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 a substitute captured by the picture of Aston Villa and Membership Brugge gamers huddled round varied 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 appeal 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 part has changed. All hail the league part!
The broadly constructive reception to the brand new components referred to as to thoughts Harry Lime’s immortal line in The Third Man. “In Switzerland, they’d concord, they’d 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 recognized in regards to the Swiss mannequin, as the brand new Champions League format is thought.
However except for delivering more cash 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 part, from Lille and Brest over-performing to Manchester Metropolis’s surprising psychodrama. Lille, as an illustration, misplaced their coach Paulo Fonseca to Milan in the summertime and offered their finest 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 part.
When Ruben Amorim’s Sporting beat them on the Swiss mannequin’s opening night time, most individuals would have tipped the Lisbon facet, 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 happening 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 laborious to attribute theirs to the brand new format.
Brest, maybe, benefited from enjoying eight video games and eight completely different opponents as a substitute of six in opposition to 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 finest new signing, hyped as a prospect able to drawing extra consideration than the same old solid of stars. However, make no mistake, quite a lot 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 attainable, notably within the Champions League, so this didn’t appear a lot of a penalty. Quite the opposite, it may very well be interpreted as a bonus by anybody aside from the coach and the gamers who must issue in additional effort, preparation and fixture congestion.
Yunus Musah sees purple in Zagreb and Milan are crushed – and condemned to play two extra video games (Marko Lukunic/Pixsell/MB Media/Getty Photographs)
At one finish of the standings, Liverpool might ship the children 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 laborious to maintain up and keep on monitor.
The actual 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 workforce are spluttering. Ultimately, although, the extension of the opening part 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 drag themselves out of bother.
It was once 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 part, Metropolis, Sporting and Membership Brugge reached the play-offs with 11 factors from two further matches. Much less from extra someway 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. They’d crushed Milan however missed the play-offs on objective distinction. It raised the query: is objective distinction a good differentiator whenever you’ve performed a special set of fixtures to, in Dinamo’s case, Metropolis, Sporting and Brugge?
Away objectives wouldn’t signify an ideal answer both, as you don’t play each workforce dwelling and away.
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Eighteen Champions League video games, one uncommon task: watch each match (in five-minute segments)
By enjoying eight completely different groups, there may be extra selection, extra curiosity and fewer sameness. Nevertheless, 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 may very well 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? May 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. However it does safe golf equipment extra income — albeit not as a lot as some suppose they might make in a brand new competitors — and the 16-team play-off spherical works like a security internet from elimination that retains the under-performing elite within the competitors as a substitute 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 this can be a Tremendous League approximating format underneath UEFA branding.
“Are you not entertained?”
I am going to 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)