Football news - UEFA planning four-team Champions League, Europa League mini-tournaments - report

UEFA are planning to settle this season's Champions League and Europa League with a four-team mini-tournament after the normal schedule has been postponed due the coronavirus outbreak in Europe, according to the Sun.

UEFA officials are set for a series of teleconferences this Tuesday in order to discuss the two European competitions and the possibility of postponing this summer's European Championships by a year in order to allow the current season to finish. The idea behind the Champions League conclusion would shorten the competition.

The last-16 second-legs will be played once football is resumed then quarter-finals will be one-off matches, instead of the usual two-legged affairs.

The final four would play a mini-tournament in Istanbul - or Gdansk for the Europa League - over a four-day period to decide a winner, in a similar fashion to last year's Nations League finals in Porto.

Shortening the competition when teams will have a backlog of games to catch up on, when professional football does return, seems a smart idea.

UEFA are no strangers when it comes to reformatting their tournaments (RIP UEFA Cup) or introducing entirely new ones - such as the mostly well-received Nations League and the upcoming UEFA Europa Conference League. This option seems an appropriate strategy instead of binning off entire campaigns.