The new Super League project, presented on Thursday to compete with the UEFA Champions League, would consist of 64 men’s teams, spread over three divisions, and 32 women’s teams competing in two divisions.
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For the first year, the 64 teams would be recruited “on performance”, said promoter A22 Sports without specifying these criteria or the number of clubs envisaged per country.
The elite, called Star League, would bring together 16 clubs divided into two groups of eight, each team playing 14 matches, 7 at home and 7 away, from September to April. The top four in each group would then enter a knockout stage from the quarter-finals, with the bottom two relegated to the lower division, called the Gold League. The final would be played in a match on neutral ground.
The system is the same for the second division, the Gold League, of the competition offered by A22 Sports, with two groups of eight teams and play-offs. The two finalists would move up to the Star League and the bottom two would move down to the third division, the Blue League.
In this third division, the system is reproduced, but with four groups of eight instead of two. The top two from each group would reach the quarter-finals and the bottom five would be excluded from the competition and then replaced by twenty new clubs.
Access to the Blue League would be through the national championships, but A22 did not specify how or explain which countries among the 55 UEFA members would be excluded from the system.
Finally, the women’s tournaments would be built on the same model, but with only 32 teams in two divisions of 16, the Star and the Gold Leagues.
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