REVEALED: Premier League clubs face MORE mayhem next season as fixture dates for 2024/25 are released… and there are ‘no obvious solutions’ to some of the clashes between European and domestic games
- There will be three fixtures between the European and Carabao Cup weeks
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Premier League clubs face additional devastation next season, with clashes between European and domestic matches and no mid-season break.
Top teams face the possibility of three clashes between midweek European fixtures and Carabao Cup assignments.
The 2024/25 season will run from August 17 to May 25, it has been announced, with a detailed fixture list on June 18.
There are two rounds of Champions League fixtures in the last two weeks of January and that explains why FA Cup replays were not considered feasible by top six clubs, who pushed for the change.
Some third round replays were typically scheduled to be played in the second half of January, but all replays have been scrapped, as recently revealed by Mail Sport. The Champions League group stage will be expanded from six to eight matches and will fill this gap from the end of January.
Premier League clubs will face extra chaos next season with three matches between the European and Carabao Cup matchweeks
There will be a net eight matches in the Champions League group stage – the two extra matches will be played roughly at the same time as the FA Cup replays would have been.
And while there was a reduced schedule in early and mid-January to give players a chance to recover this season, such a postponement will not occur again in 2024/2025.
The first clash between the Carabao Cup and Europe will take place in the week of September 16.
That midweek, the third round of the Carabao Cup will be at odds with the first matches of the Champions League group stage.
And the same goes for the following week, where Carabao Cup assignments will mix with the Europa League.
It will force clubs in Europe to alternate their fixtures and play domestic cup matches either in the week before or after they play in Europe. The first match week of the Europa League is ‘exclusive’, meaning clubs must play EFL Cup matches a week earlier.
Meanwhile, matchday six of the Europa Conference League clashes directly with the Carabao Cup quarter-final on December 18, and there is ‘no obvious solution’ to this conundrum.
There is ‘no obvious solution’ if the Europa Conference League clashes with the Carabao Cup quarter-finals on December 18
The Carabao Cup semi-finals remain two-tiered, a tradition dating back to 1961, when the competition was founded.
UEFA has remained adamant that they are not responsible for date conflicts and that the onus is on national associations to ease the pressure on clubs’ fixtures.
