“When you play as if you had nothing to lose, you go to the attack,” said Pep Guardiola after tracing 3-1 witches and achieving the classification for the next time that escaped the worst sports crisis of his career. “The new format makes the first phase really hard. It is not easy to go to Turin, Paris, Lisbon … We have suffered, but I like it! Spectators love it because important teams can stay out. Who could imagine that the City could be left out of the first 24 of the first phase? For the end of the first phase! ”
If Guardiola ended up exhausted, Leandro Shara was proud. Excited as before a newborn son on Wednesday night, as contemplated the anxiety, uncertainty and stress that caused the last day of the first phase of the new Champions League in the 36 contending teams. This 58 -year -old Chilean mathematician who has patented more than five competition formats, executive of the pharmaceutical GSK, FIFA consultant and the International Olympic Committee, says he is the creator of the formula. “This is the greatest revolution of sport in this century,” he says. “Everything has evolved. The grass, the equipment, the statistics … but until my format arrived, the formats that were used had not varied since the time of Spartacus. ”
“Now more goals are being made,” says Shara. “Scientific studies confirm that this format demands 96% more than the previous group format.”
The average goals per game in the first phase of this Champions League was 3.26. The figure hit all the competition records since the Liguilla was established in 1999. In that first edition of the European Cup with champion league format an average of 2.8 goals per match were scored in the first phase. The scoring frequency touched the bottom with 2.2 in 2001. Since then, attack football has pushed the limit, but the new format has sprayed it. For UEFA rejoicing.
The agency that governs European football denies that the intellectual author of the new competition is Shara, even more than the Chilean mathematician has evidence that he has been in contact with Giorgio Marchetti for more than a decade, attached to the UEFA General Secretariat. UEFA points out that the idea was the product of the “Strategic Development Directorate of Competitions”, whose visible head is the mathematician Stéphane Anselmo. Anselmo became famous the day presented by the new Champions, in August 2024, when he warned that, according to his simulation, the teams would “that is,” he said, “two victories and two draws.”
When has a first phase been done with eight dates? When was a tournament held with 36 teams? There are only two precedents: the 2011 Chile Cup and the Peru Cup since 2015
Leandro Shara, mathematician and FIFA consultant
The official simulation showed that not even UEFA managed to predict the outcome of the machinery he launched. The Stuttgart was eliminated with 10 points and the dynamo of Zagreb with 11 after achieving three victories and two draws. Shara explains that UEFA did nothing more than adapt the format governing the Peru Cup since 2015. “I invite you to review the history of sport, not just football,” he says. “When has a first phase been done with eight dates? When was a tournament held with 36 teams? There are only two precedents: the 2011 Chile Cup and the Peru Cup since 2015 ″.
“They hired me in 2015 to avoid the manipulation of results in the Peru Cup,” he recalls, “for example, to establish a format that would prevent archers from bribing in exchange for a certain number of goals. Second, because in Peru the roads are not good and wanted to prevent the teams from traveling large distances in round trip crosses … The first eight classified third round and from 9th to 24th they went to the repechage. Exactly as UEFA did now! ”
“In the traditional format,” he explains, “that it has been used in Champions, in World Cups, in European Cup, or in handball and basketball tournaments, many times the equipment goes to speculate because they know that letting themselves be lost or tied Then with a better rival. Many go out to protect themselves, to waste time, not to cross the midfield, or to agree on a result that suits both, as happened in Gijón in the World Cup in Spain, between Germany and Austria. In these games each team defined 50% of the probabilities. On the last day of the first phase of the new Champions, each team played with less than 6% probability of influencing the general classification. Manipulation possibilities have been greatly reduced. On the last date, Atlético competed with 14 teams and Real Madrid with 20 rivals. If there were manipulation possibilities and there was talk of amaño possibilities [entre el PSG y el Stuttgart]it’s just because UEFA badly applied the format. ” Or so the mathematician says.
Shara argues that the variable of disputed days directly affects the uncertainty of the classification, to explain that its system has not been well developed by UEFA. To do so graphic points to the mathematical function expressed in the graph of the Gauss curve, according to which, from the seventh day of the first phase of the Champions League, equipment is eliminated at the bottom of the table and equipment classified in The head that is no longer played on the following dates, a circumstance that remains interest to the tournament. “If in UEFA they had studied the function of the Gauss curve, they would have cut the competition on the sixth date,” he warns. “In the Gauss curve, 80% of the teams are concentrated in the center. As dates are added, the curve begins to shrink. Thus, it happened that teams such as Liverpool and Barça classified in advance on the seventh date and many others such as Young Boys, Girona, Salzburg or Leipzig had nothing to do in the eighth. If with eight dates this was crazy, with six the level of stress of the players and competitiveness would have been much greater, more goals would have been scored and uncertainty would have approached 100%. ”
Mathematically, the format demonstrates that the relationship between uncertainty, anxiety, and improves the attacker of the equipment is usually directly proportional. The games are more spectacular and the protagonists suffer more. “The new Champions format gives us more work,” admits Mikel Arteta, Arsenal coach, with a smile. “As they are more rivals and so different, we have had to put more hours to discover the rival that you will face only once, when you had the advantage of playing twice against it.”
The new format gives more work to coaches
Mikel Arteta, Arsenal coach
“” Adds Shara, “is to put all the games at the same time. This is not like in the groups of four, in which two games are played to define the group and in each game 50% of the group is defined. Here is barely defined 5% of the total competition. When the incidence is 5% you cannot do things that benefit you at the expense of others, it is almost mathematically impossible. According to our studies, you have only a 3% chance of manipulating the result. ”
Shara ensures that its format produces more competitive championships and soccer players. Remember that it was applied in Costa Rica’s football competitions and in the Concacaf World Cup classification for the 2014 and 2018 World Cup, and that thanks to this the best selection of Costa Rica in history emerged. The implementation of the format in Algeria two decades ago was reflected in the conquest of the Africa Cup in 2019, and the formation of the Peru Cup in 2015 promoted the classification of the Peruvian national team for the 2018 World Cup after 36 years without going to a final phase. “By increasing competitiveness,” he says, “children grow from the base with another mentality.”
