The Champions League draw is set for an overhaul this summer after UEFA worked out it would take "three or four hours" to stage the draw manually under the competition’s new format.
European football’s governing body is introducing new looks for all three of its men’s club competitions for next season, with a 36-team league phase replacing the 32-team Champions League group phase that has been in place since the 1999-2000 season.
Every team will face eight different opponents in the league phase as UEFA looks to create a format which reduces the number of dead rubbers, pits big teams against each other earlier in the competition and places extra significance on finishing position in the league when it comes to the knockout draw.
Currently teams are drawn manually from seeded pots, but UEFA’s deputy general secretary Giorgio Marchetti admitted it would not be possible for the draw to remain fully manual, estimating the Champions League draw alone could last "three or four hours" and feature around 900 balls if it continued as it is now.
UEFA said the precise format for the draw was still in the final development phase but that it would be a "hybrid" event involving some manual drawing of balls and some automation.
UEFA said any automated elements would continue to be independently audited to avoid any accusations of the draw being rigged.
Teams from the same country will be kept apart until the new knockout round play-off, other than in very exceptional circumstances, with the new round to be contested by the teams finishing ninth to 24th in the league phase.
UEFA is then introducing a tennis-style seeding system from the last 16 onwards, so that the clubs finishing first and second in the league phase are kept in separate halves of the draw and cannot meet until the final.
The league phase reserves two European performance spots (EPS) for teams from the countries who were collectively the best performers in the previous season’s European campaign.
Italy and Germany currently occupy those spots which would mean the fifth-placed teams in each of those leagues – at the moment Roma and RB Leipzig – gaining the EPS.
England are one place behind Germany, which could mean Manchester United finding themselves in the unusual situation of hoping bitter rivals Manchester City and Liverpool win the Champions League and Europa League respectively to potentially open up a fifth Champions League qualifying spot via the Premier League table.
UEFA also says it will be for the English authorities to make decisions affecting the future of the Carabao Cup, amid the aforementioned expansion of UEFA's club competitions from next season adding further complication and congestion to the calendar.
It had been hoped that the Carabao Cup may be slimmed down and FA Cup replays scrapped if the Premier League and the EFL could reach a deal on extra funding, but that appears further away than ever after the top-flight clubs failed to make an offer at their meeting on Monday, with the focus instead on first agreeing new financial rules.
UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin has previously said the Carabao Cup should be scrapped, but deputy general secretary Marchetti commented that any changes to the competition - and whether the winners should still be a European entrant - would be a matter for England's authorities to instigate.
"We organise our own competitions and we try to be extremely respectful of what the leagues and associations decide in their own territory," he said.
"(National associations and leagues) know what is best for their country. The qualification is locked for the League Cup winner, we decided a long time ago.
"It would be harsh for UEFA to clamp down and say 'no way, stop this'. If this cup is meant to be important in the English ecosystem, it's not for UEFA to step in and say 'no'.
"It's been decided like this for more than 20 years. (If) England one day will come and say 'we don't need it any more' - if it will happen, I don't know. If they ask for that, then there is no reason for UEFA to make another decision."
The Champions League and Europa League group phase will now run into January, which has always previously been reserved for domestic competitions, creating an increased likelihood that match days which are supposed to be exclusively reserved for UEFA fixtures may have to accommodate domestic games too.
Asked whether UEFA could ever say it would not allow League Cup winners to qualify for European competition, its general secretary Theodore Theodoridis said: "We don't want to say this. What we're trying to do is to co-ordinate the possibility for all teams to be participating in both competitions.
"We don't want to involve ourselves in domestic issues. We have leagues, we have associations, they know their competitions better, they know what their supporters want, so we leave it up to them. Our role is to try to accommodate and coexist with existing domestic competitions."
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