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.
