New-look Champions League shows football’s biggest problem right from the start
A total lack of unpredictability now gives way to inevitability as those with just one victory are already so close to the playoffs
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After such a grand build-up, the new Champions League’s opening night didn’t exactly suggest new excitement - or much unpredictability at all. Every single one of the pre-match favourites won. At least five of them, and arguably six, did so in a very comfortable manner. Bayern Munich went beyond comfort. They eviscerated Dinamo Zagreb 9-2, a result that should be very damaging for a launch night. It was worse than what came before.
Even if you argue that game at the Allianz was a mismatch that the competition itself is supposed to help in bridging, well, you only have to look at the night's marquee fixture. Liverpool breezed past Milan in a 3-1 that could have been a 6-1. Rather than a grand restaging of previous finals between historic giants, it was merely a showcase of profound modern problems with the game’s economic framework.
The Champions League itself, of course, has been a powerful engine in creating this disparity. It’s another reason this doesn’t bode well.
An obvious response to all of this predictable doom-mongering is that it’s early days… but that’s part of the problem. Going by numerous statistical models, all of Tuesday’s winners may only need four more points to just reach the play-offs. While that is admittedly the minimum number predicted, the mean in such models is a total of nine points to finish in the top 24. It’s not exactly much higher, and doesn’t suggest high drama late on.
By contrast, it already looks like we might have situations that a lot of people feared. That is a mass of games where there really isn’t much on the line. So much for solving the problems of the old group stage.
You can already sense it's going to take some drastic results to change that, and that’s after one night.
Except, many would say this is long what the major clubs wanted: just more content, more games, a never-ending football calendar where they are always occupying your mind.
The precise problem with that is that it tends to have the opposite effect. You only had to see the thousands of empty seats at the San Siro, where 20,000 tickets were reported to still be on sale on the morning of the game.
It was such a contrast to the last great Champions League occasion that AC Milan played at this stadium, which was the semi-final derby against Internazionale in 2022-23. The old stands shook to the sound of fans loudly blasting out the competition anthem, rather than just echoing danced-up 1990s hits as they did here.
You might say that’s obvious since that was a semi-final against their greatest rivals, but that’s actually the point. This new Champions League has actively sought to recreate that feeling, by having it so more of the big names meet. That isn’t how football works, though. Supporters, as the stands illustrated, aren’t really buying it.
By contrast, imagine the opposite. Imagine this was a straight knock-out, which feels like it is the only model that can truly save the early rounds of the Champions League in this economic framework. There's real jeopardy there.
It’s also something remarkable with the modern game. One of the guiding factors over the last few decades has been these masters of the football universe constantly seeking to change it, but that’s without seeming to understand how football actually works. Figures like Florentino Perez and Aleksander Ceferin seemingly spend so long in it they don't see. They think fans just want to see big clubs playing each other, in any context. The truth is that fans really want to see big clubs play each other when it actually means something; when there’s been a build-up so it has substance and risk. It really shouldn’t need to be said that what sport actually works on is the sense of jeopardy.
There was almost none on the new Champions League’s opening nights. More was much less.
The one potential positive you could say is that it is likely going to mean some fiercely contested matches between clubs like Celtic and Young Boys for those final play-off places. There might also be similar around the crucial eighth automatic place. Even that seems like an element of sleight of hand, though.
The big clubs and European Club Association essentially came to this accommodation because the continent’s sizeable middle-class were agitating about their reduced position in 21st-century football. Clubs like Ajax and Porto wanted more big games of their own, and more money.
This gives them that, but also takes something. The extra money this middle class receive does indeed grow - along with that spread to the thousands of non-competing clubs - but only as part of a much larger pot. So, far from actually closing the gap between the wealthiest and the rest, this new Champions League only extends it.
It also reinforces the core problem in the European game.
Anyone with any basic knowledge of football could - and did - tell Uefa and the big clubs this for years. The problem wasn’t the format. It was how the Champions League so drove inequality that it killed unpredictability.
It is something that by now needs to be said in flashing lights. This is football’s major issue. All of the forces involved willingly ignored that, and there is now a real possibility that people just end up ignoring later fixtures in this group. Sometimes, though, people need to see the reality as it works.
This Champions League needs some very different realities for Wednesday and Thursday.
That admittedly reflects how all this should be caveated by the fact this was indeed just the opening night. Things can change. It’s still important, though. This is supposed to be Uefa’s grand reform, a brand new future. This was their launch, which anyone in marketing will tell you that you really only get to do once. It didn’t land.
It instead felt almost more tedious than the same old. The opening night, at the least, didn’t really work.
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