The evening of the explosion of goals in the Champions League; Is the new format to blame?

The record of 78 goals in the second week of this season, has the new tournament format encouraged teams to take more risks?

According to Ambassador Arjan, the second week of this season of the European Champions League broke the record number of goals. Has the change in tournament format played a role in this and will these goals still stand?

9 games on Wednesday (October 14) brought a total of 46 goals. Only 2 game days in the history of the European Champions League have seen more goals and both games were held in the final and exciting days of the league group stage in the 2024-25 and 2025-26 seasons.

The 78 goals scored in the games on Tuesday and Wednesday made the second week of the 2026-2027 European Champions League season the most scored game in history. This number of goals was 9 goals more than the total number of goals scored in the first week of this season (69 goals), which at that time was the second most goal-scoring week since the start of the new phase of the league in the 2024-2025 season.

The scoring average is at the highest level in history

During the first 2 weeks of the 2026-2027 season, 147 goals have been scored in 36 games. The average of 4.08 goals per game is the highest average of goals in a single season of the European Champions League, and including the previous editions of the European Club Cup, only the seasons of 1959-1960 (4.19) and 1955-1956 (4.38) were higher than this average.

Why are more goals scored now than before?

Is there more difference between opponents? Do teams feel they have more freedom to take risks in the new first-round format? Easier climb, more risk?

In the old group stage format between 2003-2004 and 2023-2024, where teams were divided into 8 groups of four teams, 16 of the 32 teams qualified for the UCL knockout stage (50%). Now, the 36-team league format puts 8 teams directly into the last 16, but importantly, the remaining 16 teams are given another chance to make it through the knockout stage via an elimination playoff round. This means that a higher proportion of teams are promoted from the league stage: 66.7%.

This reduces risk and enables teams to take more risks in their 8-game league stage.

Take Benfica last season, for example. They lost 5 out of 8 games in their league stage, but still qualified for the playoffs in 24th place. They have proven that it is possible to win and lose more than half of their games in the new league stage.

Paris Saint-Germain has won the Champions League in the last two seasons, despite not being among the top 8 teams in both seasons and having to go through the knockout playoffs. They have won only half of their league stage games (8 out of 16) during these championship seasons.

A noteworthy point since the introduction of the league stage in the 2024-2025 season is the increase in high-goal wins (with a minimum difference of four goals) in the first round. During the 21 UEFA Champions League group stage seasons between 2003-2004 and 2023-2024, 190 out of 2,016 games ended with a team winning by more than 4 goals - 9.4%. Since the introduction of the league stage, 14.5% of the matches have seen a team win with a difference of more than 4 goals; An increase of more than five percent.

Not only that, but the average goal difference between teams has increased from 1.56 in the old group stage format to 1.86 in the 36-team league stage, while the average margin of victory has increased from 2.02 to 2.17.

This cannot be entirely attributed to the greater level difference between the opponents in the first round. Some of these wins have come by more than 4 goals, unexpectedly between teams at a similar level - at least on paper. Since the 2024-2025 season, there have been eight wins by more than four goals in the league stage by one team against another in Europe's top five leagues. The previous 4 seasons of the UCL group stage have witnessed 7 such wins.

Does this flower explosion continue?

One notable increase is the number of high-scoring games since the introduction of the league stage.

In the history of the Champions League, only 15 matches have seen more than 9 goals scored. 4 of these matches have been in the group stage since the introduction of the league (26.7%). This is most likely a statistical anomaly, but given that group stage matches from the 2024-2025 season only account for 10.7% of all Champions League games, this statistic is still strange.

Maybe the goal explosion is not only for the league stage matches. Last season we saw the highest average goals per game in the first round (3.38) and elimination stage (3.73) since the 2003-2004 season. This season's league stage is on the way to breaking this record (4.08) and considering that the average goal in the elimination stage has increased in each of the last 3 seasons, maybe we can expect the same this time.