2021–22 UEFA Women's Champions League
The 2021–22 UEFA Women's Champions League is the 21st edition of the European women's club football championship organised by UEFA, and the 13th edition since being rebranded as the UEFA Women's Champions League. It is the first edition to feature a 16-team group stage. The final will be held at the Juventus Stadium in Turin, Italy. The winners of the 2021–22 UEFA Women's Champions League will automatically qualify for the 2022–23 UEFA Women's Champions League group stage. The video assistant referee (VAR), previously only deployed for the final , will be used for all matches in the knockout stage. On 24 June 2021, UEFA approved the proposal to abolish the away goals rule in all UEFA club competitions, which had been used since 1965. Therefore, if in a two-legged tie, two teams score the same amount of aggregate goals, the winner of tie will not be decided by the number of away goals scored by each team, but always by 30 minutes of extra time, and if the two teams score the same amount of goals in extra time, the winner will be decided by a penalty shootout . Barcelona are the defending champions. Association team allocation. The association ranking based on the UEFA women's country coefficients is used to determine the number of participating teams for each association: An association must have an eleven-a-side women's domestic league to enter a team. As of 2019–20, 52 of the 55 UEFA member associations organize a women's domestic league, with the exceptions being Andorra, Liechtenstein and San Marino. Association ranking. For the 2021–22 UEFA Women's Champions League, the associations are allocated places according to their 2020 UEFA women's Association coefficients, which takes into account  their performance in European competitions from 2015-16 to 2019–20. Distribution. Unlike the men's Champions League, not every association entered a team, and so the exact number of teams entering in each round could not be determined until the full entry list was known. If there were more than 47 teams in the Champions Path qualifying, a preliminary round of two-legged home-and-away matches would have been played by the champions from the lowest-ranked associations. For example, if the title holders had not qualified for the group stage through league position and all 52 associations with  a women's domestic league entered, the champions from associations 49–52 would enter the preliminary round. However, only 50 associations entered and this round was skipped. The following is the access list for this season. As the Champions League title holders, Barcelona, which were guaranteed a berth in the Champions League group stage, already qualified via their domestic league, the following changes to the access list were made: Teams. The labels in the parentheses show how each team qualified for the place of its starting round: The two qualifying rounds, round 1 and round 2, are divided into Champions Path  (CP) and League Path (LP). "CC: 2021 UEFA women's club coefficients." Notes Schedule. The schedule of the competition is as follows. Qualifying rounds. A preliminary round consisting of two-legged home-and-away matches would have been played by the champions from the lowest-ranked associations if more than 50 associations had entered the tournament and the title holders had not qualified through league position. Since only 50 associations entered, this round was skipped. Group stage. The draw for the group stage was held on 13 September 2021, 13:00 CEST, in Nyon. The 16 teams were drawn into four  groups of four. For the draw, the teams were seeded into four pots, each of four teams, based on the following principles: Teams from the same association could not be drawn into the same group. Prior to the draw, UEFA formed one pairing of teams for associations with two or three teams based on television audiences, where one team was drawn into Groups A–B and another team into Groups C–D, so that the two teams played on different days. Clubs from countries with severe winter conditions (Sweden, Iceland) were assigned a position in their group which allowed them  to play away on matchday 6. The matches will be played on 5–6 October, 13–14 October, 9–10 November, 17–18 November, 8–9 December, and 15–16 December 2021. The top two teams of each group will advance to the quarter-finals. Køge, 1899 Hoffenheim and Real Madrid are playing in a European competition for the first time this season. Knockout phase. In the knockout phase, teams play against each other over two legs on a home-and-away basis, except for the one-match final. The mechanism of the draws for each round is as follows: Statistics. Statistics exclude qualifying rounds and  play-off round.