If UEFA had anything in mind when designing the new Champions League format, it was something It wasn’t about improving competition. I wasn’t thinking about the fans either. Much less about the interest of the big European teams or the television channels.
If UEFA had anything in mind, it was – and Thursday’s deception of the draw is proof of that – the UEFA Super League. Florentino Perez.
It did not seem so difficult to design a new competition format. These formats (knockout system, group system, Round Robin Tournament) generally adhere strictly to the aphorism that the best is the enemy of the good. None are perfect, but they all serve their purpose. This is not the case with the new format of the Champions League..
The round-robin system of La Liga is perhaps the fairest of all possible formats from the point of view of sporting merits, even if it allows the competition to be condemned several days from the end and sacrifices the emotion of a “to the death” confrontation between the best teams in the competition.
The La Liga system may not be the best possible system, but very few people doubt today that it is a “good” system that rewards the most consistent team of the year.
The format of the Copa del Rey is also “good”, easily understandable and facilitates surprises for small teams to the detriment of the big ones.
Or the mixed format of the ACB League, which combines the round-robin league and the final qualifying rounds, in line with the traditional system of the American NBA.
But no one has understood the new format of the Champions League, and that is the worst that can be said of a competition system that will pit the best teams on the continent against each other for several weeks in an unaffordable marathon of 144 matches.
The system is unfair, since it imposes certain leagues where the eight teams that make it up will not compete against each otherbut only once.
It is opaque, since the crossings were determined by an algorithm that must be assumed to be neutral, but which is very easily manipulated.
And this is suspicious given that no one has been able to clearly explain what the criterion is that determines which games are played as visitors and which are played at home.
The new system increases the number of teams playing in the competition (from thirty-two to thirty-six) and absurdly multiplies the number of matches with very little interest in guaranteeing the small teams a minimum number of matches, even if it is in a devalued Champions League. UEFA’s hidden objective is to guarantee the support of these small teams in their rejection of the Super League defended by Real Madrid.
Although UEFA denies it, it seems clear that the new format is a response to the European Super League system promoted by Florentino Perez. However, it betrays its spirit, which is that of a mixed league between the best teams on the continent, and saturates the competition with irrelevant matches in which the players, once qualification is assured, will tend to play them as if they were sympathetic. What top player would set foot in an irrelevant match against a third-rate team?
If the new format of the Champions League demonstrates anything, it is that the future of professional football lies in the Super League, and not in the chaotic inventions of a UEFA that claims to want to save “authentic” football, condemning it to an atrocious death of torpor.
