i think the CL should be pruned down drastically.
league winner and runners up from the 6 biggest leagues (england, germany, france, spain, italy, portugal) = 12 teams
champs from the next 5 leagues (netherlands, austria, scotland, serbia, belgium) = 5 teams
august playoff round for league winners from the next 8 leagues (ukraine, switzerland, greece, czech republic, croatia, denmark, turkey, norway) = 1 team advances
current champion = 1 team
previous year's europa league winner = 1 team
that would be 20 teams total. the 6 top league champions, plus the holder and the runner up, plus the league runners up from the two leagues with the highest coefficient into group a. the next 4 league runners up, plus the 5 champs from the 2nd tier leagues, plus the one team that survived the playin go in group b.
do a random draw where each team in group A plays 5 matches against other group A teams, and 5 matches against group B teams. 10 total matches played, 5 home and 5 away.
the 4 teams that have the highest totals after the 10 group games advance to a 2 leg semi, and then play the final as a single leg. this gets rid of the round of 32, round of 16 and round of 8. it makes consistent performance in the group stage actually meaningful. if they think giving up 3 rounds of knockout games is too much, then expand it and play 16 matches in the group stage instead of 10, and spread it out from september through april, with the semis and final in may.
any team that doesnt make it into the champions league field of 20 go into the europa league. and no more dropping from the CL into the europa league bullshit.
theres no reason that a separate "super league" run by UEFA can't be set up and run in parallel to domestic leagues. how many people are truly riveted by group games between huge teams and minnows from the 47th ranked european country? for every sheriff tiraspol upset over real madrid, there are 1000 instances of a 5-0 drubbing.