Draw System for League Phases of European Cups 2024 onwards

[Shing]

Beside the actual result of the draw , what do you all think about it ?
From my side it felt very much “ soulless “ and didn’t give me any of the emotions and excitement of the previous one.
I felt I barely had time to digest the fixtures , plus having a computer performing the drawing as a black box , although necessary , was quite weird .

Have to agree, but then it was to be expected I suppose. One thing they possibly could have done is to briefly show a list of the available options that the computer could select from before showing the selected ones. It would have taken a little longer, but then they show a lot of other stuff that doesn't really need to be done at the ceremony, so they could have cut some of that out.

And skip the push of the button, spares time and one less person bored.

I thought they would make Buffon and Ronaldo taking turn to draw balls and press button. Poor Ronaldo.

[diyx]

Such draws are great TV shows because all fans are watching having the agony for a good draw for the club they support. I don't think it happened at this draw. For a Manchester City fan the draw ended just 1 min after it begun since it was the first drawn club.

As I have posted earlier at this topic the draw should be totally manually. In order to safe time they only need to draw the away (or the home) club for each tie so they will only draw 144 balls. If they pick one opponent each time for every club till all clubs have 1 opponent and then continue with drawing another opponent for every club fans will be watching till the end.

Since computer was drawing randomly the opponents for each club why didn't they just press once the buttom so computer would perform the whole draw at once and they were just drawing balls. It doesn't really make any sense to me.

I agree, the event was not eventful and no one can tell if the schedule was already calculated before the draw or calculated live.

[elkjiaer is back]

So the final fixtures for the UCL were published on Saturday , i spent some time looking at those and here are some random thoughts :
-) teams from Lisbon and Milan ( obviously ) are always split in home and away but not teams from Madrid , any reason why ?
-) big matches involving 2 teams from pot 1 are not equally distributed at all
-) no big matches at all on the last matchday . This could be on purpose to ensure the highest amount of teams can still qualify but this also allows for suspiscious outcomes ( remember goal difference is the second tiebreaker criteria ) . Feel free to add more

[FEPG]

Let me speculate.

-) teams from Lisbon and Milan ( obviously ) are always split in home and away but not teams from Madrid , any reason why ?

Sporting & Benfica stadiums are only 2km apart, whereas Chamartín & Metropolitano are 7.5km apart. Given that Lisbon is much smaller than Madrid, flooding the same small area with fans, even on consecutive days, could be overwhelming for the city.

-) big matches involving 2 teams from pot 1 are not equally distributed at all

The home-away alternation constraint is very strong. In my simulator, removing this constraint reduces schedule generation time from 1 hour to just 1 second. I believe, the reason is that there were hardly any more schedules satisfying all the constraints.

[elkjiaer is back]

Let me speculate.

-) teams from Lisbon and Milan ( obviously ) are always split in home and away but not teams from Madrid , any reason why ?

Sporting & Benfica stadiums are only 2km apart, whereas Chamartín & Metropolitano are 7.5km apart. Given that Lisbon is much smaller than Madrid, flooding the same small area with fans, even on consecutive days, could be overwhelming for the city.

-) big matches involving 2 teams from pot 1 are not equally distributed at all

The home-away alternation constraint is very strong. In my simulator, removing this constraint reduces schedule generation time from 1 hour to just 1 second. I believe, the reason is that there were hardly any more schedules satisfying all the constraints.

But know that we know all the 144 fixtures would you be able to write a code to allocate those in the 8 matchdays following the requirements ? And then also try to see if a solution exists where we get at least one big match per matchday ?

[FEPG]

But know that we know all the 144 fixtures would you be able to write a code to allocate those in the 8 matchdays following the requirements ? And then also try to see if a solution exists where we get at least one big match per matchday ?

Yes, I'm planning to do it, just haven't got around to it yet. Do you happen to have the schedule in some raw format?

[eye]

Probably the reason for not having matches of pot1 at last matchday is because such matches might be dead rubbers. I also believe the ranking in the league is not so important as UEFA is trying to promote it. A top club might have some bad results for many reasons (eg key players injuries, underperforming period etc) and finish 15th which means that finishing at top2 isn't that big advantage anymore. Same might happen if a minor club overperforms and gets some unexpected results and finish 6th.

As for the city issue I think we should see the whole picture. There are 2 more competitions and some of the clubs at these competitions are located at the same city with CL club(s). So it is not so simple to avoid matches at same city each week and probably it is not even possible. So I guess this rule has a very low priority at the scheduling or even 0.

[elkjiaer is back]

But know that we know all the 144 fixtures would you be able to write a code to allocate those in the 8 matchdays following the requirements ? And then also try to see if a solution exists where we get at least one big match per matchday ?

Yes, I'm planning to do it, just haven't got around to it yet. Do you happen to have the schedule in some raw format?

Yes I do , send me a PM with your email . I took it from a betting website and converted into excel ( you could also easily do the same as well )

[Sidaredd]

So the final fixtures for the UCL were published on Saturday , i spent some time looking at those and here are some random thoughts :
-) teams from Lisbon and Milan ( obviously ) are always split in home and away but not teams from Madrid , any reason why ?

As long as I know, UEFA city clash law only prevents teams from same city playing on same day. They can play on different days in the same week.
Also, it doesn't matter how far is the distance between stadiums. For example, Basaksehir and Fenerbahce has 25km of distance between stadiums and doesn't even use the same airports. But as long as both teams represent Istanbul (along with Besiktas and Galatasaray), their schedules are arranged to prevent them from plying on same day.

[max tre]

So the final fixtures for the UCL were published on Saturday , i spent some time looking at those and here are some random thoughts :
-) teams from Lisbon and Milan ( obviously ) are always split in home and away but not teams from Madrid , any reason why ?

As long as I know, UEFA city clash law only prevents teams from same city playing on same day. They can play on different days in the same week.
Also, it doesn't matter how far is the distance between stadiums. For example, Basaksehir and Fenerbahce has 25km of distance between stadiums and doesn't even use the same airports. But as long as both teams represent Istanbul (along with Besiktas and Galatasaray), their schedules are arranged to prevent them from plying on same day.

In 2023 CL QFs, order of legs for Inter-Benfica was reversed after the draw because Milan too was supposed to play the first leg at San Siro (against Napoli).
But in 2024, it was fine for Real Madrid and Atletico Madrid to play at home on consecutive days (9-10 April).
It might be because we share the same stadium (and you don't want to play two games in 24 hours) whereas the Madrid teams do not, but there must definitely be something more than just "being from the same city".