Champions League: Opening round looks like an unwieldy bureaucracy
Celtic and Cork’s Adam Idah celebrates scoring his side's fifth goal of the game during their UEFA Champions League match against Slovan Bratislava at Celtic Park, Glasgow. Picture: Andrew Milligan/PA Wire.
We got our first taste of the Champions League under the new expanded 36-team, all-in league format, and I think the general reaction from football fans seems to be fatigued indifference.
The changes seem to have been made for the sake of change or rather to keep the European Super League wolf from the door.
Firstly, the 36-team league table looks insane. This is the first league table I’ve seen where I need to scroll the screen twice to get to the bottom of it. And that would be well and good if all the sides played each other home and away like a… league I guess, but instead, the format has four groups of nine teams with each club playing eight other teams once. Four of them at home, four of them away. That the format still requires groups raises more questions for the need to change anything in the first place. Anyway, the results from these matches are then placed back into the overall league table for comparison against the performances of all the other teams in their groups.
All you need to know is that it is an excessively complicated process to play 144 games in order to eliminate just 12 teams. The remaining eight ‘top teams’ automatically advance to the knockouts with the remaining ninth- to 24-placed sides going into a series of two-leg play-off games to decide the final eight sides to get into the knockout stages.
The advantage behind the idea is to make opening round results less predictable by throwing top seed sides up against each other in this phase rather than only when they come together in the knockouts. But the draw has already thrown up some defects with certain team getting what looks like easier groups than others but then having their results directly compared on a one-for-one basis on the same league table, despite most sides not directly facing those opponents in play, like any other league table.
The coefficient of sides in the draw is supposed to level this out but we all know some sides have a better coefficient than their results and achievements merit. Making separate group results count the same in an overall league table is inherently unfair. We will see how it plays out as it goes on but a more competitive promise in the early rounds looks less convincing when you see Bayern Munich run in nine goals against Dinamo Zagreb’s two on the opening night. Mind you, that was balanced out the following night when only 13 goals were scored across the six matches. And six of those were in Celtic’s win over Bratislava.
With so many games being played, we had the sight of Champions League matches on three days this week with the Thursday now being rolled into the equation. Once the punishment for only making the Europa League, we now have a Champions League side struggling to make it back fresh for the Premier League with one less day recovery. It also further encroaches on the already limited limelight of the second tier Europa League competition.
The side affected this week with one day’s less rest is Arsenal, who played Atalanta in Italy on Thursday and then will have to roll up to the Etihad on Sunday in Manchester to face a City side with one more day’s rest, who didn’t travel midweek, and have the advantage of being at home again for this game. This could impact the title race even before it gets going. It will be interesting to see the impact all that travel and tiredness will have on the away Gunners.
This ties into the burnout of players already stretched to the limit with the ever-increasing fixtures and competitions at domestic, continental, and international level. Liverpool keeper Alisson commented on player tiredness with so many fixtures ahead of their Tuesday match in Milan, before flying home to take on Bournemouth in the Premier League today at 3pm. Two extra games per team in the group’s stages may not seem much, but with player burnout already a concern even two more games may seem intolerable for bodies already wrecked after the summer Euros.
Man City’s star midfielder Rodri went even further to say that the players were ready to go on strike in protest of the increased number of games. It seems clear that UEFA and FIFA investigated every consideration about adding lucrative games to their competitions except consulting the actual players working these games. It may cost them in the long run.
But hey, there were notable highlights this week, I guess. We saw Harry Kane score a hat-trick of penalties in one game against Zagreb, then again, even that was kind of overshadowed on the night when it took 31 penalties to separate Preston and Fulham in a mere EFL third round game on a mid-September night in unfashionable Deepdale.
App?
