Poch says proposed changes to CL format “too tough” for English clubs

The European Club Association (ECA) and UEFA have proposed a number of changes to revamp the format of the UEFA Champions League.

The proposed plans include shifting the games to the weekend instead of midweek, introducing promotion and relegation, as well as having 4 groups of 8 teams each instead of 8 groups of 4 teams each.

These changes have been met with much resistance by the Premier League as well as some of the other European Leagues as they have expressed concerns over how this would affect their domestic competitions.

Tottenham manager Mauricio Pochettino was asked about the proposed changes ahead of the first leg of the Champions League quarter final against Man City and he said that the English clubs cannot play more games given the fact they are already involved in four competitions.

The Argentine said the size of squads aren’t big enough to accommodation another competition during the season.

Speaking during his pre-match press conference, Pochettino told Football.London,”I think that the Premier League is against. I don’t know how we can deal with more games or another competition.

“Here in England it is different to maybe Germany or France or Spain or Italy, maybe they have space to add another competition. But here in England another competition is going to be too tough. Maybe we have to talk about to extend the numbers in our squad.

“That is going to be tough and difficult to manage everything and I think today we all suffer a lot because after the World Cup, with a lot of players involved, how it affected us afterwards was massive and it is so difficult to manage and handle another competition is going to be tough.

“I only heard that the Premier League was against adding another competition.”

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