Liverpool gets Champions League ‘preview’ as Jürgen Klopp youngsters face new test

Liverpool won’t be in the Champions League next season, but Jürgen Klopp’s youngsters will get a taste of what it could be like for the Reds when they do return to Europe’s elite.

From the 2024/25 season UEFA will turn the Champions League into a ‘Swiss style league’ which will see the group stages turn into a league format, where each team will play twice as many games.

This will see the competition expand to 36 teams, with the best 16 in the table then going through into the knockout rounds.

The competition will guarantee more playing time for Klopp’s men should they qualify, in what is overall a new and somewhat confusing format.

However, those supporters who like to keep an eye on the club’s academy may already get some clarity on how the system works if they follow the club’s U21 team.

The U21 Premier League itself will be undergoing similar changes this season which will see all 25 Category One academy clubs join a closed league.

This clubs will then be seeded into five pots and drawn to play against not just teams in their own pots but four or five teams from other pots as well.

The best 16 overall teams in the league will then compete in a knockout round in a change which will radically revamp academy football.

This will create a similar format to how the Champions League will look from 2024/25 onwards, except involving a smaller number of teams.

Of course changes in academy football are quite regular. Only last season the league was changed from U23 to U21, and the format has been undergoing different revamps almost every season over the last few years.

But this change is by far the most radical and it’s going to be intriguing to see how it is played out.