UEFA Executive Committee Approves new Club Competition

The UEFA Executive Committee has recently approved the creation of a third club competition which will be played yearly alongside the UEFA Champions league and Europa League Matches, the UEFA President Aleksander Čeferin said in an interview after the announcement that "Inclusive competition means more matches for more clubs and more associations" as more associations and clubs will play European football from 2021, after the creation of a third UEFA club competition for the 2021–2024 competition cycle at their meeting in Dublin.

He further clarified certain rules and regulations pertaining the competition:

• The new competition (which has the working title of UEL2) will mirror the existing UEFA Champions League and UEFA Europa League, and feature 32 teams in a group stage.
• The format will see eight groups of four teams, followed by the round of 16, quarter-finals, semi-finals and final. 
• An additional knockout round will be played before the round of 16 between teams ranked second in their groups and the third-ranked teams of the UEFA Europa League groups, this will be played similarly to how the third team from the champions league relegates to the Europa league. 
• The new competition will feature 141 matches over 15 match weeks, exactly like the UEFA Europa League. 
• The winner of the new competition will be entitled to participate in the UEFA Europa League in the following season. 
• The new competition matches will be played on Thursdays. As such, the UEFA Champions League continues to be played on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, the UEFA Europa League and the new competition will be played on Thursday with one additional kick-off time slot for a limited number of matches in principle at 16:30CET to be further defined. 
• All club competition finals will be played in the same week: Wednesday (new competition), Thursday (UEFA Europa League) and Saturday (UEFA Champions League).

After it was announced, we analyzed the competition and from the result we discovered at least 34 countries will be represented in the group stages of the UEFA club competitions which currently stands at 26. All member associations will have access to the three club competitions and all associations will keep the same overall access quota as currently.

Massive creation to football lovers and a chance at something for the lower clubs in each association, the question is which club will be the first to lift the trophy?