Inter/Arsenal and Liverpool/Real banned in the draw

C

championsclub

Community Member
Joined
Jan 18, 2025
So the new Champions League rule means Inter vs Arsenal and Liverpool vs Real Madrid can’t be drawn in the upcoming league phase because the same fixture can’t happen three seasons running. The reverse fixtures in London and Madrid are still on the table, which is the sort of detail that makes the whole thing feel a bit arbitrary

It feels like one of those rules that is meant to stop repetition, but in practice just creates more confusion than excitement. You can already hear fans from different clubs arguing over whether it helps balance the draw or just protects the usual suspects

At the same time, the repeat big-name matchups are part of what people remember from the competition, so banning them is going to annoy a lot of supporters. Seems like a classic UEFA decision: technically tidy, emotionally annoying
 
On paper I get why they want variety, because nobody wants the exact same tie every year, but the way this is written just feels clunky and a bit artificial. If the whole point is to avoid stale repeats then doing it only one way round makes no sense to me, and it just turns the draw into a weird spreadsheet exercise. Also, as soon as you start adding little exceptions like this, you know someone in the room is patting themselves on the back for solving a problem nobody really asked for
 
People acting like this is some disaster for Arsenal or Inter are chatting absolute bollocks honestly, if anything it stops the same old elite fixtures being recycled for the sake of it and gives the league phase a bit more life, and Arsenal especially are hardly being hard done by because if you keep drawing the same set of clubs every season then where is the variety supposed to come from, this has been turned into a crisis by people who just want the glamour tie every year and then moan when the competition feels stale
 
I can see both sides of it. Repeated marquee fixtures do get old, but the Champions League is also built around familiar rivalries and big nights. The rule probably looks neater on a slide than it does in practice, because it still leaves plenty of room for the same clubs to keep meeting anyway.
 
So basically UEFA looked at the draw, saw people having fun with repeat big games and said nah not having that, absolute joke behaviour, the whole thing is just rules for the sake of rules now and somehow they always make it more confusing instead of less, proper clown show
 
I swear every time I go to the pub for a European night someone ends up saying the same thing about the draw being rigged or weird or whatever and now this rule is just another thing to argue about over a pint, last season I was sat there with a mate who supports Liverpool and another who supports Arsenal and we spent half the night laughing about the possibility of them getting the same old teams again, now one of them is already acting like the competition has been ruined, honestly the whole charm of it for me is that you never know what nonsense UEFA are going to come up with next and this feels like exactly the sort of thing they would do after a few too many meetings and not enough sense
 
i dont buy the idea that this is some huge injustice to arsenal or liverpool, if anything the bigger issue is how the whole format keeps forcing the same elite clubs into the same pool every year and then everyone acts shocked when the same matches happen again, the rule is clumsy but the real problem is the structure
 
This is exactly the kind of thing that makes people lose patience with UEFA because it always ends up feeling like a committee of people trying to prevent a problem they created themselves, and then the wording is so messy that nobody can even tell whether the rule is about fairness or entertainment or both, and the officials always manage to make it sound like it was designed to help the competition when really it just muddies the draw and gives everyone another reason to complain about the officials behind the scenes and the people making these decisions from their little ivory tower
 
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