Nov 08 2007
The UEFA Champions League Needs a New Format
So Portsmouth boss Harry Redknapp, who’s trying really, really hard to get his club into the Champions League, has decided to tell everyone that… well, the Champions League is boring.
Arsene Wenger let star names Cesc Fabregas, Tomas Rosicky, Kolo Toure and Aleksandr Hleb stay at home and watch last night’s game on TV because the club is so comfortable in Group H they can afford to take it easy.
Great viewing for the public, then. The Champions League is fast replacing the Carling Cup as a stage for the reserves to enjoy a few days in a pretty, foreign town and a run out.
Redknapp makes his most interesting point, though, about the overall importance of group stage games among the supporters, who are supposed to be the ones that matter:
Ironically, Chelsea pulled in just 24,000 for their Group B game against Rosenborg in September, while the Carling Cup match with Leicester on Halloween was a near full house — no coincidence in my mind that it’s because the result had to be decided on the night.
Liverpool’s situation was unique on Tuesday. Having lost 2-1 in Istanbul to Besiktas two weeks ago, the five-times European champions were fighting for survival at Anfield.
It meant the return game suddenly took on the feel of the traditional, old knockout match — and that’s why people were interested.
Traditional knockout match, you say? Perhaps something created by a tournament format that looks, oh, like this?
There’s a reason college basketball is one of the most awesome spectacles in American sports, and it’s all within that bracket. American sports fans are completely focused on the bracket and all that surrounds it during the month of March. Big schools from big conferences earn their way in during the regular season, while smaller schools have to win their conference tournaments to find their way into this bracket and have a shot at the big guys.
This idea would work perfectly in European soccer. Clubs have to win their domestic leagues to get into the Champions League, but the bigger leagues get extra spots in the competition based on UEFA coefficients — much the same way RPI rankings determine at-large bids in college hoops’ Big Dance. It wouldn’t be hard to determine a formula that picked 32 automatic bids and 32 spots to be won in qualifying rounds, then seed the bracket and let everyone have a go.
Even Harry would agree that this makes for more exciting matches.
Imagine if Chelsea, who were embarrassed by a 1-1 draw with Rosenborg, had been forced to travel to Norway a fortnight later fighting for their European lives in the frozen north, desperately needing to win and win well to overcome the away-goals rule.
It’s more than just the win-or-go-home mentality of the bracket, though. This format is a gambler’s paradise. You know you fill out your bracket every March and rip it up the first weekend when someone like Winthrop blasts one of your Final Four teams out of the water, because you just blew another $5, and for what?
Imagine being able to bet on a 64-team bracket in September, a 32-team bracket in November, and a 16-team bracket in February. A European Cup bracket means that March Madness could last all season. What could be better than that?
The only question is whether UEFA boss Michel Platini would be willing and/or able to make this happen. The smaller nations that helped him rise to power support his vision, and he’s handling challenges from big clubs quite deftly. If he introduced a proposal to change the Champions League from a group stage/knockout stage format to a fully seeded bracket, he could find plenty of support.
None of them would be G-14 members, of course, but if they’re really that elite, they wouldn’t really fear the bracket, would they? The Sweet 16 isn’t full of minnows in March, and neither is the knockout stage. Let them earn their supremacy on the pitch. If they can’t beat two smaller clubs on the way to the third round, maybe they shouldn’t be there.
10 Responses to “The UEFA Champions League Needs a New Format”
Dave, they originally had an all knockout tournament, the European cup, but UEFA caved into the big clubs demands and created group stages.
Yes, and I’m saying it’s high time that they went back. Take 64 clubs, seed ‘em and let ‘em go. It would make things much more interesting.
Hey Dave great website!
Everyone except the G-14 wants a return to the days of a knockout European Cup. If UEFA ever made a move to get rid of the group stage, we’re see that abomination of a European Super League where all the financial super-clubs break away and create that NFL of Europe that you talked about earlier this week.
Thankfully, you’re weren’t watching football back when the Champions League had two successive group stages. What a bore.
-Chris (from D.C.)
[...] Time for a new Champions League format? (Dave’s Football Blog) [...]
I have one very large problem with this. If you make Cup competitions all knock-out like that, then those teams which participate in them run the risk of potentially having their best players receiving nasty nagging injuries from being forced to compete nigh-constantly.
I understand that the potential format change will bring “excitement” back to the competition, however I do not feel that it is worth risking the health of your best players to get that.
UEFA v. The G-14: The Short History of a Pointless Disagreement…
European football should emulate the NFL, or possibly NCAA basketball….
That would be absolutely badass. If UEFA could clear a six-week space where the C-League and nothing else was being contested, that would rock even harder, though that would be a little difficult to pull off.
I can see it now…30 or so weeks of regular season continent-wide, all leading up to the UEFA selection show. The single elimination, the worldwide brackets being printed out, the agony of fans as their darkhorse to win it all, 4th seeded Stuttgart, is upset in the first round by 13th seeded Olympiakos in extra time. I would love to see that day. Unfortunately, I doubt the big clubs would let that day come.
Mike,
the typical European fan cares way too much about domestic competition to ever let that happen. Soccer is so much more decentralized than American sports. You just can’t throw out the domestic competitions in one fell swoop.
Soccer does not work as a single elimination sport…..
One, massive bracket, is a horrible idea. I hate to side with the G-14 teams, but they have a good point.
On any given day, any team can beat any other team. This is true in most sports, but its even more true in soccer because its such a team oriented, fan-influenced, momentum dependent, and sometimes yes, luck-driven, sport.
UEFA has decided to combine the best of both worlds. They have a group stage so that a team can get unlucky in one game but not be completely out of it. They have a knockout phase for the last 16 teams to give everyone a taste of single elimination, but with the exception of the final, each tie is a 2-legged affair, so its a hybrid style of single elimination.
In my opinion, UEFA has it right. In soccer, the cream rises to the top in the long run. Single elimination tournaments have their place (FA Cup, Carling Cup), but for the only and most important top-level European competition, you need a group stage to give the top teams a chance to establish their dominance. Anyone who thinks otherwise is merely rooting for surprise upsets and is not interested in fairly determining the “best team in Europe.”
And one more point for you — trying to Americanize soccer is a huge mistake. Look at the MLS. The entire MLS regular season means nothing. As long as your team doesn’t entirely tank, they are going to be in the playoffs. And then that’s when the real competition begins. In my opinion, the MLS would benefit majorly from adopting a British tiered league system. They already have the USL, which would be a viable Tier 2 league to relegate to and promote from.
I have talked to a number of MLS coaches, officials, and players about this. I haven’t met anyone yet who disagrees with me.