ONLY Manchester City’s meltdown has saved tonight’s Champions League bonanza from becoming the mother of all damp squibs.
When Uefa revealed their grand plan for one monster 36-club league to replace the group phase, this was supposed to be a red-letter night.
RexMan City have struggled in the Champions League this season[/caption]
ReutersThe tournament has undergone a revamp this year[/caption]
With 18 matches kicking off simultaneously, it was a feast of football, enough to melt the remote controls of goggle-eyed supporters across the continent.
And yet only City’s clash with Club Brugge holds true jeopardy for both clubs.
Etihad boss Pep Guardiola’s fallen Premier League champions need to win, while their Belgian opponents need a draw to avoid elimination.
Had this been a normal campaign for City, there would be little English interest in tonight’s proceedings.
Instead, Pep’s men have lost at Sporting Lisbon, Juventus and Paris Saint-Germain while squandering a three-goal lead at home to Feyenoord, so it is ‘game on’ in Manchester.
This new format — the most-hyped ‘Swiss model’ since Ursula Andress stepped out of the sea in Dr No — was supposed to make it nigh-on impossible for Europe’s richest clubs to fail to progress to the knockout phase.
Yet City have contrived to make a serious hash of it all and ended up in the elimination zone along with the usual suspects from Eastern Europe and the Alps.
And the prospect of elimination for the 2023 European champions is the only true intrigue in the mammoth fixture list.
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We’ve had 126 matches and in essence it’s been an ocean of largely meaningless filler content for the TV schedules.
While adding to fixture congestion, viewer fatigue and player burnout at many elite clubs who face a month-long Fifa Club World Cup next summer.
FA Cup third and fourth-round replays were scrapped to accommodate this monstrosity — with non-league Tamworth missing out on a rematch with Tottenham.
And the two legs of the Carabao Cup semi-finals are being played FOUR WEEKS apart — meaning most neutrals will have forgotten the first-leg results before the return matches are played.
This Champions League format bastardises the whole idea of league football — the idea that every team in the table plays each other.
And while seeding is meant to balance out the ‘weight’ of clubs’ fixture lists, true sporting integrity has been lost.
Fans have struggled to grasp the complexities of the format — the top eight go directly to the last 16 in March, while the next 16 face a two-legged play-off, with only the bottom 12 dumped out.
Three more of tonight’s games — Aston Villa’s Battle of Britain with Celtic, Lille v Feyenoord and champions Real Madrid’s clash at French club Brest — all represent a sort of shootout for a place in the top eight.
But even that does not bring the jeopardy of elimination from the event, those who fail to gain automatic qualification only face an extra round.
The most likely result of the night would be a draw between Stuttgart and PSG, who would both progress to the play-offs.
So what could bring back genuine excitement to Europe’s elite club competition?
How about a straight knockout competition like the original European Cup?
As if anyone at the top table would vote for danger when they can grow fat on the proceeds of ever-increasing TV filler instead.
New Champions League format is a snorefest
By Dan King
UEFA sold the idea of expanding the Champions League from 32 to 36 teams, with each playing eight games instead of six in the opening phase, as a way of creating more competitiveness and excitement.
The biggest clubs would have two matches against their peers, rather than having to wait until the knockout stage to meet.
The smaller clubs would meet teams of a similar level twice and have a chance of tasting victory that was so hard to achieve if you were the bottom seed in a group of four.
Ignoring for a moment the fact that the real motivation was the simple equation of more games = more money, the theory itself already looks flawed.
None of the matches between European giants has delivered a compelling contest yet.
And why would they? At the start of the long season with more matches in it, why would any team with ambitions to win things in the spring, go out all guns blazing in the autumn?
Especially when they know they have six games NOT against big sides to make sure they accrue enough points to qualify at least for the play-off round (and even more games).
There is even less jeopardy than before.
Read the full column on the Champions League format fail and why everyone – including YOU – needs a rethink.
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