I am talking about your problem or problems. You might be stating facts there but I'm afraid we are not seeing them here.
It clearly wasn't enough. After Liverpool won the champions league and finished lower than expected in the Premier League UEFA changed the rules as it would be madness to not have the current champions in the competition. This is well known, 4th place is not not a guaranteed spot anymore
But they changed the rules to let pool in, so that rule change allowed for 5 teams in this unlikely event. No reason they couldn't have kept it. Liverpool also had to start at the very first round. That should have stayed also.
The reason why they let Everton is no doubt because there was no precedent for this before and would have been unfair to exclude them at that point. But after this they changed the rule so that it wouldn't happen again and this involved taking one of the places of whichever country the winners come from.
I don't think that's necessarily true, actually. They only take a place from a country if they've already got 4, if I remember right.
The main problems with this argument: 1.) World Cup and European Championship winners have to qualify for those tournament 2.) Going into the play-offs doesn't automatically mean five teams from any country will qualify - Man Utd, Everton and Liverpool all had to qualify this way in 2005-6, and Everton made their job easier by failing to qualify 3.) UEFA allowed a team at the centre of a match-fixing scandal (Fenerbahce) into this season's competition, again sticking to their flimsy defence of co-efficients
Well it's true for England, which is what we are talking about here. It's not likely to be a problem for teams which don't have 4 places anyway as their teams/leagues are weaker therefore this situation is unlikely to happen if a team from one of these nations did win it.
I actually agree with the UEFA limit of 4 teams, as it gets a bit ludicrous otherwise, but choosing Fenerbahce was just stupid. I'm still mystified as to what Turkish sides have to do to get some sort of ban or suspension from European games.
1) Not all competition have the same rules, so that is irrelevant. 2)If there are 5 teams allowed from one nation it causes a problem as they have to changed the tournament structure slightly, which is probably why they don't want it to happen. 3) not sure how thats relevant?
It's not likely to be a problem for anyone, as it's only ever happened to English sides. It's not inconceivable that an Italian team could finish outside the top 3 and win it and Dortmund are only 2 points ahead of 5th placed Leverkusen though, so it's not impossible.
As much as I loved getting into the Champions League THAT season, I personally feel that the Champions League should be exactly what the title suggests - Champions of each country fight it out for the overall prize of European kings. So a rough format for me for the Champions League/ Elite competition would be: The champions of each European League go straight into a group stage to progress into knockouts and so on. The champions of each European country's domestic cups should also get a place in a pre-qualifying knock out format, two legged affair, winner joins the league champions in group stages. By doing this, every team would take our domestic cups more seriously which I'd love to see, I hate managers belittling the cups and players putting in little effort and so to have a reward like that will surely make teams take more notice. IF a team wins the league and a domestic cup, then the team that finishes 2nd in the LEAGUE gets a qualifying spot NOT the runner up in the respected cup. At the end of the day the league is a 38 game competition and so if any team is to be rewarded by "failure" for not winning the title, it's them - if a team wins the treble then 3rd place too gets a spot. Europa League/ Junior competition: Teams that finish 2nd and 3rd in the league enter this competition in it's group stages, unless of course they have a qualifying spot in the Elite competition via the league champions winning a double/ treble ruling - if that's the case then 4th and if necessary 5th get a spot in the groups. Teams that finish 4th (unless conflicting with the previous rules of course), go into a qualifying round, two legged afair where the winner reaches the groups. Personally I think that's a more fairer, perhaps stricter format but at the end of the day, I want to see the best face the best, champions face champions and live up to the Champions League name while still allowing the other teams a place to battle for European silverware
UEFA having a lack of continuity in the rules of their competitions is relevant - and that's before bringing up the subject of the Europa league being a loser's lottery. They don't have the change the structure at all, as teams are allocated different seedings. Kicking out Fenerbahce for breaking UEFA rules freed up a space in the tournament, so there are three solutions: give someone a bye, have a lottery to re-instate someone to the competition (as they did in the 2000 FA Cup when Man Utd were busy making money elsewhere), or give special dispensation to whichever club in whichever league missed out (in this case, Spurs) rather than placate a team that shouldn't be there or reward a co-efficient that had failed to keep match-fixing in check.
The Europa League winners should get a place in the Champions League. It would make perfect sense and add value to the Europa League IMO.
This is a collection of very sensible changes to the present format and being sensible they will of course have no chance of being embraced by UEFA.
Very well put Italy entering being added as the 6th nation in rugby competition is a good example. They got thrashed for a good few years before the increase in quality started to show and they were able to compete properly and beat teams. Trouble is, as you say, that the richest clubs are able to further suck the money away from the lesser teams in the competition by consistently getting further and it's at the stage now where it's near impossible for a club from a smaller league to cause a real upset in the tournament. Us getting to the quarters and Schalke getting to the semis(I think) might be surprises in some sense but we arrived in the competition with a CL quality squad put together with a lot more money than some of the lesser teams that are regular qualifiers for the competition.
SOS, really like that idea mate The problem for me is that even though we already get 4 places... so we should!! we're the best league in the world and I actually think we need more. There are teams that finish between 5-8th in our league, such as Everton for example, who are a damn good side and have been for years. Yet other than the 1 season they qualified like us, they've had no chance as they are fighting against clubs with more spending power. I just feel that it's unfair that teams like everton, who are actually capable of beating one of the qualifying sides from Germany such as Borussia M'Bach for example, are no where near qualifying at the moment. Then there's us, who finished in the top 4 and still didn't make it! . something needs to change IMO, as there's a lot of quality in our league which is also suffering due to the spending of the likes of City and Chelsea. With United included in that top 3 too, that's almost the top 3 nailed on. It's going to get very boring. At least when it was "the sky 4" (United, Chelsea, Liverpool and Arsenal) there was only 1 team with the ridiculous spending power, meaning it was easier for other clubs to cause an upset. it's a statement that I know others will say "it's not fair on other countries", but it's my opinion I'm afraid. I just think it's wrong that a club like Celtic, who if were to come to the prem, would probably finish mid table. Yet they are now in a situation where they should walk their domestic league and will then qualify. - And there's sides such as Spurs and Everton to name two, who struggle to get a look in.
Perhaps (and this stands no chance ) if all clubs were given a rating in reverse order in Europe and these ratings were used to divide the pot of money. Something like this: Divide the pot by the number of games so that each game has a defined pot. Take Barca v Apoel the ratings would be Barca 90 APOEL 5. If APOEL win they take 90% of the pot if Barca win they take 5% a draw would see the percentage take halved so APOEL would get 45% and Barca 2.5%. Any residue from the pot would go back into the overall pot for the next round. This has the advantage of spreading the money to the smaller clubs who would earn more for the achievement of beating a bigger club and the pot gets bigger as the rounds progress. The ramifications would be huge!
