I will comment this totally unexpected major change in two posts intentionally: here are my thoughts about it generally, in the second I will order the (likely) participating teams again in the new ranking.
First of all, this is typical for our two top volleyball federations (applies also to FIVB, not just CEV): no reliability, but quick decisions to do something essentially different. This is also lacking integrity, but this is no surprise, because FIVB is IMHO totally corrupt (as virtually all big world sports federations) and CEV only a little better. They should be ashamed, to erase the already published rankings and berths for the leagues in this stage, nobody could prepare in time for this change, so the short time to react for the clubs regarding application for certain European cups was reduced even more.
In detail some pros and cons:
It's positive to have again the same number of pools for both women's and men's competition. There is IMHO no point to handle this differently.
It's okay IMHO to stick to pools of four each - this is an established format and limits the number of matches to a reasonable number, but makes them also not too small (like pools of three).
It's good, that the top three federations now get fixed berths in pool stage - there is simply no point especially for Turkey and Italy to enforce qualification rounds to them, which they will always pass (aside from some seldom happening miracle).
Also positive is, that by putting the strongest federations all directly in pool stage, they are not kicking away inferior leagues clubs necessarily anymore. So it is more fair to qualification participants, despite there will only two survive now instead of four the last time. This can help to create stronger and more balanced pools indeed.
Host advantage was always tilting the competition and also influencing the ranking list in favour of the hosts. So the more classical quarters and semis approach is okay for me - and make the chance to get to quarters a little higher for not top-leagues teams (8 instead of 6 slots).
The double header women's and men's final at a neutral host location is no great idea, the reasons were already pronounced in earlier posts: maybe too distant for the spectators at that location and a little out-of-system. Maybe it may work though, but does neutral host mean only from a city not in the competition (as I guess) or even not from a country of the participants? The last would limit possibilities and simply exclude the strongest federations from being hosts, which seems unlikely. Otherwise having a finalist team in the same country will often result in an hosting advantage for them, despite not fully predictable, but often likely with only two finalists per country considering the big difference in strength between the three top leagues and the remainder.
And finally: what they obviously did NOT is also worth to mention: there is no hint, that they would relax very expensive regulations, which are a serious issue for less well financed leagues and/or clubs, even if they are strong enough for participation. In pool stage you have alone per home match minimum additional costs of three times and two times 10.000 Euro, for laola1.tv high quality streaming and video challenge application, so in total 60.000 Euro, not taking into account long travels usually by airplane and hotel costs and so on. So the too big financial obstacles seem to persist and will not result in broader acceptance of financially limited teams.
Even worse, increasing the prize money benefits usually only the already rich clubs, which get further in the competition, and increases even more the gap between them and the others.
Also I think, the CEV should exclude obviously too feeble teams, last season there were three I would never accept to apply, i.e. Sliedrecht, Kfar Saba and Brcko. This is no approach, which makes any sense, because a minimum strength should be prerequisite for application even for qualification IMHO. It is not enough, to let every national champion apply, some of them are just insane applying, I think.
I guess the money is running thin there.
