Which is bigger: Champions League or World Cup?
Columnist By Davidde Corran, 21 May 2010 Davidde Corran is a Roar Expert
If Madrid wasn’t football mad enough, things have certainly gone into overdrive this week. Yesterday I had barely got off the plane at Madrid’s Barajas airport when I was assaulted by a barrage of advertising for Saturday’s UEFA Champions League Final, and it didn’t stop there.
You quite simply can’t escape the continental final and if you didn’t like football you would not want to be in the Spanish capitol this week.
So while Australia goes into a frenzy ahead of the World Cup, Madrid and most of Europe are going Champions League mad.
It’s had me thinking which is the more important tournament – the Champions League or the World Cup?
The UK version of FourFourTwo magazine had a debate on this very point in their latest edition.
In it, former England international and two-times European Cup-winner Viv Anderson argued that, “To win the World Cup is still the ultimate challenge for any footballer anywhere on the planet. It makes the Champions League pale in comparison.”
Meanwhile Liverpool fan, Gareth Roberts stated the Champions League is more important because fans of England’s biggest clubs feel more of an association with their club sides than their national team.
While that’s an English perspective on this global debate, what about the rest of the world?
For me it is clear that the UEFA Champions League is where the most innovative and advanced football is played. The very nature of club football makes this possible.
So if you want to see the best football on offer, the Champions League is the place to go.
Yet despite all of this, the World Cup still retains its mystique. Sport has a unique ability to unite the masses and there is no tournament where this is truer then at the World Cup.
Where the Champions League, despite its higher quality, tends to only hold the interest of football fans, the World Cup captivates people right across the globe.
The World Cup hype already building weeks out from the tournament in Australia is a great example of that. While for a country like Brazil, as Rio Di Jenero based football journalist Tim Vickery often says, “the World Cup is a matter of national pride.”
I’m not sure if the UEFA Champions League could one day overtake the World Cup in terms of prestige and popularity, but it does seem possible.
Yet for now one thing is clear: when pundits and fans talk about players like Lionel Messi, Wayne Rooney and Cristiano Ronaldo the consensus is thus: they will only be considered truly great players once they really do it at a World Cup.
That might seem a little unfair, but for the time being it settles the debate for me.
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May 21st 2010 @ 3:04pm
Damiano said | May 21st 2010 @ 3:04pm | Report comment
WC for sure.
For me the Champions League has become a bit of joke anyway… at least this year one of the teams in the final actually won a title, in the previous year. Bayern Munich didn’t win anything in the 2008-2009 season… its not really a league & its not really champions.. mostly runners – up, with too many games without consequence in the early stages.
The WC is rightly, the pinnacle competition… next year there will be another champions & runners-up league…
May 21st 2010 @ 3:33pm
Art Sapphire said | May 21st 2010 @ 3:33pm | Report comment
World Cup by a country mile.
Unless you support one of the teams that has a chance of winning the Champions League, the Champions league is just a sports entertainment product where you can enjoy clubs play the sport at its highest club level.
Here is a comparison -
Inter will play Bayern this weekend in the Champions League.
Germany played Italy in the semi of the 2006 World Cup.
You don’t have to be Einstein to work out which match meant a great deal more to the people of the 2 competing countries.
May 21st 2010 @ 3:55pm
punter said | May 21st 2010 @ 3:55pm | Report comment
While I 100% agree with you Art, there are those who believe club before country.
I often wondered why Robbie Fowler was more revered than Michael Owen at Liverpool, it was because Fowler only wanted to play for Liverpool & England was a bonus while Owen’s priority was deemed to be England.
But for me World cup by a country mile.
Also hard to argue with your comparison.
May 21st 2010 @ 4:22pm
Art Sapphire said | May 21st 2010 @ 4:22pm | Report comment
punter – I know quite a few people who follow one of the big 4 in England and in the main they are more concerned about their own team winning titles than whatever England does on the international stage.
A Liverpool supporter would sell his own grandmother to stop Man U from overtaking them in the title race.
I was in Athens during the UCL final in 2007. The centre of town was invaded by 40k Liverpool fans.
It was quite a spectacle.
May 21st 2010 @ 4:16pm
MV Dave said | May 21st 2010 @ 4:16pm | Report comment
Love both…UCL final now has the biggest tv viewership of any club football match (of any code) on the planet;
http://www.futuressport.com/press-most-watched-TV-sport-events-2009.html and is growing in popularity at a exponential rate (around 158 million for 2009 final vs Superbowl around 107 million). The UCL is huge but still minor compared to the WC. ManU may have millions of fans in England but when the English National Football team play they have the whole country behind them…multiply this by the number of teams in the WC (plus interested observers whose nation did not make the WC) and we have a much bigger audience.
The wonderful result being that football fans have the best of both worlds…club and country.
May 21st 2010 @ 4:29pm
Art Sapphire said | May 21st 2010 @ 4:29pm | Report comment
mvdave – considering that this years UCL final is being held on a Saturday night. The viewing figures should even larger this year.
May 21st 2010 @ 4:32pm
MV Dave said | May 21st 2010 @ 4:32pm | Report comment
Art
Wont be the same… staggering out of bed at 4am on a cold weekmorning to lie shivering on the counch knowing that after the game there was…work
ps although did take the day off back in 1999 when ManU beat Bayern M
May 21st 2010 @ 4:40pm
Art Sapphire said | May 21st 2010 @ 4:40pm | Report comment
mvdave – Europeans growing up on prime-time football are soft compared to us Aussies
May 21st 2010 @ 7:06pm
Haha said | May 21st 2010 @ 7:06pm | Report comment
Pure comedy it’s the old club vs country debate again!
It’s like asking which horse is better – the one which wins on the flat, or the one which wins over the jumps.
Everyone has different loyalties so it’s a matter of opinion – a more interesting question is: could soccer survive at the same level without one or either?
May 21st 2010 @ 10:10pm
Brian said | May 21st 2010 @ 10:10pm | Report comment
There are certain pockets where the UCL is bigger, particularly Barcelona & Liverpool because Cataluyna and scousers don’t get a national team but overall the WC is much bigger. When you think Pele, Maradona, Zidane, Ronaldo you think WC. Taking Zidane as a modern example he won both the WC and UCL socring in both finals, yet Madrid aside its the WC he’s remembered for.
The strenght of course of UCL is the ability to build stronger sides such as the modern Barcelona but that’s also the weakness, the players play the UCL for cash but the World Cup for national pride. No doubt which one is more important because how many players in Sunday’s final grew up wanting to win the UCL for the team they will represent on Sunday. I suspect maybe one or two, I don’t know Lahm or Schweinsteiger backgrounds!
May 22nd 2010 @ 9:27pm
Tom said | May 22nd 2010 @ 9:27pm | Report comment
In nsw and qld the only thing on the planet is state of origin.
May 22nd 2010 @ 9:38pm
MV Dave said | May 22nd 2010 @ 9:38pm | Report comment
Tom yours is a pointless post on this thread but as you brought it up…SOO in the global context is miniscule in comparison to either UCL or WC…not on the same planet.
May 23rd 2010 @ 7:01pm
person said | May 23rd 2010 @ 7:01pm | Report comment
possibly due to the high levels of inbreeding amongst league supporters, particularly queenslanders
May 23rd 2010 @ 6:54pm
person said | May 23rd 2010 @ 6:54pm | Report comment
Silly question.