Day: September 27, 2025

Champions League is a club association football competition operated by Europe’s top-tier league, the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA). It features the reigning champions of each of UEFA’s 53 national leagues and clubs that earn invitations through other qualification streams. The competition is one of the most watched and highest regarded in the world, behind only the FIFA World Cup and the UEFA European Championship.

The competition began in 1960 as a single-elimination tournament for teams only from one nation, but has since been expanded to include the best clubs from the five continental member confederations of the Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) and other high-ranking clubs. It is the top-tier competition of the European football season and is contested by 32 clubs over two legs, with the final being played in a neutral venue selected by UEFA.

In 2024/25, the competition format was substantially revised, dropping the group stage and replacing it with an expanded “league phase” in which all thirty-six qualified teams are ranked as a single group using a system based on four seeding pots to determine matchups. During the league phase, each team plays eight different opponents, with half of those games at home and the other at away.

The top-eight ranked clubs advance to the knockout play-off round, where they face the teams that finished nineth through twenty-fourth in the league table, with each of those matches also being two legged. Ahead of the start of the new format, UEFA explained that this arrangement is designed to increase both sporting and logistical incentives for teams in the league phase, and that it will provide the opportunity for a greater variety of matches in the bracket.

The last few weeks have been filled with athlete retirement news, from Super Bowl star Nick Foles hanging up his cleats to two-time Olympic gold medalist Alex Morgan announcing her last Women’s World Cup appearance. For many athletes, the decision to hang up their cleats is not an easy one.

Athletes typically retire much earlier than the average person, often coinciding with crucial phases of career development and family planning. It can be a big adjustment going from training around the clock to surviving on minimum wages with very little support, and some athletes struggle in their early post-athletic years.

Those who do make the transition can face a number of challenges, ranging from adjusting to a new lifestyle and finding ways to define their identity outside of sport to dealing with injury-related financial pressures. A study by Anglia Ruskin University found that the vast majority of female athletes experienced difficulties in identifying themselves as anything other than an elite athlete.

Athletes who make the decision to hang up their cleats might find themselves in a unique position when it comes to retirement finances, as most of their assets are held in trust and not directly under their control. RBC professionals recommend that athletes become financially literate and make the right investments to help fund their post-athletic lives. Those who are married should consider a prenuptial agreement to protect their assets, and those with children might want to establish a trust for tax planning purposes.