I’m a strong supporter of group stage in the CL. Then there will be more matches which will provide more income. It will also be more fun I think.
You can play against more teams and also the smaller teams in the CL can easily play 6 or 8 CL matches.

The only obstacle are the 21 places for the CL. I have thought about a system but that will only work with 20 teams. But I think this groupstage is worth the sacrifice of this CL place.

First there will be a qualifying round like there is now with 8 teams (home and away).

After that the groupstage begins with the 4 winners of the qualifying round and 12 directly placed teams. So we have 16 teams what will make 4 groups of 4 teams.

Within these 4 groups there will be played 6 games (home and away against each team)

The 2 best teams of each group play a knock-out stage afterwards.
So quarter final 4x home and away
Semi final home and away
and the final will take place at neutral ground like it is now.

The extra turns this plan will have are not a problem I guess because the National cup already ends on tick 52.

I suggest:
qualifying round: tickx 94 and 97

group stage: ticks 104/107/110 and 116/119/122

quarter final: ticks 128/131

semi final: 136/139

final: 143

Then we can play almost the whole season in 2 competitions and we have to take care about the stamina of our players. That’s not really a problem now unless you only have 11 good players…

Cheers

Dirk

I miss group stage on CL and Libertadores as well. I liked your suggestion, it’s just a matter of creting the logic to support the group stage. I was willing to wait until more countries were added but it may be worth to add the group stage with just a few countries and adjust it afterwards. Let’s see :-)

Cheers!

You can already try it now and if there are more countries you can add more groups. Also with a few countries I like a groupstage more then it is now.