UEFA Competitions – time for a rethink?

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This new BT deal, is it them showing them only in the UK, or is it across Europe?

If that makes sense.

If so, seems a ridiculous amount of money to show a handful of games.
 

I'd imagine the rights are for UK broadcast. However, they now have the monopoly for Euro footy as ITV will lose the rights to show highlights. I thought monopolies were frowned upon in this country?

Anyway, prepare for the inevitable price hikes for BT Sport - this ludicrous deal has to be paid for somehow.
 
Bayern, Real, Barcelona, PSG. Only four teams can legitimately go in and believe they will win the CL. That is the main problem.

In fact you could eliminate PSG from there as well. So only three teams. This is why I always root for Atletico in this predictable and boring competition. They're someone different.

The CL needs more teams like Atletico to save it.
 
Aar_the_Toffees said:
Bayern, Real, Barcelona, PSG. Only four teams can legitimately go in and believe they will win the CL. That is the main problem.

In fact you could eliminate PSG from there as well. So only three teams. This is why I always root for Atletico in this predictable and boring competition. They're someone different.

The CL needs more teams like Atletico to save it.
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Hopefully RB Leipzig win it next year.
 
Mountfield1985 said:
No offence to the OP, but I think the whole "only league winners should qualify for the european cup" thing is just based on pure nostalgia. The Champions League is a far better competition than the old European Cup.

Just look at that period of 77-84. An English winner in 7/8 seasons. Mostly breezing past inferior opponents and facing a handful of proper games.
I think the Champions League worked brilliantly during the 90's and the early 00's. Teams like Ajax, Dortmund, Porto, Valencia, Red Star, Marseille, Leverkusen all reaching finals.

These days the Premier League takes all the best talent from Holland, France, Belgium, Germany (Bayern aside), even Italy now. To the point that those leagues really struggle to put out sides that can realistically challenge. That's why we are starting to see the giant clubs dominate it so much now.
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Aren't you being a bit nostalgic also?
When it first started, it was something different and seemed to give more teams a chance of reaching a higher level.
In reality, as you've said it has become quite dull, until it reaches the knockout phases?
 

The "Super league" cannot work as a break away league, 20 teams, with no relegation, so at the midway point in the season, 15 of the 20 teams will have nothing to play for. Who wants to watch that?
 
roydo said:
This new BT deal, is it them showing them only in the UK, or is it across Europe?

If that makes sense.

If so, seems a ridiculous amount of money to show a handful of games.
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Handful? They show almost every game. During the group stages on my BT TV I can switch to any group game, same with knockouts for the CL. Europa League tons are on their normal channels and extra channels, the rest you can stream for free on the BT website. It's miles better than how Sky do it.
 
OneTrueLegend said:
I think the biggest issue is that the big clubs would block any simple expansion of more teams or more games. They don't want that, it just means more games to play and the money gets diluted. Also I don't think the fans really want that. They have just announced that the top 4 leagues now get 4 automatic places,(rather than 3 automatic places and one additional place if a team qualifies) which comes in from 2018 to 2021, I'm sure next time they will announce that the top few countries will get 5 places, then So on and so forth, until it becomes more of a closed shop and the lower ranked nations need to go through more qualifying rounds to get to the Champions League and really most of the teams in the champions league will come from about 10 nations and the other 45 nations scrapping it out for one or two places.

When they make the changes slowly, people hardly notice it's happening
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I don't think so. Bigger Champions League means more guaranteed games in the group stage and almost a guaranteed place in the competition as well. Overall number of games for each club would be about the same as now.
 
It needs to expand IMO.

I think we need a third tier European Competition, The Kuiper Belt League of all the relegated clubs from the year before, or even all the teams that missed out on Europe.
 
The Champions League is untouchable simply because of money. My feeling is that if fans and clubs came to appreciate the Europa League as a high level competition like they do the Copa Sudaamerica in South America than the current system would be fine
 

Nymzee said:
Handful? They show almost every game. During the group stages on my BT TV I can switch to any group game, same with knockouts for the CL. Europa League tons are on their normal channels and extra channels, the rest you can stream for free on the BT website. It's miles better than how Sky do it.
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Compared to a full domestic league, its a handful.

And with loads of meaningless dead rubbers in the group stages.
 
tadao said:
Aren't you being a bit nostalgic also?
When it first started, it was something different and seemed to give more teams a chance of reaching a higher level.
In reality, as you've said it has become quite dull, until it reaches the knockout phases?
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I don't think I am. My point is the current format works when more leagues can produce competitive teams. The emphasis should be on stopping the Premier League and La Liga stockpiling all the best talent from europe.
 
It seems most people are missing the point on who instigated these changes. It was not UEFA, they were being blackmailed by the then G12/G16. They threatened to form a breakaway league unless uefa caved in to their demands of introducing a group stage because they feared getting knocked out by a minnow. League format made that less likely. They got their leagueformat, then they realised that they may miss out on the party altogether so again threatened a breakaway unless they allowed runners up (from the rich leagues only) to also qualify. This was expanded to 3rd and 4th later.
Then, when the likes of Chelsea came along with a major sugar daddy, the forced uefa into creating the ffp rule to prevent any other clubs trying to get a share of their pot of gold.
UEFA are basically powerless to make any changes which are for the good of the game, any time they consider it, they are threatened with a breakaway league.
 
Zaschrona said:
I don't think so. Bigger Champions League means more guaranteed games in the group stage and almost a guaranteed place in the competition as well. Overall number of games for each club would be about the same as now.
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Reading some of the reports from February, there are the "smaller" champions league teams, like Celtic and Ajax pushing for a 48 team champions league and the "Bigger" teams led by Bayern Munich were pushing for the competition to be reduced to 24 teams with 16 places going to the top 4 leagues;

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/celtic-push-48-team-champions-9828497

The upshot is that if Uefa are receiving £1.2b in sponsorship, this has to be divided up among the teams competing, if there are more teams competing, there is still the same amount of prize money, so you get less prize money per game
 

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