Rival watch

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Power - apart from giving clubs who qualified for Tournament A a chance to lose and still have another competition to play in, this leads to the EL being overlong and clearly lessens the chances of an originally qualified team winning through.

No-one would have considered a team losing in an early stage of the old European Cup being allowed to drop into the the UEFA Cup - and if they had, we might not have had a couple of victories in that tournament!!
PnP has pointed out that my first post is not quite right because of the special case of Chelsea but why is it obviously bad for say the second placed team in the PL to drop into the EL if they have a bad CL group stage. If they had been three places worse in the PL they would have been in the EL in the first place.

Just because it didn't use to happen it doesn't mean it's a bad idea. There is a Rugby Union competition where there are four groups of four and the teams in group A play all the teams in Group B (and the same for Group C and Group D). This means they each get two home games and two away games but never play each other. But since they all play the same teams it is a perfectly fair way of qualifying. It would be an excellent idea for a football tournament but it has never been done before so on your logic could never be considered.
 
I've been going on for yonks that the Ropey cup winners ought to automatically qualify for the CL to make teams field full sides, perhaps I should do one now based on the current state of affairs. However, I still believe that it would enhance the Ropey tournament.
 
I've been going on for yonks that the Ropey cup winners ought to automatically qualify for the CL to make teams field full sides, perhaps I should do one now based on the current state of affairs. However, I still believe that it would enhance the Ropey tournament.

And we'd be looking at Chelsea keeping us out of the CL again <grr>
 
If you win a competition you earn the right to be able to defend it. Spurs shouldn't have got in at our expense but they should have over the Turkish.

With the following exceptions:
World Cup
European Championships
Copa America
African Cup of Nations
Europa League

Note that's two UEFA competitions where winning the competition doesn't mean automatic qualification for the next one.
 
The dropdown's an awful idea, in my opinion. It devalues the competition, drags it out for even longer than it already would take and gives clubs that have failed a chance to win silverware against clubs that have succeeded.
Two clubs that have already been eliminated from one European competition are now in the final for another, having knocked out one team that had to play 12 games to reach that stage and one bunch of cheats.
They now play each other at a neutral venue with only a handful of tickets for their own fans and on a weekday. The whole thing's a farce.
 
The other thing to consider is each club's UEFA coefficient. The likes of Chelsea and Benfica have had an opportunity to improve theirs, whilst clubs that did better in the CL have had theirs damaged.
How can that be right?
 
Don't agree. Winning the Champions League > 4th in the premiership.

Of course it is, but it shouldn't be an either/or for CL qualification.

4th place currently merits qualification. It's illogical and (of course) extremely unfair that qualification should be lost because a team from the same country happens to be successful in winning the competition.
 
Of course it is, but it shouldn't be an either/or for CL qualification.

4th place currently merits qualification. It's illogical and (of course) extremely unfair that qualification should be lost because a team from the same country happens to be successful in winning the competition.


The thing is someone has to lose their place as there would be an uneven number of teams.
 
The thing is someone has to lose their place as there would be an uneven number of teams.

Nah, just stick Chelsea in the 1st preliminary round that starts about a day after the final. <whistle>

In all honesty, it's not something that's going to happen very often and UEFA had a very easy out this season, due to the Turkish match fixing scandal, but they chose not to use it.
Given that they've already claimed it was unfair (which I don't think it was) and they let two teams in before when it happened, I don't think we'll see the same solution again.
 
The thing is someone has to lose their place as there would be an uneven number of teams.

I'm sure that could be addressed through the qualifying rounds. A pre-qualifying play off for the two lowest ranked teams. Although it's quite bizarrely happened with two English teams, the chances of it ever happening again are slim.