After a summer packed with great footballing action, including the continental championships of Europe (the Euros) and South America (the Copa America), the meat and drink of regular league football has returned. Autumn is almost upon us and thanks to new TV deals there is more action to watch than ever before.
If you want to plan your schedule, decide when to book your holidays so you don’t miss any football, or just want to know when the biggest games are taking place, this is the article for you. We’ll focus on English football but with one or two other key dates too.
Premier League
The Premier League started on the 16th of August, 2024 with a Friday night game between Man United and Fulham. 36 more rounds of football will follow that before the all-important – usually at least – last weekend of the season. If we’re lucky we’ll have most of the major battles – the title race, the fight for European places and the relegation dogfight – still undecided.
Match week 38, as the Premier League refer to it, will see all 10 games kicking off at 4pm on Sunday the 25th of May. There are no obvious six-pointers, be that for a top-four finish, the title, or the relegation scrap. However, Man United versus Aston Villa could well be pivotal in terms of European football next term, whilst Southampton versus Arsenal could have big implications at both ends of the table.
Other key dates that many are interested in are around the festive season. The exact fixture times and dates are yet to be released but the PL has said that they will ease the congestion and give sides more rest, with no teams set to play two games within 60 hours. Another point of note is that the winter break has been scrapped this term after a brief experiment where half the league had rest periods on alternative weeks.
Championship
The second tier of English football started, as usual, a little earlier than the top flight. With 24 teams in each of the three tiers of the EFL, there are eight additional games for each team in comparison to the Premier League. There are some slight differences between the scheduling of the Championship compared to League One and League Two.
However, the Championship will be staged over 33 weekends, with nine rounds of midweek games and four lots of Bank Holiday games. The last games of the season will kick off simultaneously on the 3rd of May at 3 pm. That earlier finish to the regular season leaves time for the play-offs which, as usual, culminate in the finals over the late May Bank Holiday.
FA Cup
Premier League fans may be surprised to learn that the 2024/25 FA Cup started at the beginning of August. In fact, three rounds of the competition take place in meteorological summer, with an extra preliminary round, preliminary round and then first qualifying round all taking place whilst the kids are still off school!
The first round proper takes place on or around Saturday the 2nd of November with the second following at the end of the month. The big boys then enter the fray, as usual, in January, with the bulk of the third round on Saturday the 11th of January, 2025.
The major dates for the other rounds are as follows:
- 4th Round – 8th of February, 2025
- 5th Round – 1st of March, 2025
- Quarter Finals – 29th of March, 2025
- Semi Finals – 26th of April, 2025
- Final – 17th of May, 2025
EFL Cup
The Carabao Cup, EFL Cup or League Cup (take your pick of nomenclature) is the first major piece of silverware to be handed out each season. It began on the 13th of August, 2024, with some Premier League teams coming in for the second round on the 27th and 28th of August.
Next, the PL sides who are in Europe join the fun with a staggered round seeing games on the 17th and 18th of September, and also the 24th and 25th. After that, we have the fourth round at the end of October, the quarters in the week commencing the 16th of December and then the two-legged semis in early January and then early February. The final is later than usual this year (well, next year), pencilled in for the 16th of March, 2025.
England and the International Breaks
Some fans love the international breaks and the chance to see England, whilst others loathe them. Things are a bit more interesting this year as we get to see how Lee Carsley gets on in the post-Gareth Southgate era. The FIFA calendar shows the following dates set aside for international action, along with the teams England will face:
- 1st-9th September, 2024 – Ireland and Finland
- 6th-14th October, 2024 – Greece and Finland
- 10th-18th November, 2024 – Greece and Ireland
- 23rd-31st March, 2025 – TBC
The 2024 games are in the Nations League. In March, qualifying for the 2026 World Cup will commence, with England yet to know their opponents.
Champions League, Europa League, and Europa Conference League
We have a new format for all three major European competitions this term, with a Swiss-system league replacing the familiar round-robin group formats. In simple terms, the group phase, with eight quartets playing each other home and away, has been replaced with a large single group/league where all teams play eight games, four at home and four away, but do not play all other clubs (of which there are 36 in total).
The key dates to be aware of are as follows:
- Champions League Final – 31st of May, 2025 @ 8pm in Munich
- Europa League Final – 21st of May, 2025 @ 8pm in Bilbao
- Conference League Final – 28th of May, 2025 @ 8pm in Wroclaw
The UCL final will take place on a Saturday night, as it has for some time now. In contrast, the other two UEFA finals take place midweek, on consecutive Wednesdays.