Champions League: EU to automate group stage draw process

Champions League: EU to automate group stage draw process

Hashnet:

European Football Association (UEFA) will reportedly automate the draw process for the Champions League, Europa League and UEFA Europa League group stages, scheduled for August 29-30 in Monaco, rather than manually drawing them as usual. It has announced what

There are 36 teams participating in each of the three games in a “league”, with the goal of occupying the top 8 in the standings and directly advancing to the round of 16. The remaining eight tickets in the same round are reserved through the play-offs.

The 36 teams are divided into four divisions. Each team plays eight games against eight different teams: two different teams in each division, one at home and one away.

Only the divisional league games will be different, as each team will face six teams belonging to the six existing divisions, with three home games and the same number of away games.

The complexity of this type of draw, as well as the time it takes to do a completely manual draw (as in previous years when teams were divided into four groups), prompted European football associations to use services.

Therefore, AE Live, a company specialized in sports data and used for many years to carry out automated draws in several professional fields, will offer a program to directly carry out the draw and determine the eight participants for each team after manually drawing the ball from a bowl placed on the stage.

All 36 teams, from Tier One all the way up to Tier Four (or Tier Six in the case of the European League), will see their balls randomly drawn from a pool, and then the identity of their opponents revealed in real time.

The computer must adhere to two criteria: no team can face opponents belonging to the same league (same country), nor can it face more than two teams from the same country. For example, Paris Saint-Germain cannot face Monaco, nor can it face three teams from the Premier League.

Computer decisions will be immediately verified by two independent systems. Everything will be verified and monitored by the auditing firm EY.

The group stage fixtures for each competition will be announced on Saturday 31 August.