I didn't like the way the failures from the CL were allowed to get into the Europa League. The Europa should have been a chance for smaller/less successful clubs to get European experience. It gives cup excitement to smaller clubs in the same way as the FLT and JPT does. If you let the bigger guns in you might as well have one cup.
It would I suppose have a few more park the bus performances which might not be good to watch. But conversely that means more upsets so it's a toughie.
I'm guessing a few teams will enter in qualifying rounds...the big teams wouldn't want to play a lot of minnows.
I don't think this will happen. The Europa league needs changing, it is a mess of a competition, but the champions' league is meant to be exactly that, a league of champions. Europe's best teams facing each other, and that's where the commercial attraction lies. This principle has already been watered down but with 64 teams in the group stages will we have 8 English teams? Would you be as excited to see Fulham vs Osasuna as you would to see Barcelona vs Arsenal for example?
I think the Europa League should be for lower teams in each league with no relegation from the CL. People mock it, but we loved the JPT and we'd be doing cartwheels if we got to the final of the Europa.
The thing is there's barely any commercial interest in the Europa league now, you can see how for many teams in the competition it's barely worth sending a team to away games, and for a lot of foreign clubs it's stretching them financially to make these trips. It needs to go the other way in my opinion in order to be feasible. Make the champions league more elite, not less, and the Europa league will become more glamorous because of the higher calibre of teams in it. I doubt that will happen though!
How excited were you for Braga-CFR Cluj? On the other hand, how enjoyable was it seeing APOEL advance and go toe-to-toe (and win again) with Lyon in the first knockout stage?
This doesn't work for me. You'd have to assume it would be sixteen groups of four because groups of eight would be ridiculous. There are about 15 truly top teams in the Champions League, if there was sixteen groups, it would dilute the quality of the group stages and spread the teams across. Meaning there wouldn't be groups of Real Madrid, Dortmund, City and Ajax. It would be Real Madrid, Eintracht Frankfurt, Vitesse and Trabzonspor, I don't see the entertainment in that. The group stages would just consist of big teams winning every game 5-0, and then the smaller teams scrapping around for second. It would just spoil it as a spectacle for me. You'd turn on the telly, and look at that group, Real Madrid are playing Vitesse and it will not even remotely be a contest, so you don't want to watch that, so instead you watch Frankfurt vs. Trabzonspor... That just doesn't feel like a Champions League match. Then teams would start resting their big players for the league because their opponents in the Champions League were so weak, and you'd get Real Madrid B Team vs Vitesse, rather than Real Madrid vs Dortmund or City. The CL should be worth aspiring to and worth fighting your way towards. You shouldn't get in it for finishing seventh or winning a cup or being the fifth best team in Scotland. The only way to keep competitive groups would be to have two separate sets of eight groups... And then you've basically back to where you were with two leagues. For me the way to sort out the Europa League is simple: Keep the Champions League the pinnacle, but incentivise the Europa League, increase prize money at all levels, and let the finalists of the tournament into the Champions League. The winner straight into the group stages, the loser into the play-offs. That would give a route for good teams that are in very competitive leagues to get access into the CL, teams like Atletico and Spurs who would add to the quality of the CL, but are hard-pressed to qualify in their league. That way there is a bucket of gold at the end of the rainbow, rather than having to exert great effort usually at the cost of Domestic success, to win a league with minimal reward and no prestige or real respect gained from it. That way the Europa League becomes more competitive, increases TV money, which will fund and fuel it even more, and so on whilst the Champions League has a couple more good teams in it at the expense of a whipping boy.
Wouldn't be excited by Braga-Cluj, but how exciting would Braga-Saints be!! The fact is that, apart from the big guns, most people are only interested in their own.
I don't know I didn't see that, and I wasn't excited about Braga vs CFR Cluj either. I'm not saying these matches aren't good viewing, but they're not glamorous events and I bet, as good as the matches might have been, very few people watched them. Mikey's post above says what I wanted to say much better!
The current format isn't a league of champions either. Maybe they could solve that problem by changing the name. Fulham vs Osasuna may not sound exciting to the neutral, but I bet you it would sound exciting to Fulham and Osasuna fans. And think of what this could do for the domestic leagues.
Lack of excitement about Braga-Cluj (not to pick on them) was what I was getting at, though; I doubt that anyone polled would name those two among the 32 best teams in Europe, yet there they were. The group stage is only interesting when either the draw overloads one group with top teams, or the minnows attack; adding more team may make it a little more boring, but I'm of the opinion that the benefits to the second tier of European clubs would considerably outweigh the delay of a few good matchups to the knockout stages.
I know, I said that principle had already been watered down. Fulham and Osasuna fans aren't a big enough audience to make games such as this financially viable. You need a big audience around Europe for these games or the money will go away. Ok I misunderstood, in that case, sure there are a few uninteresting games now, but if the format changes as has been suggested, these uninteresting games will become vastly outnumber the interesting ones. This will result in dwindling audiences and revenue for the competition.
This year, adding the Europa-bound teams to CL would have resulted in the inclusion of the following teams: England: Tottenham, Newcastle, Liverpool. Spain: Athletic, Atletico Madrid, Levante. Italy: Lazio, Inter, Napoli. Germany: Leverkusen, Stuttgart, Hannover. France: Lyon, Marseille, Bordeaux. Good many teams among them worth watching. And, as an example, think of the difference it would have made for a team like Newcastle. Rather than having their success rewarded by a summer of fending off the vultures, they would have had a chance to actually build upon their great season.
That looks good to me. And remember that these teams would still have to prove themselves in the earliest rounds. If they get to the latter stages, they're worth watching.
Tough luck really, what about teams lower down who do well and have their players picked off? How far down do you want to go? There's only so much money in the game, and I'm all for spreading it more equitably, I just don't think this is the way to do it. Those teams may be reputable teams but there are a whole load more you neglected to mention who would not fit into that category, and to be frank, a game between any two of those is unlikely to rank among the top games in Europe. The proportion of attractive sellable games would reduce, there's no two ways about it.
TV money is assigned according to your progress in the competition. Accordingly, this could be viewed as yet another cynical attempt by the big clubs to ringfence the bigger rewards for themselves because doubling the size of the competition will not double the size of the sponsorship pot. The weighting for progression to the knockout stages will therefore increase significantly. As already stated, there is no doubt that sixteen groups of four would result in only one seeded team being in each group. Subsequently, there would be much less chance of an upset and voila, the big clubs get the extra revenue. If however, I am simply being cynical and there is potential to double the revenue generated from sponsorship so everyone gets a big CL payday, then what a great idea!
With 7 Champions League places available, it wouldn't be the same 7 teams getting them every season. In the previous 5 seasons, 11 different teams have finished in the top 7. In the long run, loads more teams would be getting a slice of that pie, thus spreading the wealth around and also giving the Premier League more of a purpose for teams who have no real chance of winning the title. The load of less-reputable teams that Schad neglected to mention would have to compete from the earliest qualifying stages, and if they did get into the group stages, it would be on merit. Any team getting into the final 16 would certainly be deserving, and that would still be the case if there were 640 teams competing. Not strictly true. As long as it's possible for money to be injected into the game from outside sources, the potential for the amount of money in the game is basically limitless.
With the Europa League being no more, I assume there would at least be some increase in overall revenue.
It's progress in the competition and viewership figures. United got knocked out in the Group Stages last year, for which the prize money is about £7million, but made about £30million because of the TV money. And in 2010, United lost the final to Barca but made more money than them. It would make very little difference if more small teams got into the Champions League, the viewership would not rise that dramatically, and the majority of the money would still go to the big teams. Even if more small teams did get into the Champions League, unless the entire prize money structure was changed, which the big teams wouldn't allow, the financial rewards would be minimal.
