UEFA propose major Super Cup change hours before start of PSG vs Spurs
UEFA could be set to make a huge change to the Super Cup format ahead of next season.
On Wednesday (August 13), Europa League winners Spurs will take on last season’s Champions League winners Paris Saint-Germain in Udine, Italy.
The first UEFA-sanctioned Super Cup took place in 1974 and has been a fixture ahead of the subsequent campaigns.
Real Madrid boast six titles – the most of any club – while AC Milan and Barcelona have won the prize five times, with Liverpool securing four.
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Currently, the match is a one-off fixture contested at a neutral venue between the winners of the Europa League and Champions League.
The competition is also different to other UEFA-sanctioned tournaments as it is decided via a penalty shootout without extra time if the 90-minute match ends in a draw.
The way the tournament works could be set to change with UEFA proposing a huge shake-up to how the competition is formatted.
The Telegraph reports that the Super Cup could be turned into a four-team tournament before the start of the 2026/27 campaign. Venues in the Middle East and the US could also stage the fixture.
UEFA previously raised the prospect of re-jigging the Super Cup back in 2022, intending to sell TV rights for the 2024-27 cycle as well as the competition acting as an “opening tournament” ahead of the yearly Champions League.
This comes after UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin revealed that the prospect of playing Champions League games outside of Europe was discussed by the body in 2023.
Speaking to Men in Blazers, Ceferin said: "It’s possible. We started to discuss about that but then one year it was the World Cup."
He added: "Football is extremely popular in [the] United States these days. Americans are willing to pay for best and nothing for the less. So they will follow European football as basketball lovers in Europe follow NBA.
“it’s a very important promising market for the future. The thing is that we are selling rights very well. Sponsorship is so-so for now from the US, but here [in the US] commercialisation is completely different than in Europe. "They [Americans] are much more talented for that than us [Europeans].”
The revamped version of the competition would involve two semi-finals and a final. The Telegraph’s report claims that the previous proposal was dropped but could resurface ahead of the new round of bidding rights.
Meanwhile, earlier this week, the Spanish FA approved plans to host a La Liga fixture between Barcelona and Villarreal in Miami in December of this year. The RFEF will now seek permission from FIFA and UEFA to move the game to the Hard Rock Stadium.
Topics: UEFA, Football, Champions League, Europa League, PSG
Luke Davies