Emma Hayes has acknowledged the need to assess the Women’s Champions League format but emphasised the importance of respecting its current structure.
There has been debate about the Women’s Champions League qualification format, especially for unseeded teams that haven’t won their domestic leagues.
Four league champions from Spain, Germany, France and England qualify automatically, but there are two paths in the qualification draw: “champions path” for league winners and “league path” for non-league champions. The issue with the league path is that it risks eliminating prominent teams early as they could face each other and miss the group stages. Arsenal, Wolfsburg, Real Madrid, Paris Saint-Germain and Manchester United all went into this path.
United boss Marc Skinner recently suggested it was “crazy” they played PSG in a qualifying round and Hayes has said that the format will eventually need to change.
She said: “First of all we have to respect the format. The format has been in place and evolved a little bit over the last few years. I remember in 2016-17 season we joined the round of 32, we won that and next round we played Wolfsburg and were out. A year later we drew Wolfsburg straight away and we were out. A year later we played Bayern Munich, won the game in the last 16 and that improved our coefficiency, that gave us some points on the board. Guess what? We had to earn that over three years, much like Paris FC had to earn that or whoever for that matter.
“We have to respect the format and it is important to say that, we all knew what it was.
“I think that’s ignorant and arrogant all at once to say that. Roma and Benfica won their leagues, they perhaps deserve to go straight into the group stage but this isn’t about my opinion, it is what the format was. We have to play that.
“However, do we need to look at that? Absolutely. Do we need to look at that in terms of the growth of the women’s game to say…well actually there is a lot more investment across many leagues so perhaps we should consider a format similar to the mens competition, where it’s group stages from the off and maybe larger. We have to look at the smaller nations and countries, they deserve the opportunity and have the right to be in the competition as much as any English team does.
“It’s not my place to comment on one team being better than any other. This is the Champions League and any team is tough you play against.”
Chelsea have been drawn against Real Madrid, Paris FC and Hacken in the Women’s Champions League group stage.
