FM 23 shocks people into seeing how Champions League will work from 2024/25 season

Fans of Football Manager 23 have been opened up to the reality of the changes to the Champions League group stages, and people aren't impressed.

Last week, fans of the FM franchise were given the chance to play the latest edition of the game, with the Beta version being made available for those who have pre ordered.

Like in real life, Erling Haaland's ability to score goals is already causing havoc for players of the game, with the Manchester City forward having ridiculous stats.

It's understandable considering his real life stats have him breaking Mohamed Salah's record for most goals in a Premier League season in February!

With FM having only been out a few days, you'd have expected that players were still getting to grips with all the new features, such as the recruitment revamp, but it's not the case for everyone.

Some players have already skipped ahead in the world and are already facing the realities of the changes to the Champions League.

In 2024, Europe's premier club tournament will be changing drastically in the group stage, with 36 teams involved instead of 32 and all in one group.

The Champions League format in 2024-25… 😮

Via @y_dnafir pic.twitter.com/rS4XWqzxaY

— Out of Context Football Manager (@nocontextfm1) October 24, 2022

Fans might have been left scratching their heads wondering exactly how all that is going to work, staring at a very long list of teams.

Teams will be playing 10 games, instead of six, and with no separate groups they will be drawn against 10 different opponents, playing half at home and half away.

They will be drawn against sides still based on coefficient to make things fair, and you still can't be drawn against teams from your own country.

All the games obviously go towards just the one group with only the top eight guaranteed to go through to the knockout stages.

The other eight positions will be decided by play offs played between the teams from ninth in the group to 24th, with those 25th and lower knocked out, and not dropping into the Europa League.

As well as the change in format, there's also four extra places for qualification, which will be decided by a number of different factors.

Fans worried that it would be a defacto Super League, when it was initially considered that teams could qualify on previous coefficient, however it's not quite the case.

The fifth highest coefficient league will now get an extra place in the Champions League, with the second spot going to an extra qualifying play off round winner.

The third and fourth additional slots will go to the teams with the highest coefficient who haven't qualified, but they will have at least had to have finished in the Europa League slots.

The difference being that, for example, Manchester United could have got one of the extra spots by finishing seventh, with a fifth placed Newcastle United missing out.

Erik ten Hag's side would at least now need to finish above Newcastle, in this scenario, to grab one of the extra spots, although it's still not completely on the up and up, it is at least fairer.