Arsenal reached the Champions League final after benefiting from UEFA’s new extended seeding rules, which gives top league phase finishers home advantage throughout the knockout rounds
Arsenal’s journey to the Champions League final has benefitted from a timely rule change by UEFA. The adjustment was implemented after the Gunners felt hard done by following their previous encounter with Paris Saint-Germain.
UEFA’s revised league table structure for the Champions League commenced in the 2024-25 season, with Arsenal amongst eight sides who earned automatic progression to the last 16.
This also granted the Gunners home advantage in the second leg of their round-of-16 tie with PSV Eindhoven. However, this privilege didn’t extend to subsequent knockout rounds, much to Arsenal’s dismay.
Their irritation intensified when PSG, who’d concluded 12 positions beneath Arsenal and required navigation through the play-offs, were designated as the home side for the second leg when the pair clashed in last year’s semi-finals.
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Mikel Arteta’s team were also denied a home second leg when they progressed past Real Madrid in the quarter-finals, despite placing above them in the league phase.
Arsenal had to travel to Paris attempting to reverse their 1-0 home loss, eventually succumbing 3-1 on aggregate after a tightly-fought semi-final encounter. This season, though, there’s been an alteration.
UEFA have expanded the seeding throughout the entire knockout stages. By virtue of topping this season’s table, Arsenal were afforded home advantage across all three of their second legs. That proved especially valuable during the last-16 and semi-final rounds.
Initially, the Gunners could only secure a 1-1 draw away to Bayer Leverkusen in the round-of-16 first leg before capitalising on their home advantage in the return fixture, claiming a 2-0 victory on the night.
Subsequently in the semi-finals, Arsenal were restricted to a 1-1 draw by Atletico Madrid in the Spanish capital. When the sides reconvened in London, the Gunners prevailed 1-0 and secured their place in Budapest.
PSG supporters will observe that this campaign saw them face an away second leg for all three of their knockout fixtures beyond the play-off stage, having concluded 11th in the table.
They overcame Chelsea and Liverpool on their respective turfs before a 1-1 draw with Bayern Munich in Germany proved sufficient to propel them through to another final, suggesting it’s evidently not an issue for the French powerhouse.
However, debate persists regarding how the seeding operates. When a team defeats opponents who finished above them in the table, they ‘inherit’ their rivals’ position.
For instance, Atletico secured a home second leg in this season’s quarter-final encounter against Barcelona, having eliminated Tottenham in the preceding round, with Spurs having finished one place superior to Barca.
Last year, Martin Keown was at the randomised draw that took place when the Gunners’ last-16 opponents were decided that they would play both the quarter-final and semi-final at home first. He raised his concerns with the format at the time, prior to the change this season.
“When this draw was done, they sort of… I did argue with the guy who put the rules together,” said Keown. “There needs to be some benefit of getting out of the blocks early and finishing in the top eight or your league position.
“I like the fact that you play second. The last 16, the teams that didn’t play in the 32, they played the home game last. There’s a lot in that.
“Atletico Madrid have got that against Real Madrid. That could be quite telling. I don’t think the competition organisers realise the full impact that has. In fact, they did say to me that Dortmund would probably want to play their [home] leg first. Well, that’s okay then.
“But I think that the league position, one of the mistakes I’d like to offer up is they should have allowed that where you finished in the league gives you the right to play the last game at home throughout the tournament.
“To just draw that out of a hat in the last draw and give that away, it was a very cheap thing to do, really. It takes it away from what is a Champions League competition, after all, and we should be reverting back to the league right the way through the competition.”
