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The folly of UEFA’s Champions League pandering

By Ryan Willox

A photo taken on April 6, 2016 shows the logo of European football body UEFA at the UEFA headquarters in Nyon.Swiss police raided the headquarters of European football body UEFA on April 6 following the latest revelations of a web of Panama-based offshore financial dealings by the rich and famous. The raid came after the so-called Panama Papers revealed that newly elected FIFA president Gianni Infantino signed TV rights contracts for the Champions League with a company headed by two defendants later caught up in the corruption scandal that engulfed football's world body. / AFP / FABRICE COFFRINI (Photo credit should read FABRICE COFFRINI/AFP/Getty Images)
A photo taken on April 6, 2016 shows the logo of European football body UEFA at the UEFA headquarters in Nyon.Swiss police raided the headquarters of European football body UEFA on April 6 following the latest revelations of a web of Panama-based offshore financial dealings by the rich and famous. The raid came after the so-called Panama Papers revealed that newly elected FIFA president Gianni Infantino signed TV rights contracts for the Champions League with a company headed by two defendants later caught up in the corruption scandal that engulfed football's world body. / AFP / FABRICE COFFRINI (Photo credit should read FABRICE COFFRINI/AFP/Getty Images) /
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The path to the Champions League for Europe’s elite will get easier after UEFA announced changes to the competition format beginning from the 2018-19 campaign.

As part of UEFA’s ongoing attempt to stave off the creation of a breakaway European Super league, which is why we have a Champions League at all of course, the top four teams from the top four countries will gain direct entry to the groups.

Aside from a couple of other minor changes, such as tweaking the coefficient system to reward individual club’s performance, nothing much changes on the face of it.

However, in reality the move brings us closer to an elite top competition saved for the ‘haves’ of Europe that potentially does irreparable damage to UEFA’s second-tier leagues such as Portugal, Russia, Netherlands and even France.

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UEFA has stated that they intend to keep both the champions and non-champions route to qualification when the new system kicks in during the 2018 season, but has not specified who loses out. As it stands, the top four leagues provide eleven group stage slots.

With the ‘bye’ through the notoriously tricky, and usually exciting, play-off round that will elevate to 16 teams. So who are the five ‘losers’?

To take this season’s competition as an example, under this new system, Inter Milan, Roma and Villarreal would be in.

Can anyone honestly say that they would want to watch them any more than Monaco or FC Porto or that they deserve an automatic place based on a lower finish in a big market as opposed to being runners-up in a secondary league?

The most likely scenario is that the Champions of Ukraine, Holland, Belgium Turkey and Switzerland would get bumped back into the play-off round and the ‘Champions’ route for those teams who have earned a right to play by being the best in their country would become bloated and exceptionally difficult to navigate.

The cases of Porto and Monaco are instructive because they are two of the clubs who stand to suffer the most from this narrowing of the path to the promised land of the group stages. Those two sides were the last outside the ‘top four’ leagues to contest a Final, back in 2004.

GELSENKIRCHEN, GERMANY – MAY 26: Fussball: Champions League 03/04 Finale, Gelsenkirchen; FC Porto – AS Monaco 3:0; Sieger der Champions League 2004 – Team FC Porto 26.05.04. (Photo by Andreas Rentz/Bongarts/Getty Images)
GELSENKIRCHEN, GERMANY – MAY 26: Fussball: Champions League 03/04 Finale, Gelsenkirchen; FC Porto – AS Monaco 3:0; Sieger der Champions League 2004 – Team FC Porto 26.05.04. (Photo by Andreas Rentz/Bongarts/Getty Images) /

Since then, the finalists have all come from Germany, Italy, England or Spain. UEFA are figuring without the law of diminishing returns. How much interest is there likely to be in the latter stages of the Eredivisie if second place gets you a murderer’s row of spurned champions en route to the group?

Take the example of the Premier League also, and the excitement generated over the last few weeks of the season by the battle between Arsenal and Manchester City to avoid fourth and the potential of the play-off. That frisson would be gone.

Equally, while a group stage with more of Barcelona-Manchester City may be to everybody’s taste, at what point does Inter Milan-Villarreal or Bayer Leverkusen-Fiorentina fail to whet the appetite?

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UEFA have stated that there will be a greater distribution of funds for associations whose teams don’t make it but whatever that increase may be, can it possibly be in the same ballpark as the 30M potentially of offer for group participation, or the revenue from a play-off against a AC Milan or Sevilla?

The UEFA spin doctors are out in full-force but we are seeing a desperate act of pandering as Europe’s governing body seeks to prevent being cut out of the picture of a European Super League along the lines of the NFL or NBA in American sports.

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