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

[Papa Shango]

Just call it the European cup and forget about champions.

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 watch some irish league football and I do genuinely enjoy it. But the best teams are league 2 level. To suggest the champion should be playing CL group games against Bayern Munich or BBarcelona etc is ridiculous.

I do. If rubbish teams play more games they get more money and improve from there.

A lot of these clubs are not rubbish teams per se anyway, they are historically big clubs who cant get back to the top because they have been locked out of the big money stages. Talking more former eastern bloc sides, some Scandinavian sides, even Dutch, Portuguese sides etc.

I have no interest in Barca playing Bayern for example any more because it is not a rarity or an event these days, they are becoming like regular fixtures. The allure of European football to me was games you have never seen before. Like everything in football it is over saturated now.

 

[roydo]

Being really really selfish, there is more chance of us getting our hands on Euro Cash with the current system, (get 4th), than reverting back to the old version.

I also quite like the group stages, even though they throw up the occasional duffer of a match. But if you are a club with little chance of getting out of one, then at least you might have the chance of playing a Barcelona or RM at home.

 

[DixieScoresAgain]

I can imagine at the next G14 summit, Chairman of it "before we start we have this memo about FC Copenhagen changes for the CL", cue loads of laughter, then proceeds to toss it in the bin.

 

[Carlito]

Copenhagen are railing against the latest of many incremental steps towards the eventual goal of a supranational league.

They're wasting their time.

 

[WA Toffee]

And no one would watch it

It sounds pretty much like you are one of those people who would ultimately like to see a super league. Fair enough, nothing wrong with that.

It's not for me though. I would prefer a competition where the playing field is level and the minnows have a chance of causing an upset, and is driven more by the sport itself rather than how much money can be made.

 

[Groucho]

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

Like some sort of “Champions” league?

Why hasn’t this been thought of before?

 

[WA Toffee]

I do. If rubbish teams play more games they get more money and improve from there.

A lot of these clubs are not rubbish teams per se anyway, they are historically big clubs who cant get back to the top because they have been locked out of the big money stages. Talking more former eastern bloc sides, some Scandinavian sides, even Dutch, Portuguese sides etc.

I have no interest in Barca playing Bayern for example any more because it is not a rarity or an event these days, they are becoming like regular fixtures. The allure of European football to me was games you have never seen before. Like everything in football it is over saturated now.

Pretty much this. 25 years ago I would crawl over broken glass to watch Barca v Bayern or Madrid v Milan. Now I don't even watch the highlights because the saturation has killed the enjoyment for me.

 

[havrey0123]

It sounds pretty much like you are one of those people who would ultimately like to see a super league. Fair enough, nothing wrong with that.

It's not for me though. I would prefer a competition where the playing field is level and the minnows have a chance of causing an upset, and is driven more by the sport itself rather than how much money can be made.

We are in a time where people want to watch exciting games and not borefests.
Take the 2 games in last season's cl semi finals. City spurs with sterlings goal disallowed when they thought they were through.

You wouldn't those sort of games in a normal league. Every player pushes it to the limit to win that competition.

 

[Yarrgh]

We are in a time where people want to watch exciting games and not borefests.
Take the 2 games in last season's cl semi finals. City spurs with sterlings goal disallowed when they thought they were through.

You wouldn't those sort of games in a normal league. Every player pushes it to the limit to win that competition.

Wouldn't you prefer a Champions League were there were 50 teams that could provide that excitment? Surely you'd love to see the likes of a Steau Bucharest being able to come out and win it from a 'lesser' league if you want excitement?

 

[Papa Shango]

We are in a time where people want to watch exciting games and not borefests.
Take the 2 games in last season's cl semi finals. City spurs with sterlings goal disallowed when they thought they were through.

You wouldn't those sort of games in a normal league. Every player pushes it to the limit to win that competition.

Those games mean nothing to me as its not my club playing (which does make the spectacle slightly less, sport works when you have a vested interest in the result) and they are not a rarity any more.

I have not watched the Champions League for about 20 years now. Think the last time I watched was the brilliant Dortmund team of the 90s.

 

[Chris O'Connor]

The proposed Champions League overhaul that would damage City

FC Copenhagen have put forward a plan that would change the structure of the Champions League, and force teams like Leicester City into four rounds of qualifying

www.leicestermercury.co.uk

I agree with it actually

It's ridiculous that you can finish 4th in our league and get straight in to the CL Group Stages whilst winning a League elsewhere means you have to go through 4 rounds of qualifying

None of the English sides in the CL have really been tearing it up this season and I genuinely dispute the overall quality of our League outside of the top two, so it's only fair that we start making 4th placed teams do a little graft before enjoying the financial windfall that comes with the Champions League

Hopefully this will lead to a greater distribution of wealth, with teams from smaller Leagues actually getting to make the Group Stages more often

I'm all for it. Ultimately if an already monied Premier League side can't manage to qualify then it's their own fault. They already have a huge advantage

Last season English teams had all the finalists in Europe's top two competitions. This season all seven qualified from the group stages and it would hardly be surprising if it was repeated given some luck with the draw not making it impossible.

Chelsea and Spurs are severely understrength atm with transfer bans and injuries to marquee players not helping but this isnt the case every year. Last year three premiership sides made the CL semis while the fourth lost out to a fellow premier league team.

Teams finishing fourth but expecting a far more serious league challenge in the future might want to skip the league and FA cups or even want out of Europe entirely (eighth) unless in the top three.

It's a choice of having the best and stronger teams making it a tougher, more prestigious competition with more attractive high profile fixtures or giving the lesser teams from lesser leagues entry with no real prospect of getting anywhere.

A weakening of the competition and a lesser feat to win it.

Finishing fourth may even become the poisoned chalice Europa qualification often is.

 

[WA Toffee]

We are in a time where people want to watch exciting games and not borefests.
Take the 2 games in last season's cl semi finals. City spurs with sterlings goal disallowed when they thought they were through.

You wouldn't those sort of games in a normal league. Every player pushes it to the limit to win that competition.

For me, seeing the same teams in the last 16 year in, year out is the absolute definition of a borefest, so much so that the last time I watched an entire group stage game is probably last century. I watched the Real Madrid final a couple of years ago, but that was only because my son wanted to watch it, other than that the last final I watched would have probably been Man utd v Bayern.

I think we are in a time of people being told that football is only worth watching if it involves the best players and biggest clubs. I think most football fans still long for the days when teams like Ajax, Porto, Celtic could compete for the top honours, and every so often a team would come out of nowhere and dazzle the world.

Unfortunately, the money men have decided what people get now, and will indocrinate the masses until they are convinced that it is good.

 

[Mikey_Fitzgerald]

Last season English teams had all the finalists in Europe's top two competitions. This season all seven qualified from the group stages and it would hardly be surprising if it was repeated given some luck with the draw not making it impossible.

Chelsea and Spurs are severely understrength atm with transfer bans and injuries to marquee players not helping but this isnt the case every year. Last year three premiership sides made the CL semis while the fourth lost out to a fellow premier league team.

Teams finishing fourth but expecting a far more serious league challenge in the future might want to skip the league and FA cups or even want out of Europe entirely (eighth) unless in the top three.

It's a choice of having the best and stronger teams making it a tougher, more prestigious competition with more attractive high profile fixtures or giving the lesser teams from lesser leagues entry with no real prospect of getting anywhere.

A weakening of the competition and a lesser feat to win it.

Finishing fourth may even become the poisoned chalice Europa qualification often is.

I personally think the whole "it'll make the competition weaker" stuff is utter bollocks

If you just want monied rich clubs vs monied rich clubs from the top 4 leagues and nothing else, then just create the Super League and be done with it

This is a continental competition and giving more teams in the less glamorous Leagues more slots will allow them to improve, so the quality of the competition will be barely affected, if at all

Fourth should be a "poisoned chalice". It's a joke that it gets you into the "Champions" League in the first place

 

[Chris O'Connor]

I personally think the whole "it'll make the competition weaker" stuff is utter bollocks

If you just want monied rich clubs vs monied rich clubs from the top 4 leagues and nothing else, then just create the Super League and be done with it

This is a continental competition and giving more teams in the less glamorous Leagues more slots will allow them to improve, so the quality of the competition will be barely affected, if at all

Fourth should be a "poisoned chalice". It's a joke that it gets you into the "Champions" League in the first place

Naturally if you take better teams out of the competition and replace them with weaker teams it will make the competition weaker.

The likes of the premier league now have all four entrants getting through the group stages to the round of 16 as well as providing both finalists plus Man City (beaten by finalists Spurs) last year.

This year Europa winners Chelsea are added, having beaten Arsenal in the final.

The days when Nottingham Forest won the second tier one season, the first tier the next and the European Cup the third, their first ever attempt, have long gone and belong to a bygone era.

Celtic the Scottish champions pretty much every year haven't reached the knockout stages since 2013. Its far harder for the likes of Leicester to get in the Champions League yet in their only recent appearance they at least didn't disgrace themselves, reaching the quarter-finals.

Noone wants a proliferation of mismatches, the romanticism of thinking that teams from minor leagues are equipped to compete are at odds with reality, that era has gone.

 

[barneygumble]

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.

Well this is wrong.

Real Madrid in 2000. Finished 5th, Real Zaragoza finished 4th.... splurged loads of money on contracts etc, then lost their place.
Chelsea 2012. Finished 6th, Tottenham finished 4th, and missed out.

If anything, even if Uefa did rig it, that we were the only team to "benefit" from this rule, as we actually were allowed to participate in Qualifiers. You win the European Cup you deserve to be allowed to defend your title. I'm sure Nottingham Forest will agree.