Tottenham Hotspur will host their city rivals Arsenal on Thursday, in a postponed match from the 22nd round of the English Premier League. Tottenham drew 1-1 with Liverpool earlier this week, reaching 62 points, four points behind the Gunners in the Premier League table with three games of the season remaining.
A victory for Mikel Arteta’s side will secure at least fourth spot and confirm they will finish above their rivals for the first time since 2016. However, a Spurs win, or even a draw, would leave it wide open.
Egyptian midfielder Mohamed Elneny is expected to find his way to Arsenal’s starting line-up on Thursday, after his brilliant performance in the past league matches.
Elneny is reportedly close to renewing his contract with the Gunners. His current contract with Arsenal expires at the end of this season, on 30 June. The talented pharaoh has been playing for the English club since 2016.
Meanwhile, the European Football Association (UEFA), last Tuesday, officially announced a new system for its continental championships, on the sidelines of the meeting of the UEFA Executive Committee, a day before the 46th Ordinary Conference.
The agenda of the UEFA General Assembly included selecting the host of the 2023 European Conference Final, and approving amendments to the European Champions League, as well as the two European Championships for teams under 17 and 19 scheduled to be held in the 2022-2023 season.
The European Football Association officially agreed to make a set of amendments to the Champions League competition, and they will be applied starting from the 2024-2025 season, most notably increasing the number of teams participating in the competition to 36 instead of 32, provided that the group stage will be replaced by one group that includes all teams, Each team plays against eight different teams, provided that they play four matches home and the other four away.
The top eight teams will qualify directly to the round of 16, while the teams ranked 9th through 16th will play home against the teams ranked from 17th to 24th. Teams ranking from 25th to 36th will exit the Champions League and will not be transferred to the Europa League.
Among the amendments that UEFA made to its championships was to grant the fifth country in the European classification after England, Spain, Italy and Germany an additional seat in the Champions League.
These amendments come to confront the European Super League project launched by the Spanish trio Real Madrid, Barcelona, and Italian Juventus last year. Nine elite European teams in Italy, Spain and England, supported the project before retracting later for fear of sanctions from UEFA.
