Listen carefully to the Champions League anthem tonight. While the competition has been completely turned upside down, it too has been revisited, with a brand new instrument…
The long-awaited day has arrived. The Champions League, the premier competition for football clubs across Europe, resumes its rights this Tuesday, September 17, with the start of a new season full of promise. In addition to the enticing matches that await fans across the continent (your choice: Juventus Turin – PSV Eindhoven, AC Milan – Liverpool or Real Madrid – Stuttgart tonight, Manchester City – Inter Milan tomorrow, Atlético Madrid – Leipzig and Monaco – FC Barcelona Thursday night), it is above all the competition’s format that will experience a major upheaval this year.
Gone are the traditional group stages that the Champions League had accustomed us to for decades! Now there is a single championship bringing together 36 teams in a single ranking. Each club will play 8 matches against 8 different opponents, according to a draw organized at the end of August. The latter was organized according to a complex logic of hats.
At the end of this first phase, a ranking will be established and the 8 best teams will qualify for the round of 16, while 8 others will have to go through play-offs. A format that promises more spectacle and suspense, according to the organizers, threatened by the “Super League” that some elite clubs would like to create.
But the Champions League is also getting a makeover aesthetically. Its historic anthem, which has become as legendary as the competition itself over the years, has also undergone a good facelift. Rest assured: there will be no radical upheaval, but only a few subtle arrangements and the addition of brass instruments in the middle of the famous choirs, which have not changed one bit (“Ils sont les meilleurs, Sie sind die Besten, These are the champions” etc.). Listen instead below to the extract revealed this week by UEFA:
UEFA wanted to mark this new beginning by adding trumpets, which add a little more to the epic atmosphere of the famous piece, while retaining the soul of this very special music that thrills football fans. Small touches of modernity then, for a Champions League faithful to its roots? The answer this evening, with the discovery of the anthem, but also of this new formula which still has to convince.