I mean, Liverpool were so bad when they won the CL they were only allowed back into the competition the next season by special dispensation. It's true - UEFA actually changed the rules to allow them to compete!
That rule still stands today, but if you think that's funny imagine Uefa allowing the winners of the Uefa equivalent of the League Cup into the Group Stage of the Champions League the following season, would never happen right.
I know, it's a nonsense - the prize for winning the bloody thing is that you don't have to play in it again next season!
There are many precedents for this: e.g the prizes for winning smaller poker tournaments are places in a bigger more prestigious tournament that has £millions as top prizes. By doing this UEFA are acknowledging that the Europa is a much smaller tournament which serves as an entry to their more prestigious champions league. Which is fair enough because not doing would have led to its demise. Would the likes of Arsenal or Dortmund have taken it seriously? Even Small premiership teams have treated it with disdain in the recent past resting their key players. Less respect than the league cup. Now at least we have a serious competition, with participants wanting to win it.
Exactly, so do the EL winners really deserve a place in the CL or is it simply borne of desperation to give the competition back some appeal?
It is an exaggeration, and you are right that team's always need a bit of luck to win a cup competition. The league tends to go to the best team every year, the cups less so. But it's hard to deny the gulf in quality between the respective teams, and the level of luck needed to succeed. After all, when people talk about the best teams of the PL era, Utd of 99 and Utd of 08 are always up there with the best. Schmeichel, Keane, Scholes, Stam, Giggs, Beckham, Rooney, Ronaldo, Vidic, Ferdinand, VDS etc. They are always the names mentioned, alongside the likes of Arsenal 04, Chelsea 05 and almost certainly soon City 18. Would anyone honestly put Liverpool's 05 team or Chelsea's 12 team at or even near the same level? Not only in term's of quality, but also in how they rode their luck at several points.
The rule was invented after Liverpool's failure in the league in 2005. UEFA willingly bent the rules to get Liverpool back into the CL in 2006, the actual rules at the time should have seen Liverpool drop into the UEFA. I do agree with you that the EL winners shouldn't go into the CL, imo it devalues both competitions in the long run. Just look at us last season - willingly giving up on the league because we knew the EL was there for the taking. But at least when we used that route it was within the rules, we weren't relying on UEFA doing us a favour after the fact.
Would suggest it was that the rule was reinstated to make it same as European Cup. UEFA at the time were surprised as up till then all other Associations had automatically given previous CL winners 1 of their countries places-even our FA had said they would in prev seasons when the possibility had come up .They therefore decided to put it in black & white to ensure that the previous winners always had the chance to defend their "title".
The act is desperation. However I would be perfectly happy with it, providing UEFA got rid of the CL drop-out rule, which IMHO is both a contemptible act of greed + preserving the status quo.
Not really - the European Cup rule was to give an extra spot for the winning nation, not have the previous winners replace the genuine qualifiers. Regardless, Liverpool clearly got special favouritism outside the rules at the time. Interesting that they were willing to ignore the rules for Liverpool in 2005, before formally changing them the following season. Yet the next time it happened, Spurs were denied a CL spot for 4th place in 2012 before the rules were again changed the following season to mean that if the CL winners were outside the league qualification spots they would get an extra space rather than taking the genuine qualifier's spot away.
Agree with both. It's a shame really, the EL used to be a competition which clubs like Sevilla, Bilbao, Bilbao etc tried to win because they valued the trophy. Yes it was a lesser trophy, but it had its own prestige. Even though I'm happy we won it last year, it's clear that clubs like Utd, Liverpool and Arsenal in recent years have seen it primarily as a route to the CL when they think the league route is less certain. I think Arsenal are now almost guaranteed to do what we did last season - sack the league off and just go all out for the EL, then ignore it next season if they get back into the CL as a result.
The old UEFA Cup used to be great in the 70s/80s. You would get clubs who finished 2/3/4 in their home league, and the draw guaranteed some tasty ties at all rounds of the tournament. Now the EL is just a procession in the group stages for clubs from the major leagues, pepped up in the last 16 by the arrival of the CL failures.
The EUFA cup was brill due to the large number of good teams ensuring , even without seeding , you would always have had some really tough games to win it. Also you often got to see who may be the up & coming teams across Europe - well if they played English teams you might since that was the only way you would even get highlights
The old Cup Winners' Cup was great too - literally had to win a domestic cup to get into it so the winners could say they were the true European kings of the knockout competition. I guess the way more teams are let into Europe now and how it's been merged, even with the CL, is a prelude to an eventual European Super League for the richest clubs.
the CWC always seemed the poor relation of the 3 to me as could have really weak teams winning domestic cups. Sure you're not just remembering an acute finish by a dodgy manager by any chance
Aye, could be a bit of a lottery, but then so was the EC up until the semi finals. Very easy for the winner of one of the second tier leagues or cups to go to **** the following season, and whilst it would usually be top sides in the final you could always end up with the likes of Brugge, Malmo, Saint Etienne, Antwerp etc somehow making it through and getting canned in the final. In many ways the UEFA was arguably tougher to win back then, as there were so many sides in it that even if some had declined since the last season there were enough there to be sure of strong competition. Consider that if it was the old system now then our representatives in the EC would be Chelsea scraping through by their fingertips, whilst City, Utd, Spurs and Liverpool would be smashing teams in the UEFA!
Possibly Though it shows what a great competition the CWC used to be when you got FA Cup holders United vs Copa del Rey holders Barcelona in the final. There's not been a bigger final in Europe outside of the CL ever since.
Well, at least the best the all conquering City can do this season is the "poor mans" treble now, not the main one like good teams do
