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The European Champions League has become a cash cow for UEFA and has taken all the fun out of discovering Europe’s best team. It’s time for the tournament to be taken back to its traditional style in order to revive the tournament.
The excitement of the Champions League has been lost, and the dead rubbers and foregone conclusions turn the early stages into drudgery.
Consider, for example, this week’s fixtures in Group H. AC Milan, champions of Italy, travel to Belarus to play FC BATE Borisov (whose UEFA ranking for those playing at home is 61).
Meanwhile, in the same group Barcelona, champions of Spain and Europe, will travel to the Czech Republic to play FC Viktoria Plzen (UEFA ranking 151). Milan and Barcelona are tied at the top of Group H on seven points. BATE and Plzen sit locked on one point below them.
With three games to go, it would take a bizarre series of results to see Milan or Barca fail to progress to the next round, but I could have told you that before the tournament kicked off.
While small teams can manage one big upset victory, maybe even two, rarely can they continue to overturn the form book over six games, home and away. Simply, this group is a foregone conclusion, and has been for some time.
Now, apologists for UEFA will argue that there is still much to play for each team. Seedings for the knockout round are based placings in the group, there’s spots in the Europa League, and prizemoney! Be still my beating heart, we are supposed to say. ”
In reality, these are of superficial value to the football fan. They don’t tug at the emotions like a knockout competition does.
The time has come for this silliness to end. It’s time for the Champions League and the Europa League to be merged, and returned to a true European Cup.
Working much like the FA Cup and others like it, it would be open to hundreds of teams around Europe to qualify through the preliminary rounds, with the best sides from the European leagues qualifying automatically for the first full round (like Round 3 of the FA Cup, where the big clubs come in).
League winners and high finishers would be in there. Present day Europa League participants would be there. Cup winners would be there.
Importantly, each round of the tournament should consist of only one leg, the host of which is decided by a draw. The away goals rule of two legged games leads to turgid encounters which are more about avoiding the concession of a goal than striving to score one.
Look at those Group H fixtures and consider instead of playing out a procession in which, even if Milan or Barcelona lose they’ll still probably qualify for the next round, imagine if these matches were sudden death.
If Barcelona are drawn away to Plzen, they’ve got to send their best side, and find a way to win in foreign conditions and in a hostile environment. If Milan draw BATE at home they’ll be favourites, but going 1-0 down early would see the pressure rise.
Watching the Italian champions with the crowd on their back having to break down a side full of confidence and clinging onto a lead would truly be worth getting up at 5am for.
In this style of tournament, ‘giant killing’ runs become a real possibility and the European Cup has far more excitement and far less inevitability. Rather than waiting until February for the big boys to finally be set loose on each other in knockout games, it’s on from the outset. Manchester United can’t get to Inter Milan if they don’t find a way past FC Kopenhagen first.
At the moment, the group stage of the Champions League is just about ‘getting the job done’; clinically getting through the formalities with as few wounds as possible. This negative approach would be gone. To prove worthiness of the title of European champions, a team would need to get through every challenge European football can provide.
Every team in Europe trying to win the same trophy, major football powers put under real pressure by hardy minnows, and a tournament where in every game either side could progress or be eliminated.
There might not be as much money in it, but it’d be a proper football competition.
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