If you know me by now and have read what I write, I like a good rant, I happen to think I’m pretty good at them, I like to direct my anger towards pundits, owners and teams, and today provided me an opportunity to take a swipe at UEFA.
It seems as though tomorrow, the exciting and new format of the Champions League will get the green light for the 2024 season. Meaning more teams! More chances to play in the Champions League! Exciting times for smaller European clubs on the cusp of Champions League qualification! Bollocks.
There are 4 more teams that can get in via the qualifiers, up to 38 from 34 teams, which means two more ties, so if you hadn’t already guessed what that means, it’s more money for UEFA, then you have ten games in a league style format to qualify for the knockout stages, not six like you do now, money, the teams that don’t qualify automatically and finish from 9th to 24th in the “league” enter into a play off round, money.
In theory then you’d have a last 16, but who knows, you could end up with UEFA deciding that you need more group games and have 4 groups of 4 before you get to the quarter finals, it’s all about money, it’s not about opening up the competition to everybody.
All it means is that you’ll get the likes of Ludogorets and Istanbul Basaksehir playing against each other in the second lot of Champions League qualifiers after having to qualify to get to the league in the first place.
It’s all about the money (insert Tom Cruise shouting “show me the money” gif) nothing more, nothing less, and there will be special wild card picks too for teams that miss out on Champions League football, with the highest UEFA co-efficient, so basically the two teams that were shite this season but bring a bucket load of you guessed it, money to the completion can gain one of these wild card picks.
So the example given is that this season Liverpool who are 7th in the Premier League would be eligible for a wild card pick, Liverpool do not deserve to be in the Champions League if they finish 7th, that’s the long and short of it, although some of the more entitled members of their fanbase will tell you otherwise, but they will get in because they’re a big club with a massive fan base who bring shit loads of money to the table so UEFA will do whatever they can to get them in it, does that sound right to you? The pinnacle of club football in Europe allowing a side into the competition on past glories and not on merit.
This new format only serves to dilute an already diluted competition, it’s not really the Champions League now anyway, it would be amazing if it were just the Champions of each league in a straight knockout style competition, like it was before, but that wouldn’t bring in million and millions of pounds to UEFA.
What we will see now is more of a mix of Champions League and Europa League teams squaring off, so that’ll mean the Europa League will need an expansion, and the talk of this new 3rd European competition being brought in too will only intensify.
Lastly, what of the little guys, we know the Premier League don’t give a fuck about Championship, League One or Two sides, so when there is more midweek European football early in the season, what happens to the EFL Cup? It’s a highly important income stream to the teams in the lower divisions, and the only midweek slots available are the ones that the EFL Cup play their third, fourth and, fifth rounds, so you either see teams play less of a side than they do now, or pull out entirely, which weakens an already weak completion but one absolutely vital in smaller sides income.
As P.Diddy or Puffy or Sean Combs or whatever the fuck he goes by now it’s “all about the Benjamins”
If you hadn’t already grasped what the thinking is by UEFA from the amount of times I’d mentioned the word money in this piece, once again, it’s all about the money.
Cheers, the fat man.
Fat Lad Sports 