The 36-Club Champions League, Rated Before a Ball Is Kicked
8 September 2026
One table of 36
The league phase started tonight, and this is the Match Day version of it. Every one of the 36 clubs in the 2026/27 Champions League rated with ATK, DEF and CGF, all 144 fixtures from the real draw laid out by matchday with the Match Ratings already worked out, and the whole knockout road from the play-off round to the final.
If you have not looked at the format closely, it rewards a second look. Everyone plays eight different opponents, two from each seeding pot, one home and one away, never a club from their own country. The top eight go straight to the last 16. Ninth to 24th go into a two-legged play-off. Finish 25th and you are out, with nothing to drop into. Working out who has actually qualified with three matches to go is half the entertainment, and a 36-row table with cut lines at 8, 16 and 24 is a very good thing to have on the desk.
The helper app
The pack comes with a browser app. One file, works offline, nothing to install. There is no engine in it, and that is deliberate. You play the matches on the table with Book One and type the scores in. The app keeps the 36-club table, sorts the UEFA tiebreakers, marks the cuts, then draws the play-off round along the real bracket lines and runs it through to the final.
The one job it does that a printed sheet cannot is generate a fresh draw. Two from each pot, one home and one away, no same-country ties, never more than two opponents from one country, then dealt into eight matchdays with every club playing once. Drawing that by hand is genuinely painful. The app does it in a second. Once you have played the real draw, play the one that might have been.
Three ways to play it
The ratings CSV pastes straight into the Match Day League Helper and the Long Play app. So you can roll it on the table and keep score in the helper, let the League Helper run the matchdays for you, or take the big nights into Long Play and play them chance by chance, with extra time and penalties when the knockout rounds arrive. Same 36 clubs, either 2nd Edition engine.
The ratings
A projection, set in the week of matchday one. Big-five clubs are rated from their most recent full season and adjusted for the field they will actually face. Everyone else is rated against that same field, because a pot is five years of history and a rating is now. The set is balanced to play at a league-phase scoring rate, a touch above a domestic league.
PSG and Real Madrid lead the attack ratings. Arsenal have the best defence. Sabah, on debut from Azerbaijan, are rated to score about one goal every two games. Tell me where that is wrong in January when the table proves it.
You need Match Day Book One: Quick Play (2nd Edition) to run the matches, and Book Two for extra time and penalties.