Week 31: Do Changes Create A Champion Hurdle?
So what began on 25 June 2019 with a mini-tournament in Pristina, Kosovo concluded on Sunday, August 23 – also after a mini-tournament – in a near-deserted Estadio de Luz in Lisbon.
It was of course, the UEFA Champions League.
In those fourteen months, disrupted by the COVID virus like everything else, there were 119 matches and 386 goals – not all of them against Barcelona; it just felt like they were – and even with all the palaver, almost 5 million fans in attendance at an average of just under 40,000 per match, which is what Wikipedia says but doesn’t seem quite right when some of those early qualifying games were Sheriff Tiraspol versus Saburtalo Tbilisi (3-4 on aggregate if you are wondering), but we’ll go with it.
The last of those 386 goals came from the head of French winger, Kingsley Coleman, the Bayern Munich winger – he’s won the league with his club in every one of his seasons as a professional – who PSG let go as a teenager in favour of paying millions for Neymar and Killian Mbappe, the superstars who drew blanks on the biggest stage of all on Sunday night. Bayern – also becoming the first team to win EVERY match on route to victory – thus won the trophy for the sixth time while the Parisians await their first.
It was fitting that the final was a cagey affair, very much in keeping with many others that haven’t quite lived up to their billing after the games that proceeded them. That it finished with a single goal victory was rare by today’s standards; and almost a throwback to the finals I remember most.
Indeed, when English clubs held a monopoly on the competition in its pre-Champions League era, after Liverpool beat Borussia Monchengladbach 3-1 in Rome in 1977, the next SEVEN finals finished 1-0 until Liverpool triumphed on penalties against Roma, again in Rome. The one after that, at Heysel and largely forgotten given the tragedy, was also won by a single goal.
After the high-scoring goal-fests of the fifties and sixties (the first 1-0 in a final was in 1964/65 – the tenth year of the competition), the score-line has decided fifteen finals before this latest one although, remarkably, not since 1999/98.
Since the beginning of the competition in 1955 (won 4-3 by Real Madrid against Reims in Paris) there have been many format changes too. The trusted two-legged knockout style through to the prestige final remained in place until 1991, after which a group stage, one-leg semi-finals and, briefly, two group stages were tried and discarded before the group stage of 32 teams with a knockout stage thereafter was settled upon in 2003/4.
Until now.
Faced with an unprecedented global pandemic and postponement or curtailment of seasons across Europe, UEFA were forced to innovate and the final stages were, for the first and only time, concluded with straight one-off knockout games in one city.
Of course, there were no fans which was clearly to the detriment of the spectacle but other than that, the format and the matches (as well as those in the similarly changed Europa League) have been a resounding success.
But still, a one-off, right? Maybe. Maybe not.
The initial thought was that it was although the UEFA President, Aleksander Ceferin, hinted that we might have seen the last of it when he said, “I have to say that this system of one match seems more interesting to me than the other system with two-legged matches.” By contrast, Phil McNulty, the BBC football journalist was quick to point out that, despite its success, the groups and two-legged knock-out stage should still return at the earliest opportunity.
But is it a little early to consign it to that of an experimental solution that the coronavirus forced on it, but that has no place in the game beyond that?
If nothing else, it should signal the need for some more analysis. This virus has prompted many changes – some bad, some good, some barely noticeable – but the fact that it forces change doesn’t mean that everything has to go back to the way it was.
Obviously, the lack of fans is a change that we don’t want to repeat under any format. But that aside, the immediacy of high stakes knock-out football in a confined time had lots to offer as Bayern swept aside Barca, then Lyon while PSG stunned Atalanta with two stoppage-time goals and then beat RB Leipzig comfortably to join them in the final.
But while this strangest of seasons HAD to conclude the European competitions in one week and one place for very specific reasons, going forward it makes little sense without major revolution across the continent. Here are some of the key discussion points.
One Round Knockout
It’s easy to get caught up in a reactionary OTT view to what happened, especially with so little else going on. The reality is that – in the Champions League anyway – the magic of the one-off games really only happened in the quarter-finals. There, as well as the incredible 8-2 win for Bayern and PSG’s late-late comeback, we also saw the wheels come off Manchester City’s wagon again and a late Leipzig winner against Atletico. All four games had intrigue, goals, excitement and helped to create an amazing narrative for the new format yet the semi-finals were one-sided damp squibs by comparison and the final also didn’t come close to matching the last-eight drama either.
Less Is More
One of the criticisms often aimed at UEFA is for the bloated nature of the tournament as it’s ever-expanding formats played into the hands of greedy clubs who relied on its riches to allow them to financially outmuscle the clubs in their domestic league. Although talks of European Super Leagues have always circulated, the reason for the expansion in the first place was to appease the giants of European football who could not afford to miss out (hence why some countries have three or four places available). In 1964/65, it’s worth noting that there were 63 matches played in total, growing first to 85 and then 125 (in 2018/19) with the small reduction this time because two-legged matches were not played from the quarter-finals onwards.
Just Champion?
The group stages (firstly used at the end to determine the finalists and now to bring us to the final sixteen clubs) allowed the name change from Champions Cup to Champions League to make more sense. They should possibly have changed the other part of the name too; after all, many of the teams who are now taking part are not current champions in their own country (although Bayern and PSG were). If at the end of the season (with all leagues concluding by the end of April), the 16-top ranked countries put forward their champion to play in a tournament like this, spread across two or three cities in one country, then that might be something. But it requires so much more, localised, change to ensure leagues are shorter and all finish at the same time. And then this competition would have to be concluded early enough to keep players fresh for the continental and global international tournaments too.
Few Surprises
There is little doubt that a two-legged format, as well as groups, helps the bigger teams to progress. Over six games, they should reach the knock-out stage and then there is always a second bite if they slip up. This has made the elite more powerful and present over the last twenty years. Final-eight line-ups dominated by clubs from Germany, Spain, Italy, England and France are normal now. The chances of a smaller club from outside of the elite reaching the semi-finals becomes ever rarer although the odd big name like Ajax can make it. But before their run to the semi-final in 2018/19, the only other times a club from a country other than those above was represented in the last eight was Benfica (2015/16), Porto (20114/15) and Galatasaray (2012/13), and to find a semi-finalist outside of that quintet, you have to go back to PSV Eindhoven in 2005, the year that a Steven-Gerrard-inspired-Liverpool came from 3-0 down to beat Milan in Istanbul; the stadium that would have hosted this season’s final in more ‘normal’ times.
Not A Leg To Stand On
2018/19 stands as the counter-argument for switching from two legs to one. Just in the semi-finals alone we witnessed Liverpool’s unbelievable comeback from three down after the first leg and then Spurs coming back from three down at half-time in the second leg. Barcelona’s 6-1 comeback from 0-4 down to PSG in 2017 is another. There is something unique about the two-game format, with the added jeopardy of the away-goals rule that we don’t want to lose because the game would be worse off for it, and anyone that falls under the spell of last week’s excitement has a short memory in that respect.
What A Difference A Year Makes
One thing that I’ve always found questionable about the European Cup, in any format, is the timing. A club wins the league (or finish in the top four) but by the time they play in the Champions Cup / League, the new season has started and for some, they might have a completely different set of players or even a new coach. For instance, when Aston Villa won the cup (beating Bayern 1-0) in 1982, they finished eleventh in the league and had sacked their championship-winning manager before Christmas. I’m not saying there is an obvious way around this but this Lisbon-based solution has offered a glimpse of what it might look like to find the Champions of Europe from the current set of champions. And that, I do like.
Conclusion
There are no obvious or easy answers. For every pro, there is an equally clear con. The answer cannot be an ‘either-or’ because the new format wouldn’t work instead of the traditional one. The full competition takes a year to complete because of all the games involved – from extra preliminary games and through the group stages – and to reduce this further takes away the opportunities for Europe’s other nations to compete for group places and with them, their own financial gains and motivations.
But if fans were added to what we’ve seen in Lisbon (and Germany too where the Europa League finale included a five-goal thriller of a final itself) then there is something that can’t be dismissed without at least some additional debate.
Maybe the answer is somewhere between the two. And if reform isn’t possible now, of all times, then when? Especially when travel restrictions have made us all reflect on our attitudes and behaviours including jumping on aeroplanes. And many things that have bettered the world were arrived at by accident (penicillin, Post-It notes, microwave ovens and chocolate-chip cookies, to name just a few).
Maybe a longer-term review of what European competition is aiming to do and its objectives is overdue anyway. UEFA are adding a third competition but are the current ones entirely fit for purpose or is there room for changes that provide both a league format and one that truly arrives at the Champions of Europe?
The questions, unfortunately, will be largely irrelevant. One thing alone – money – will stop the clubs, and probably UEFA, from letting any debate go too far.
A lot of football fans liked the new format. Television viewers also did and some of the broadcasters too. I’d wager a lot of players didn’t mind either.
But you sense that when its virtues are compared to having between four and eight home games -at least – each season, then the revenue on offer from those games will win the argument.
Put another way, in his two seasons at Glasgow Rangers, Steven Gerrard has overseen 32 (thirty-two; only six short of a full domestic season) European games and that was to reach the last-16 in 2019/20 and get knocked out in the group stage the season before.
Most clubs will probably agree then with the considered assessment of PSG midfielder, Ander Herrera when asked what he thought of the new format as Bayern were parading the cup in front of empty seats on Sunday.
‘It’s shit’ he said.
But then, nobody likes change.
words Darren Young, D3D4 columnist