolling out sparkling looks for all three of its men’s membership competitions beginning from next season, changing the 32-team Champions League group section with a larger one featuring 36 groups that has been going on on account that the 1999-2000 campaign. In the upcoming league segment each crew will compete in opposition to eight distinctive opponents in order to reduce down on any pointless games, pit pinnacle groups towards every other a good deal formerly than before, and make the knockout draw a good deal greater big based totally on their last league position.

As it stands, the winners of the Scottish Premiership will at once qualify for the group stage next season, with the aspect that finishes in second going into the 0.33 qualifying round for the Champions League. With nine games remaining, Rangers command a two-point lead over bitter rivals Celtic at the top, with the groups due to face off against every other twice before the campaign draws to a close.

Teams are commonly chosen manually from seeded pots, but UEFA’s deputy customary secretary Giorgio Marchetti confessed that it may not be viable to have a entirely guide draw, predicting that the Champions League draw alone may additionally take up “three or four hours” and involve nearly 900 balls if they decide not alternate the contemporary procedure.

Although the exact layout for the draw is still getting last touches, UEFA has proven that it will be a “hybrid” match – some guide drawing of balls combined with some automated processes. UEFA clarified that any computerised elements will still be checked independently so as to avoid any finger pointing or claims about the draw being fixed.

Teams from the equal us of a will be kept apart till the new knockout round play-off, other than in very splendid circumstances, with the new spherical to be contested through the groups ending ninth to 24th in the league phase. UEFA is then introducing a tennis-style seeding machine from the closing 16 onwards, so that the clubs finishing first and second in the league phase are kept in separate halves of the draw and cannot meet till the final.

The league phase reserves two European performance spots (EPS) for teams from the nations who were together the high-quality performers in the previous season’s European campaign. Italy and Germany presently occupy those spots which would imply the fifth-placed groups in each of those leagues – at the second Roma and RB Leipzig – gaining the EPS.

England are one region behind Germany, which may want to suggest Manchester United finding themselves in the uncommon state of affairs of hoping bitter rivals Manchester City and Liverpool win the Champions League and Europa League respectively to doubtlessly open up a fifth Champions League qualifying spot through the Premier League table.