Is the new Champions League any good?
More teams, more matches, more big games... more fun?
The Champions League is back. The continental competition returns on Tuesday and Wednesday for its fifth round of fixtures, with 18 more matches across two days as the league stage continues. And with that phase currently at its halfway stage, it seems a good time to ask: has the new format been any good?
How did the format change?
Instead of 32 teams in eight groups of four, there are 36 sides taking part now. And instead of playing the same sides home and away, those teams now face fixtures against eight different opponents, playing half of those matches at home and half of them away. To organise that, the teams were ranked in four seeding pots, each drawn to play two opponents from those pots, one match against a team from each pot at home, and one away.
So how do those teams qualify for the knockout stages? In a giant league table of 36 teams, the top eight advance automatically to the last 16. Meanwhile, teams from ninth to 24th meet in a knockout tie in February for the remaining eight spots in the second round. In total, 144 matches just to eliminate 12 teams.
More big games, less jeopardy
Speaking about his hopes and proposals for a new European Super League in 2022, Real Madrid president Florentino Pérez said: “[Rafa] Nadal and [Roger] Federer played each other 40 times in 15 years. So far, Nadal and [Novak] Djokovic have faced each other 59 times in 16 years.
“Is this boring? These historic clashes have grown tennis as a whole. In football the figures are staggering. It turns out we have played Liverpool, a historic team with six European Cups, only nine times in 67 years. And only three times in Madrid.”
Surely that makes those meetings more special. In fact, the two teams have now met six times in as many years: in the 2018 final, twice in the quarter-finals in 2020-21, in the 2022 final and over two legs again in the last 16 in 2022-2023. On Wednesday, there’s another. Yay.
Also, there’s the sense that none of this matters much. Bayern Munich lost to Aston Villa, Barcelona were defeated by Monaco, Manchester City went down to Sporting CP and Real Madrid have been beaten twice. So what? Does anyone truly think those teams won’t advance to the knockout stages?
Are any big clubs in danger of going out?
In the old format, Madrid made it through the group stages each year, but every other big club in Europe experienced elimination in the league phase at some point – including Barcelona, Manchester United, Juventus, Bayern…
Of Europe’s elite clubs, only Paris Saint-Germain are in the bottom 12 and PSG have long been a hot mess in the Champions League. In any case, the Parisians still have four rounds to get it together and a couple of wins will probably be enough. They are away to Bayern next, though, so that makes things a little more interesting.
Propping up the table with zero points, the likes of Slovan Bratislava and Young Boys seem much less likely to be there beyond the league phase.
So was it worth it?
The Champions League featured 125 matches in its previous format and that total has now risen to 189, with 144 in the league stage alone. Teams now play a minimum of eight games and a maximum of 17. There are more matches and more meetings between big clubs. But more does not necessarily mean better.
This new format feels like another step towards an inevitable European Super League. The Champions League’s expansion also follows the trend seen in the World Cup, the Euros and the Club World Cup, all amplified in recent times to feature more teams and more matches. And to make more money.
In each case, though, the product suffers. Some on social media have said that they prefer this new format, perhaps because their team has an increased amount of winnable fixtures. But in reality, it’s more meaningless matches for footballers already playing far too much and a watered-down version of an elite competition which should have been left alone.
If the usual suspects could just fuck-off to their closed-shop super league so that the rest of us could go back to enjoying both domestic and European competitions it would be much appreciated.
It's horrible, too many games, I am killed by boredom.