UEFA has confirmed a major change to the way home advantage will work in the Champions League knockout rounds, and it’s already causing a stir among some of Europe’s biggest clubs.
Softfootball can confirm that from this season, the second-leg venue won’t be decided randomly anymore. Instead, it will be based on League Phase performance but only for the teams that finish in the top four or the clubs that knock them out.
This means a lower-ranked team can still get second-leg home advantage, just by eliminating one of the elite.
UEFA has been busy; we recently reported that they fined a good number of clubs due to FFP breaches and are now trying to readjust a format that was newly introduced just last season.
According to Express, that change may sound fair on paper, but it’s led to confusion and complaints about inconsistency. Some clubs feel they’re being punished for finishing 3rd or 4th, a solid performance by any standard, but still being denied the benefit of a home second leg in the semis.
Take Arsenal, for instance. They had to play the second leg of their semi-final in Paris last season, even though they finished 3rd and PSG were 15th. That wouldn’t change under the new rules, because PSG knocked out No. 1-ranked Liverpool in the round of 16, meaning they inherited the home-leg advantage from them.
So essentially, if you knock out a top-four team, you get to keep their perks.
Many feel this setup adds unnecessary imbalance. Unlike in the U.S., where playoff brackets often get reshuffled based on performance, UEFA has opted not to re-rank matchups. That decision means some teams can never host the second leg of a semifinal, no matter how well they performed in the league phase.
Last season, Barcelona (2nd) would’ve hosted Inter Milan (4th) under the new system flipping the draw. Arsenal would also have hosted Real Madrid (11th) in the quarterfinals instead of travelling to Spain. So yes, this could change the path of the competition quite a bit.
Softfootball can confirm that this same rule now applies across all UEFA competitions, including the Europa League, Conference League, and Women’s Champions League.
The goal might be to reward merit, but critics argue it’s rewarding selective merit. Whether it leads to fairer matchups or just more confusion remains to be seen.
