Aston Villa, Bologna, Brest, Girona and Slovan Bratislava made their debut appearances in the Champions League since the introduction of the group stage.
[1] With the format change, the number of matches prior to the knockout phase increased from 96 to 144.
Juventus' Kenan Yıldız was the first-ever goalscorer of the competition's league phase.
If two or more teams were equal on points upon completion of the league phase, the following tiebreaking criteria were applied, in the order given, to determine their rankings:[3] During the league phase, criteria 1 to 5 were used to rank teams who had an equal number of points.
[6] The participants included: Notes The draw for the league phase pairings was held at the Grimaldi Forum in Monaco on 29 August 2024, 18:00 CEST.
For every team manually drawn, a guest on stage pressed the button for the automated software to digitally draw their opponents at random, determining which of their matches were at home and which ones away.
All matches were played on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, except for the competition's exclusive week, which also included Thursday fixtures.