Explained: New EHF Champions League Format
- therookiereporters
- 39 minutes ago
- 2 min read
Europe’s best handball clubs are ready to battle it out once again, as the exciting EHF Champions League returns for another season.
Last season we saw record-winning champions, FC Barcelona - also known as Barça - take home the golden trophy against Füchse Berlin in a match that ended 37-34.
Now this season, with familiar powerhouses and new contenders all chasing the same prize in a completely new format, it's almost promised to be an exciting season ahead of us.
The New Format:
The kickoff matches on September 9th, will be the start of a new era, as a whole new EHF Champions League format is being introduced.
Instead of the usual 16 teams being split into two large groups of eight teams each, this season it will be shifting to a 24-team format, where 24 different teams are split into six groups of four teams in the initial phase. The different groups are shown below.
In the first phase, each team plays a double round-robin (home and away matches) against the other three teams in their group, resulting in six matches per team.
From here the 1st and 2nd place in the groups advance to the Champions League Main Round, and the 3rd and 4th place teams are eliminated from the Champions League, but drop to the EHF European League Men play-offs. This leaves 12 teams advancing and 12 teams leaving.
In phase two the remaining teams will be split into two groups of six teams (Group 1 and Group 2). The teams then again play against every team in their new group except for the team they already faced in phase one. This results in eight additional matches per team.
The four best teams in their phase two group, advance to the quarter-finals (eight teams in total), whereas the 5th-place teams for both groups are relegated to the EHF European League Men Last 16 and the 6th-place teams are completely eliminated from European competition.
The eight remaining teams will then be playing a traditional home-and-away knockout in the third phase. The top 4 from this phase, will be advancing to the always highly anticipated tournament held in LANXESS arena in Cologne, Germany.
The final event to close off the season is the EHF FINAL4, where the four best teams of the season will be facing off in single-elimination semi-finals and the grand finale over the course of one weekend.
This new format also ensures that all teams making it to the FINAL4, will have played 18 matches over the seasons, instead of some teams getting to skip a round or two.
Matches On The 9th Of September (All timings in CEST):
Vive Kielce vs HC Kriens | 18:45
RK Zagreb vs Celje Pivovarna Lasko | 18:45
Aalborg Håndbold vs Paris Handball | 18:45
Veszprem vs Porto | 18:45
SC Magdeburg vs Kolstad | 20:45
HBC Nantes vs Orlen Wisla Plock | 20:45
FC Barcelona vs Skanderborg AGF Håndbold | 20:45
Article Written by Laura Friis
