BREAKING NEWS: Man City and Aston Villa have Champions League and Europa League registration…

After the joy of welcoming multiple new signings during the January transfer window, Manchester City, Tottenham Hotspur and Aston Villa now face a headache when it comes to their winter signings.

That is because, under UEFA rules, clubs playing in Europe can only register a maximum three new players into their knockout stage squad from their league phase roster – though there are some exceptions.

Right, let’s get the boring rules out the way. Back in September, clubs competing in Europe filed a registration list for the league phases of their respective competitions. The registration is made up of two lists. List A and List B.

List B doesn’t really affect Man City, Spurs or Villa here but if you’re interested, it is mainly made up of youth players.

Players in this list were aged 21 or under at the start of the season and have been registered to the club for three straight, uninterrupted years from the age of 15. And there are no limitations on how many of these players you can have, or when you can register them,.

But when it comes to List A – that’s where the main players are. No club can have more than 25 players on List A during the season – and at least two must be goalkeepers. On top of that, eight of those 25 players must be ‘locally trained’.

What does that mean? At least four players must have been on the books of the club for three years between the ages of 15 and 21. The rest can be made up of home-grown players fitting into the same category, but they may have played for another club from the same league.

If you fail to meet that quota, your squad size is trimmed. For example, if you’re two ‘locally trained’ players short, then you can only have 23 players in your List A squad, instead of 25.

We know, this is getting very complicated. But stay with us as that ‘locally trained’ bit is important, especially when it comes to Spurs.

The main crux is, clubs are only allowed to register a maximum of three new eligible players after the completion of the league phase and before the start of the knockout phase. There are some exceptions where more new players are allowed to be registered.

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