UEFA, the soccer organizing body in Europe, has come under increasing pressure to kowtow to the top clubs in Europe. They are likely the clubs you have heard of, even if you aren't a soccer fan like me. Manchester United, Real Madrid and the like. UEFA finally got pushed too far, and FIFA, the global organizer of the game, stepped in and put their foot down.
The story is that a plan had been hatched to create a league that featured 15 permanent members from across Europe, and 5 that were exchanged yearly through some undisclosed process. FIFA stepped in and warned that players participating in such a league would be banned from international competitions, like the World Cup. That will probably steer enough players away that the league won't come into being.
However, that doesn't mean that there wasn't a large amount of pandering to the bigger clubs and bigger countries. One of the more admirable things about international soccer is that, at the very least, every team is given a chance. Every team that starts playing professional soccer in Europe has a path to winning the top prize in Europe, however narrow the path. Or at least they did.
This year is the first year of the Europa Conference League, which is a third tier tournament now behind the Champions League and Europa League, and collects almost all of the teams that would have once been in the Europa League. The Champions League is, so far, unchanged, in that it will welcome every league champion in Europe, as well as some runners up in the top rated leagues. Europa will only have spots for teams from the top 15 associations, though other places could be filled by teams falling out of the Champions League.
The Conference League will be played, initially, between almost all of the teams that had previously been in the Europa League, including teams that win their National Cup (which is usually played by teams of all tiers), save for some teams that get to stick in the Europa League. It separates further the top associations from the smaller associations, and with an easier path to the top (the winner of the Europa League gets to play in the next year's Champions League) benefits teams like Manchester United, who had recently fallen on hard times, maintain a lifeline to the top continental league.
Not satisfied, there is a strong likelihood that the Champions League will change format in the next few years to allow teams from the top leagues to start their campaigns later in the tournament, while also allowing for more games and more TV revenue for the teams by an extended group stage. The top teams didn't really need to work so hard to break away from the standard soccer structure, because they had a pliant punching bag already at their mercy.
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