Real Madrid Femenino will compete in the UEFA Women’s Champions League in 2022–2023 for the second consecutive year.
The new format, which has a home and away group stage, will be used for the second time during this season. Everything you need to know about the new structure and the UWCL’s gameplay is given here:
Real Madrid’s victory over Villarreal on the penultimate day of the league season resulted in three points, and Atletico’s loss to Barcelona allowed Las Blancas to finish third in the league, raising their chances of competing in the UWCL for a second straight year.
According to the draws made today, Real Madrid, who finished third in their league this season, will play Austria’s Sturm Graz in the semifinals of the UWCL qualifying tournament.
How does this qualification work? Who advances to the group stages?
Who qualifies directly for the UWCL group stages?
In total, there are 50 associations. The top six associations enter the top three teams from their league, the seventh through sixteenth associations enter the top two teams, and the remaining associations enter their league champions.
Along with the reigning UWCL champions, four teams, including the league champions of the top three associations—England, France, and Germany—automatically enter the group stage. Since Olympique Lyonnais won both last year’s championship and the French league, Barcelona, the league champion of Spain’s fourth-place association, officially qualified for the group stages.
The rest of the teams have to go through two rounds in order to qualify for group stages:
Round 1: The semifinal and final of round one are single-leg events with two alternative paths:
League Path: In the first round’s league path, the third-placed clubs from associations with rankings one through six and the runners-up from associations with rankings seven through sixteen are eligible. Four league path winners move on to round two.
Champions Path: For the champions path of round one, fourty-four league champions representing associations seven through fifty are eligible. Eleven winners of the champion’s path move on to round two.
Round two: The teams moving on to the group stages are determined in Round 2, a two-legged knockout round. There are two paths in this Round as well:
League Path: For this path, four league path champions from round one and six runners-up from associations placed one through six are eligible. This route advances five winners to the group rounds.
Champion’s Path: There are eleven final winners from the champions path of round one, along with league winners from associations four through six, who are also eligible for this path. From this road, seven winners move on to the group stages.
Sixteen teams compete in group stages after round two, including the initial four teams and seven teams from the champions path mixed with five teams from the league path.
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The UEFA Women’s Champions League group stages are quite similar to the UCL group stages for the men.
Four groups of four teams each contain a total of 16 teams; these teams will play each other both at home and away.
The champions of each group and the runners-up advance to the knockout rounds, which are divided into two legs before a single Final.