The Champions League

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davek said:
KO competition from the off: 64 teams start the first round, five ties to win and a final.

Same format for a second tier European trophy.
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So basically the F.A cup but for European teams. Not sure to be honest, but agree the whole thing is just a money making scheme and the new rules coming into play are a joke.
 
Doubletree said:
So basically the F.A cup but for European teams. Not sure to be honest, but agree the whole thing is just a money making scheme and the new rules coming into play are a joke.
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We need to get back to basics. Instead of the CL and EL and ECL just have two KO Euro competitions of however many rounds needs playing to be representative.

No dead games, no seedings, no home and away venues in advance of SFs etc etc.
 
For the Champions League you can read the Premier League as a whole. You may get one or two clubs punching above their weight, or in the case of us and United punching below our financial weight, but by and large you know who's going to be winning it before a ball has been kicked. What's perhaps worse is that there is literally no way of competing now without getting into bed with incredibly shady owners. Football as a sport has gone from its working class roots to become completely spoiled by money.
 
davek said:
We need to get back to basics. Instead of the CL and EL and ECL just have two KO Euro competitions of however many rounds needs playing to be representative.

No dead games, no seedings, no home and away venues in advance of SFs etc etc.
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It was good in the past because you'd have a great generation coming through at Red Star, Steaua or Ajax and they'd have a great chance of winning things. Now the "big" clubs have so much money that they just hoover up talent from across the world so there really isn't any hope. If you think a knockout competition would help you only have to look at the FA Cup as how that makes no difference when the money is so stacked.

In terms of winners, you had Leicester last year and then Wigan in 2012 as the only "non big 4" team winning it in the last 15 years. Add in Portsmouth winning it in 2008 and then you have to go back to our win in 1995 for someone that isn't Arsenal, Chelsea, City, Liverpool, or United winning it. So in pretty 32 years of competition, 5 teams have won all but 3 tournaments. It's a far cry from the 10 CL finals in the years before it became 4 teams from the big leagues, in which you had 10 different winners, and that's not due to the nature of the competition but rather the monopoly on players that being a big team affords you.

Having a knockout won't stop PSG and Bayern walking away with their domestic leagues, or Juventus by and large doing the same in Italy.
 
Bruce Wayne said:
It was good in the past because you'd have a great generation coming through at Red Star, Steaua or Ajax and they'd have a great chance of winning things. Now the "big" clubs have so much money that they just hoover up talent from across the world so there really isn't any hope. If you think a knockout competition would help you only have to look at the FA Cup as how that makes no difference when the money is so stacked.

In terms of winners, you had Leicester last year and then Wigan in 2012 as the only "non big 4" team winning it in the last 15 years. Add in Portsmouth winning it in 2008 and then you have to go back to our win in 1995 for someone that isn't Arsenal, Chelsea, City, Liverpool, or United winning it. So in pretty 32 years of competition, 5 teams have won all but 3 tournaments. It's a far cry from the 10 CL finals in the years before it became 4 teams from the big leagues, in which you had 10 different winners, and that's not due to the nature of the competition but rather the monopoly on players that being a big team affords you.

Having a knockout won't stop PSG and Bayern walking away with their domestic leagues, or Juventus by and large doing the same in Italy.
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No, it wont be solved with just a KO format, but it'd takle away the safety net for the ever dwindling group of elite CL teams, which isn't there with the stages format.

To fundamentally improve competition we have to see structural changes in the game around wages and investment levels. But that'; a far harder thing to achieve than tweaking a format.
 
davek said:
The final will always be a spectacle. But the tournament outside of that is now very poor.

The fall off in standard of the Spanish and German clubs especially has contributed to that.

I cant see this CL lasting much longer.
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I have noticed a rapid decline in this competition. Not something even worth watching anymore. Somethings got to give soon.
 
"What the bourgeoisie, therefore, produces, above all, is its own grave-diggers"

-Karl 'flat back 4' Marx
 
Capital always accumulates at the top of the pyramid until something revolutionary dislodges it, and those at the top will do everything to protect the accumulation. That's what all of the coefficient business is all about.

Until there's a football equivalent of louis xvi with his head in a basket we're going to get more of the same. That's why we should have been welcoming the super league.
 
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