Champions League and Europa League might be settled through a mini-tournament

UEFA is planning to conduct two mini-tournaments to decide the winners of the Champions League and Europa League. Such a consideration aims to ease the fixture congestion that the coronavirus pandemic has caused.

It has been understood that a four-team Champions League and Europa League might be organised to decide the winners of these competitions.

UEFA's normal schedule has been drastically hit by the COVID-19 outbreak in Europe. Both competitions are currently at their last-16 stage. Six matchdays are remaining, including the finals, with 14 last-16 encounters yet to be completed across the two tournaments.

On Tuesday, the officials of the European football organisation are scheduled to do a series of teleconferences. The goal of the video conference would be to discuss the two European tournaments as well as the possibility of postponing this summer's Euro 2020 by at least a year, so that the current club season could be finished.

UEFA is eager to complete the Champions League and Europa League on time because they have to satisfy major broadcasting contracts.

According to BBC, all the parties associated with these tournaments are ready to sacrifice something to reach a unified solution.

The source mentioned that all 55 members of UEFA, along with the boards of the European Club Association and the respective European Leagues, and a representative of world players' union FIFpro are invited to Tuesday's conference.

If the Champions League is shortened, it would allow timely completion of the competition. As per the original schedule, the last-16 second-legs would be played once football is resumed in the UK. According to reports, quarter-finals might be played in a one-off match format instead of being the usual two-legged encounters.

Possibly, the final four might be played in the form of mini-tournaments in Istanbul and Gdansk, the venues for Champions League and Europa League, respectively. If that happens, it would be similar to what the football fraternity witnessed during last year's Nations League finals held in Porto.

This is not the first time that UEFA has reformatted their competitions or introduced new ones. A well-received Nations League and their upcoming UEFA Europa Conference League are positive innovations that the organisation brought to the table.

It would be interesting to see how UEFA combats the current situation without cancelling entire campaigns.