New Champions League format

In principle it might be more interesting with more jeopardy, but am interested to see how it pans out.

I absolutely hate the current group stage and I barely even acknowledge those matches nowadays, especially since it went to BT/TNT. Arsenal v Olympiakos on a Tuesday night in November - who cares!

For me the CL starts in February, of course with most of the usual suspects left in.
 
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Ironops said:
Too many minnow teams in it already, format should be fewer better teams. Us neutrals wanna watch PSG v Inter not Nowhere FC v Celtic
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I don't agree Ironops...remember teams getting drawn against Galatasaray "welcome to hell". Used to make some of best players in the world **** their pants 😁. Id rather see minnows have a shot over 2 legs than the sterile stuff served up now...
 
Ste43 said:
I don't agree Ironops...remember teams getting drawn against Galatasaray "welcome to hell". Used to make some of best players in the world **** their pants 😁. Id rather see minnows have a shot over 2 legs than the sterile stuff served up now...
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Exactly. And now teams like Galatasary have a much better chance of getting through to a knockout round.
 
I'm for it in theory, more matches for viewers between the best sides in Europe. Boro aside, the UCL (and EL/ECL) are probably my most watched football competitions.

I do think the introduction of the ECL have helped with "nowhere FC"'s involvement, as they're unlikely to even make the UCL now, let alone qualify for the league stage.

Take Sweden as an example - 24th ranked league in terms of coefficients:
1st placed qualifies for UCL (but only first qualifying round, meaning they'd potentially need to beat 4 teams to make the league stage?)
2nd and 3rd place go into ECL qualifying.
 
I like the Champions League. It’s often the best level of football and has had some quality games over the years.

It needed a revamp to counter the greed of the proposed Super League.
 
The group stage was *****.

This sounds ***** too.

But I also have absolutely no real desire to watch the Champions of Andorra facing the Champions of Italy in a major knockout match, unless those Andorrans are on a surprisingly good run, so not sure what the solution is.
 
B_G said:
I think it gives weaker teams a better chance of getting through to the knockout stage.
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If this was true the changes wouldn’t be happening.

It is all about getting money to the top / big clubs and rigging the competition / draw to try and ensure they qualify.

The whole competition is rigged and really just a pile of crap
 
The only interesting part of champions league is the pre qualifying rounds.

After that is is just a load of super league clubs who I hope get beat and knocked out.

Man U getting knocked out by Copenhagen this year was great
 
Since1973 said:
If this was true the changes wouldn’t be happening.

It is all about getting money to the top / big clubs and rigging the competition / draw to try and ensure they qualify.

The whole competition is rigged and really just a pile of crap
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Well at the moment you have 16 teams out of 32 teams qualify.

There's going to be 24 teams out of 36 that get through to the qualifying round. It's definitely easier for lesser teams to get through to a knockout round.

Especially when you consider they will now have easier fixtures and the better teams will have harder fixtures
 
Sorry, my point isn’t really about qualifying for the knock out round - There will be 24 teams in the knock out round so for them teams that qualify for the group / league phase it will obviously be easier.

But once they do qualify the draw will be rigged - the euro coefficient crap will come into play as will the can’t play a team from the same country till the 1/4 final crap, it should just be 16 balls in a pot and draw the teams, then repeat for each round.

That will give the lesser teams a better chance
 
I’ll tell you how I would revamp it. Straight two legged knockout, every top flight side in every European league would be eligible. It would be down to pure sporting integrity, and a real cup competition. No dead rubber games.

It’ll never happen though because the big clubs want guaranteed revenue
 
Since1973 said:
Sorry, my point isn’t really about qualifying for the knock out round - There will be 24 teams in the knock out round so for them teams that qualify for the group / league phase it will obviously be easier.

But once they do qualify the draw will be rigged - the euro coefficient crap will come into play as will the can’t play a team from the same country till the 1/4 final crap, it should just be 16 balls in a pot and draw the teams, then repeat for each round.

That will give the lesser teams a better chance
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There aren't 24 teams that qualify for the knockout. There are 16. 8 automatically and the next 8 via a playoff. You could class the playoff as the knockout round but it isn't. Same way we weren't in the PL last season.
 
BoroMart said:
I’ll tell you how I would revamp it. Straight two legged knockout, every top flight side in every European league would be eligible. It would be down to pure sporting integrity, and a real cup competition. No dead rubber games.

It’ll never happen though because the big clubs want guaranteed revenue
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They definitely don't want actual competition. They want cash. The current format would work fine if all the money was distributed evenly to all teams that qualify but the payment structure means the teams that do well get loads more money so they can do well next year as well.
 
Nano said:
but the payment structure means the teams that do well get loads more money so they can do well next year as well.
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It is worse than that - they don’t even have to do well.

This season Man Utd and Newcastle both finished bottom of their group (Happy Happy days) Newcastle got one more point thanMsn Utd which equates to around €900,000 so Newcastle should have got around €900,000 more prize money than Man Utd.

Oh no, not in the mad rigged euro coefficient world of UEFA, Man Utd actually earned around 20 million euros more prize money than Newcastle for performing worse.

It is a good job for Newcastle that the were English, if they had been from a so called lesser county the differential in prize money would have been even greater.

You can guarantee the prize money rules will have been tweaked again to favour these so called big clubs.

That is before they rig the draw in their favour.

The whole completion is just a rigged pile of *****.
 
It’s all about guaranteeing more games and revenue for each club and giving bigger clubs more of a chance to get to the knockout stages. It’s 8 games instead of 6 in the league stage and with 24 teams getting at least to the playoff stage it’s like putting the top 3 teams through to the knockout round in the old system.
 
Since1973 said:
It is worse than that - they don’t even have to do well.

This season Man Utd and Newcastle both finished bottom of their group (Happy Happy days) Newcastle got one more point thanMsn Utd which equates to around €900,000 so Newcastle should have got around €900,000 more prize money than Man Utd.

Oh no, not in the mad rigged euro coefficient world of UEFA, Man Utd actually earned around 20 million euros more prize money than Newcastle for performing worse.

It is a good job for Newcastle that the were English, if they had been from a so called lesser county the differential in prize money would have been even greater.

You can guarantee the prize money rules will have been tweaked again to favour these so called big clubs.

That is before they rig the draw in their favour.

The whole completion is just a rigged pile of *****.
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Yeh, you're right. I forgot about that part. It's based on the past 5 years performance. Do you even have to qualify or do the teams that missed out but have a high coefficient still get paid like parachute payments?
 
It's more revenue but it's also about giving the top sides a greater chance of getting through the group/league stage.

Margin for error is greater with 8 games versus 6.
 
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