The Champions League is meant to be Europe's elite competition, yet it is dull until February, we endure half a year of group stages when there is hardly ever an upset anyway. How would you make the competition more entertaining? Personally, I would start with two seeded knock-out rounds (2 legs) and get it down to 8 teams. There is the chance of upsets, there would be good games in that lot, especially in the second round. Then, you split the 8 teams into two groups of 4, you might get something looking like this: Group A: Barcelona, Man Utd, Bayern Munich, AC Milan Group B: Real Madrid, Chelsea, Inter Milan, Man City How great would that be? Every game is top quality European elite football, exactly what the Champions League should be. The winner of each group plays the runner-up of the opposite group for the semi-finals, and the competition stays the same from then on.
Back to champions only - hence the name champions league. Just a knockout, never mind seeding teams .
Make it a straight draw. There is no sporting justification - only a commercial one - to ensure teams from the same country dont play each other in the group stage. It should only be a maximum 3 teams from one country also. I know you and others suggest getting in the 'big names' but for me it would be far mroe interesting to have more representatives from other nations in there. Platini gets a lot of stick but encouraging perceived smaller league representation would be far more interesting and I like that he is addressing this.
I think current format is fine but scrap the seedings. There's no chance they'd do it though, they want the biggest 16 sides through to the knock outs
It's a creeping Euro League. It's all about money. To win the Champions League today is far less of an achievement than it was to win the European Cup back in the 80's.
And in one fell swoop you solve the problem of teams taking the cups seriously... 3 teams entered, and we have three cups. Only Champions get in, runners up in the leagues and cups then get Europa League entry... The money says it won't happen - but by god it would make the Leagues and cups interesting!
they should just make if for teams that are their country's champions rather than not. it should be knockout from start to finish. it should be renamed the european cup. sepp blatter should be executed by being forcefed cane toads. this is all true.
I don't think there's any problem with it as it is, it's by far the best cup competition in the world and the four places we get have a very positive effect on the battle at the end of the Premier League season.
