At a time when some occasions are banning telephones to make sure the viewers is correctly engaged within the expertise, the perceived success of the brand new Champions League format was as an alternative captured by the picture of Aston Villa and Membership Brugge gamers huddled round numerous gadgets anxiously checking the scores in Barcelona and Zagreb to see in the event that they’d made the highest eight and play-offs respectively.
Wednesday’s scenes at Villa Park and the Etihad Stadium had a palpable attraction to them. Right here was a contemporary twist on transistor radios being held to 1 ear, game-states being handed by phrase of mouth adopted by cheers or curses, progress or elimination. This was offered as a welcome novelty, one thing that didn’t used to occur within the group stage the league section has changed. All hail the league section!
The broadly optimistic reception to the brand new components referred to as to thoughts Harry Lime’s immortal line in The Third Man. “In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.” Lime maybe wouldn’t have been so disdainful if he’d identified concerning the Swiss mannequin, as the brand new Champions League format is understood.
However except for delivering extra money to the golf equipment, extra video games to the broadcasters and extra income to itself, did UEFA’s overhaul work?
There have been some nice tales through the league section, from Lille and Brest over-performing to Manchester Metropolis’s sudden psychodrama. Lille, as an example, misplaced their coach Paulo Fonseca to Milan in the summertime and offered their greatest younger participant, Leny Yoro, to Manchester United. They wanted to undergo two preliminary rounds, the place they eradicated Jose Mourinho’s Fenerbahce, simply to make the league section.
When Ruben Amorim’s Sporting beat them on the Swiss mannequin’s opening night time, most individuals would have tipped the Lisbon aspect, not Lille to be the gatecrashers into the highest eight. However, no. Lille bounced again to beat champions Actual Madrid, then neighbours Atletico. They drew with Juventus and solely misplaced to Liverpool after taking place to 10 males.
Remy Cabella celebrates with Ngal’ayel Mukau as Lille thump Feyenoord 6-1 on Wednesday (Rico Brouwer/Soccrates/Getty Photographs)
However previous editions of the Champions League didn’t lack storylines like Lille’s, so it’s exhausting to attribute theirs to the brand new format.
Brest, maybe, benefited from enjoying eight video games and eight completely different opponents as an alternative of six towards three different golf equipment, as was the case in earlier seasons. It feels a very long time in the past now however the momentum for his or her qualification to the upcoming play-off spherical got here from a light-weight introduction to Europe’s elite membership competitors.
To the impartial, their fixtures felt much less Champions League and extra Austrian Bundesliga or Mitropa Cup within the early months as they beat Sturm Graz and RB Salzburg, then creditably held Bayer Leverkusen to a draw earlier than overcoming Sparta in Prague. It was a heartwarming story, even when Brest’s Cinderella story was a bit like giving Cinders a courting app with the very best algorithm to assist her discover her happy-ever-after.
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The miracle of Brest, a membership a world aside from Champions League opponents Actual Madrid
They have been trumpeted because the second-best new addition to the Champions League. The opposite was the buzzword of the ultimate night time simulcast.
Because the competitors clashed for the primary time with the winter switch window, the notion of jeopardy was roundly heralded because the Champions League’s greatest new signing, hyped as a prospect able to drawing extra consideration than the same old solid of stars. However, make no mistake, loads of smoke and mirrors have been in use right here.
A part of the jeopardy got here from lacking out on the highest eight.
Atalanta and Milan fell out of it on Wednesday. Their punishment? Two extra video games on their schedule within the play-offs. Is {that a} penalty? Followers of golf equipment are inclined to need to see them in motion as a lot as doable, notably within the Champions League, so this didn’t appear a lot of a penalty. Quite the opposite, it could possibly be interpreted as a bonus by anybody aside from the coach and the gamers who should issue in additional effort, preparation and fixture congestion.
Yunus Musah sees pink in Zagreb and Milan are overwhelmed – and condemned to play two extra video games (Marko Lukunic/Pixsell/MB Media/Getty Photographs)
At one finish of the standings, Liverpool may ship the youngsters to play PSV in Eindhoven. On the different, 9 groups had already been eradicated earlier than the ultimate gameweek. The majority of the rest have been both positive of qualification or virtually positive of it, which meant the jeopardy was jostling for place in a desk so giant it felt like watching midfield overtakes within the Indy 500.
As a viewer, it was exhausting to maintain up and keep on monitor.
The true drama got here from the random coincidence of the brand new format’s introduction with the one season in Pep Guardiola’s 17-year teaching profession when his group are spluttering. In the long run, although, the extension of the opening section from six video games to eight allowed large golf equipment like Metropolis, who left it last-minute in contrast with Paris Saint-Germain and Actual Madrid, sufficient rope to tug themselves out of hassle.
It was that 10 or 11 factors was the benchmark for qualification from a six-game group. Although in 2013, 12 factors weren’t sufficient for Napoli. This time spherical, within the inaugural league section, Metropolis, Sporting and Membership Brugge reached the play-offs with 11 factors from two additional matches. Much less from extra one way or the other represented progress.
Metropolis diced with catastrophe, left it late, and nonetheless reached the play-offs (James Gill – Danehouse/Getty Photographs)
The tie-breakers have been unsatisfactory, too.
Whereas Brugge celebrated in defeat in Manchester, Dinamo Zagreb have been downcast in victory on the Maksimir. That they had overwhelmed Milan however missed the play-offs on objective distinction. It raised the query: is objective distinction a good differentiator while you’ve performed a distinct set of fixtures to, in Dinamo’s case, Metropolis, Sporting and Brugge?
Away objectives wouldn’t symbolize an ideal answer both, as you don’t play each group dwelling and away.
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Eighteen Champions League video games, one uncommon project: watch each match (in five-minute segments)
By enjoying eight completely different groups, there may be extra selection, extra curiosity and fewer sameness. Nonetheless, the brand new format throws up one other conundrum: when is a league not a league? By not enjoying everybody, your membership’s fixtures can really feel summary and that abstraction could possibly be like lifting the lid on Pandora’s field. As a result of if dwelling and away isn’t a factor, does it matter the place these video games are performed? Would possibly it open the door to UEFA Champions League fixtures in New York and Riyadh?
We should always always remember the unique sin of this format change was the problem posed to UEFA by a Tremendous League. The Swiss mannequin is an open mannequin. It isn’t closed to entry. Nevertheless it does safe golf equipment extra income — albeit not as a lot as some assume they might make in a brand new competitors — and the 16-team play-off spherical works like a security web from elimination that retains the under-performing elite within the competitors as an alternative of sending them all the way down to the much less profitable, extra tiring Europa League as in earlier years.
In order with the phantasm of jeopardy, the opposite trick right here — a compromise, actually — is that it is a Tremendous League approximating format beneath UEFA branding.
“Are you not entertained?”
I’ll depart you with the picture of Aleksander Ceferin, bloodied by the Tremendous League insurrectionists, throwing his sword onto the Colosseum gravel.
Is it a thumb-up, a thumb-down, or is your fist nonetheless hovering uncertainly within the air?
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Champions League play-offs draw analysed: Man Metropolis face Actual Madrid, aid for Bayern, Milan and Juventus
(High photograph: Michael Regan – UEFA/UEFA through Getty Photographs)
