FC Copenhagen suggest changes to Champions League which brings back qualification for finishing 4th

[Deleted member 38674]

Incidentally, a team from England, Spain, Italy or Germany has not won the competition for 15 seasons, and just once out of the last 24 seasons. It's become almost guaranteed that a team from one of those four leagues will win the competition.

As I said in the other thread:

In the 27 years of CL Football, there have been THREE finalists from outside England, Germany, France, Italy and Spain. That was the great 90s Ajax side, twice, and Porto in 2004.

In the 27 years prior to the change in format, when it was the European Cup, there were NINETEEN finalists from outside those leagues, including the champions of Belgium, Sweden, Yugoslavia, Greece, Romania and many other countries who wouldn’t have a hope under the current format - no matter how well they do domestically.

 

[Mikey_Fitzgerald]

No one wants to see absolutely rubbish teams in the knockout stages of europe even if they did win their division. We want the best sides playing the best sides.

I think a lot of people would love to see teams outside of the "Big Four" Leagues in the latter stages

Look at how many plaudits that Ajax team got last season

 

[KaiserEFC]

Not really arsed. We’re never in it and the whole thing is just the footballing oscars full of false everything and misplaced elitism.

 

[chrismpw]

Should

Be

Just

For

The

Champions

 

[degsy]

Couldn’t go back to that now. Would take about 10-15 years to phase that back in.

Is morally and ethically the right thing though.

Not at all sure you can use these words in any way shape or form with regards to modern day football.
I'm actually amazed the GOT swear filter doesnt bleep them out automatically

 

[Lanolin]

As I said in the other thread:

In the 27 years of CL Football, there have been THREE finalists from outside England, Germany, France, Italy and Spain. That was the great 90s Ajax side, twice, and Porto in 2004.

In the 27 years prior to the change in format, when it was the European Cup, there were NINETEEN finalists from outside those leagues, including the champions of Belgium, Sweden, Yugoslavia, Greece, Romania and many other countries who wouldn’t have a hope under the current format - no matter how well they do domestically.

That's because of money and globalisation though.

50 years ago the majority of this Belgian 'golden generation' would have been playing in Belgium, so there would have been a chance for a side from that league to be world beaters. Just giving Club Brugge a guaranteed CL spot won't make the likes of Hazard and De Bruyne move back there though, and won't stop their current best players from moving to the PL and Spain. The world has changed, not just the name of the competition.

 

[havrey0123]

Incidentally, a team from England, Spain, Italy or Germany has not won the competition for 15 seasons, and just once out of the last 24 seasons. It's become almost guaranteed that a team from one of those four leagues will win the competition.

Probably because they are the best teams in the competition.

 

[havrey0123]

Look at the last 16, the calibre of teams in that competition is ridiculous and that's what people want to see.

 

[Deleted member 38674]

That's because of money and globalisation though.

50 years ago the majority of this Belgian 'golden generation' would have been playing in Belgium, so there would have been a chance for a side from that league to be world beaters. Just giving Club Brugge a guaranteed CL spot won't make the likes of Hazard and De Bruyne move back there though, and won't stop their current best players from moving to the PL and Spain. The world has changed, not just the name of the competition.

That was my point, but I don’t think it’s fair that a europe-wide “competition” appears to be utterly confined to teams from 5 nations. That doesn’t feel right to me, does it to you?

If UEFA made a commitment to take places off those 5 leagues and reintroduce group stage places for Champions of other nations, it would reduce the quality of the competition for a few years and arguably make it more of a monopoly for the best teams for a short period, but eventually it would improve.

For example, would Modric have left Dinamo Zagreb for Spurs if DZ were in the CL at the time? Would Zlatan have left Malmo, Lukaku have left Anderlecht, Alaba have left Austria Vienna, Shaqiri have left Basel, Lewandowski left Poznan, Nedved have left Sparta Prague, Berbatov have left CSKA Sofia, Arshavin have left Zenit, Litmanen have left MyPa or Shevchenko left Dynamo Kiev?

Perhaps they all still would, but if they didn’t need to to play at the highest level, if they didn’t need to join teams regularly finishing 4th in their own respective domestic leagues to play at the highest level, it would be very interesting.

It would obviously make our task of reaching that platform all the more difficult, so on that level I have mixed feelings but it’s got to be the fairest way. I don’t see why the likes of Spurs, Chelsea, Atalanta, Napoli, Bayer Leverkusen and Valencia were in this years competition.

 

[Deleted member 38674]

Not at all sure you can use these words in any way shape or form with regards to modern day football.
I'm actually amazed the GOT swear filter doesnt bleep them out automatically

Why not?

 

[degsy]

Why not?

They don't apply.
They only apply if they're spelt EM, OH, EN, EE, WYE

 

[Yarrgh]

The Champions League has been in operation for 27 seasons, and in that time it's had 11 different winners from 7 different countries, with 4 of those coming in the first 5 seasons. In the 27 years before that, you had 17 different winners from 9 different countries.

But for the first 11 years as a knockout competition only 3 different teams all from different countries won it.

 

[Lanolin]

That was my point, but I don’t think it’s fair that a europe-wide “competition” appears to be utterly confined to teams from 5 nations. That doesn’t feel right to me, does it to you?

If UEFA made a commitment to take places off those 5 leagues and reintroduce group stage places for Champions of other nations, it would reduce the quality of the competition for a few years and arguably make it more of a monopoly for the best teams for a short period, but eventually it would improve.

For example, would Modric have left Dinamo Zagreb for Spurs if DZ were in the CL at the time? Would Zlatan have left Malmo, Lukaku have left Anderlecht, Alaba have left Austria Vienna, Shaqiri have left Basel, Lewandowski left Poznan, Nedved have left Sparta Prague, Berbatov have left CSKA Sofia, Arshavin have left Zenit, Litmanen have left MyPa or Shevchenko left Dynamo Kiev?

Perhaps they all still would, but if they didn’t need to to play at the highest level, if they didn’t need to join teams regularly finishing 4th in their own respective domestic leagues to play at the highest level, it would be very interesting.

I think they still would, yes. The money in the top leagues is much greater, the exposure etc. Players move from United and Liverpool to Real and Barcelona because they see it as a step up, thinking that they wouldn't see MyPa to Ajax as a step up and so make the move is a little naïve.

I'm all for taking it back to Champions only, don't get me wrong. The horse has bolted though, there's no going back now. The Swedish league will never be able to compete with the PL and La Liga, as I said, the world has changed.

The stats being used are a bit one sided too. In the first 30 years of the European Cup it was won by teams from 7 countries. In the 27 years of the Champions League it has been won by teams from... 7 countries. 6 of them are the same countries. Before the infamous ban, English teams had won 7 of the previous 9 European Cups, and been beaten finalists in one of the others. There was a Spanish side in 9 of the first 11 finals etc etc. Let's not make out like teams from every country used to win the thing, it's always been dominated by the big leagues, with the occasional interloper.

 

[Archie Knox]

Champions League winner shouldn't automatically quality. How typical that only Liverpool has ever benefited from that pathetic rule created just for them.

If it's the Champions League it should be for league champions only. Given it goes down to fourth for auto qualification in the Premier League, and they didn't even achieve that, it was remarkable how they were able to have the rule changed to let them back in after they failed so badly in the league.

I would fully support 4th place in the Premier League having to do several rounds of qualifying, as should third place too. In fact, I'd let the league champions in automatically, and have 2nd, 3rd and 4th placed teams need to qualify. Final qualifying round for second place, penultimate round for 3rd place and three rounds of qualifying for fourth place.

The current set-up is a joke. Don't think anything will change though.

 

[mahermi1]

How's about we make it for the champions of their respective leagues?

Like it used to be.