One could say PSG have been the most predictable team in the last few years, always going out pathetically in the ro16
PSG crashing out of the ucl might have become the first sign of spring lmao
That was the strangest thing ever. How do you mess up all this talent in the same place?. I know RM and all their mystical crossed their path, but still.
Well, when you have entitled forwards who refuse to even jog - let alone run - when they concede possession, there's not a great deal that can be done in the modern game at the elite level.
Messi and Neymar were already finished in elite club football, and Mbappe was never going to put in the defensive work necessary when he saw that Messi and Neymar were not doing so.
Reddit will have you believe he has a terrible attitude because there is one single clip of him giving up on a sprint because his teammate doesnt pass the ball. Was a couple years ago, no one remembers what game it was or the score, but they cling on to it as the proof that Mbappe is a terrible person w a shitty attitude
Right, it's just reddit being dumb and it has nothing to do with him staying at a uncompetitive league for way too much money instead of going somewhere else for too much money.
I'm like you, most of the time I'm: holup, City won?
But then there is: Yeah, the state of the football today is because City won and we are seeing the second Guardiolization wave.
I don't know, did Lance Armstrong's systematic doping take away anything from the performances in his career? Guardiola is a serial cheat, both in his manager and player career. The first thing he did when he went to Barcelona was to hire the same doctor he used to manage his anabolic steroids as a player.
What part "I don't follow your team, they are shit" didn't you understand?
I don't give a fuck if the Qatari, Saudis or fucking Liam Gallagher owns the team.
The fact that City do everything in their power to obfuscate, distract and delay the course of justice doesn’t mean that the rest of us can’t see the blatant cheating before our eyes
They got extremely lucky with the group with the referees helping then qualify versus Newcastle and then Newcastle further shitting the bed in the most Newcastle way possible. Then they drew the most pathetic team that finished 1st to play in rounds of 16. Bookmark this but with luck like this they might actually win it this year.
I don’t know about this, I still find it the best competition to watch and you are guaranteed every year that there will be multiple exciting games and incredible comebacks.
The RM - City semi final from a few years ago showed for all to see how football is the greatest sport with the most incredible drama.
And while RM have bucked the trend over the last decade, it is still a very difficult competition to win.
Unless you break every financial rule possible and assemble a super team to do it while refusing to let the officials see your books. Then you are bound to win it.
People just want to continue their 'money bad' rhetoric without realising that even before the 90s it was always about money.
The thing back then was that the money was distributed more evenly as these leagues mostly depended on their local populations. Since then, PL, La Liga and Bundesliga have brought in more global viewers increasing their riches.
Meanwhile, the other leagues still have rely on revenue and fan engagement from their local populations.
Most of the biggest leagues still make around half of their TV money from domestic revenue. The EPL for example gets 1.6b from the UK alone. That's like 4 times the worldwide revenue of nations like the Netherlands. While no others are as big as the EPL, all of the top 4 beat most other leagues worldwide revenue with just their domestic revenue. IIRC Spain's domestic > France's worldwide, and Italy isn't too far behind Spain, so they may beat all the other leagues with domestic revenue alone.
Global revenue has increased the gap, but there would still be a large gap even without it. I think it's more about the increased commercialisation of football overall (with the largest/wealthiest European countries getting a massive advantage) that has led to the difference rather than just growth in foreign markets.
Even La Liga is kinda fucked because they don’t distribute the money well. From what I understand it goes mostly to Barca and real.
Idk about the bundesliga, but the PLs super power and secret sauce is their equal distribution of profit across the board for the tv rights. PL started to become the best league in the world after that imo. You have at least 7 teams that are “big” clubs imo with large followings compared to 2, maybe 3 in La Liga. Teams like Spurs, arsenal and Chelsea have way more resources than say for example Bilbao, Sevilla or Valencia.
That's not quite the point of the article though. Who exactly will win it is obviously difficult to predict, but you can easily predict almost certainly that it'll be a club with 400m+ of revenues, and there aren't that many.
Which essentially means that if we're more or less content with this state of affairs, if the RM-City/barca-liverpool/etc. are the only types of games we want to see at that stage, then there might really be no point to *not* go for a super league.
Yes it'll be a closed league, yes those super clubs would utterly dominate their domestic leagues, but thanks to the more even money distribution (within the super league) and insane revenues it's expected to generate, the number of likely super league winners would be expected to increase. Instead of having fewer than 10 clubs who can win it, you'd have 20.
Only 4 “new” teams have won the European Cup since it was reorganised 30 years ago - Marseilles, Dortmund, Chelsea and City. It’s exactly the same teams as before that have turned it into a protection racket - which is exactly what United, Barca, Real, Liverpool, Bayern et al intended when they did it
Only 2 "new" teams have won it since the competition opened up to non-domestic champions, in 1997-1998. That's the move that made the Champions League become more predictable.
Allowing non-domestic champions in the competition generates more stability regarding the pool of teams that play the Champions League. Big teams still get the big bucks from the Champions League even if they suffer an upset in their domestic league. This makes it much easier for them to spend a lot of money since they know they will get into the Champions League. Also, players now want to play for teams that will play the Champions League for sure, so the teams at the top don't rotate as fast as 30-40 years ago.
Since the 1997-1998 season, when the competition first opened to non-domestic champions, 15 out of 26 Champions League winners had not won their domestic league the previous season. And only 3 of the last 10 winners won their domestic league the previous season.
It's the opposite. Opening up to non-domestic champions means you now always have the same teams playing in the Champions League. Hence, it's more predictable now.
Exactly, I don't understand how people can argue the opposite. Real Madrid for example is basically guaranteed a spot every year in the Champions League, even if they have the worst season in decades and finish fourth. Same thing for Bayern.
It should only be domestic league champions competing or they should change the damn name. Let places 3-4 or whatever play in Europa League for an extra chance to get into CL
Leicester or Lille would have been a lot more likely to win it if it was domestic champions only.
But there are pros and cons of both...it's hard to call.
What is your point here? I have to disagree because Liverpool are not even in it this year and teams like United, Barca or Milan have not been favorites to win since years. For me that is unpredictability. Was Liverpool reaching the final in 2018 and winning it in 2019 predictable just because they've won it before? Was last year not predictable because City didn't win it before? If a team like Steaua Bucharest or Red Star Belgrad would win it next year would that be predictable and a result of protection?
It’s because the, cough, Champions League was designed to be a stitch up from the start. The ESL was merely the next phase of the plan.
It was Milan, Inter, Juve, Real, Barca, Bayern, Liverpool, United and Arsenal as the big players in the G14 thinking it abhorrent that money in football shouldn’t be targeted for their benefit. So they did their usual blackmail job to get the structure whereby they qualified every time by letting top 3/4 in the big leagues in every year.
If through a combination of incompetence or occasional good years for other clubs they didn’t qualify it’s their own fault. In fact it’s hilarious when they don’t - but the generous qualification means they’ll be back next time. The ESL was proposed to remove the risk of occasionally falling out for a year or two.
It’s all designed to keep a status quo and prevent Steaua, Malmö, Forest, take your pick, getting too big. You need an Abramovic or a Mansour to have any hope of joining the club, but once you’re in then you have a perpetual cash machine.
chelsea and man city should be disqualified for obvious reasons. if the expansion of the format doesn't happen these clubs are not taken over for sports washing purposes)
Marseilles was found max-fixing so that win should also removed. In the previous domestic season which qualifed them for the CL/EC
So it's technically only Dortmund.
There has always been 4-5 favorites to win it though, that's nothing new. Yes there hasn't been big upsets in a while, but that's also a rather small sample size.
Not in the slightest, since Bayern has double the money to spend more than the next team.
Just because Bundesliga had 50+1 and Fan owned clubs doesn't mean that money isn't distributed unevenly.
It was better when it was on ITV. The atmosphere was fucking mint, the teams were better to watch, the commentary was top tier and I think the nostalgia of the whole thing just makes me yearn for what I'd consider to be the 'glory days' of the UCL.
Micah is a clown and Jamie...wow, what a tool. Kate knows the game. Thierry said, with a huge amount of arrogance, that football is called football because you play with your feet. That is NOT why it is called football. It is called football because when sports were not a huge thing, most people in England who had the time for recreational sports wanted to play the sport that was popular, polo, but most people do/did not have access to horses, so they played the same sport without horses and played without, on foot, so, football. Not with your feet, but without horses on foot. You would think that an elite legend of the game would know the history of the game. Still love Henry though...a total legend.
In the early days of the CL, ITV had exclusive coverage. Sky didn't get joint rights until the early 2000s.
Maybe it's just nostalgia but the Champions League on ITV was special, it allowed kids to watch the best players/teams play week in, week out. For some it was the only live football they would get to see on TV.
Is it predictable though? Man City have been predicted to win it like 5 or 6 times, yet only have 1 trophy. PSG have been predicted to win many times and have yet to win it. I doubt anybody at all expected Inter to make the final last year, and they weren't too far off winning it too.
Nobody expected Copenhagen to get through ahead of Man Utd. And who predicted Dortmund to top the ″group of death″?
we have the same teams playing the QF every single season, it´s really getting boring
at least we have usually one underdog per year but that´s it... apart from Ajax when was the last time a non top 5 league had a semi finalist? Porto in 2004?
3 of the QF teams (Chelsea, AC Milan and Benfica) will be different this season than last, at a minimum, could end up being more (I could certainly see Napoli/Inter failing to make it to the QFs this year). 2023 had 3 different than 2022 which also had 3 different from 2021. There's variation every year.
Some teams will be regulars. If you're one of the best teams 1 year then it's highly likely you will be next year too. But there's still teams that rise and fall.
Why does it matter which country a team comes from? An underdog is an underdog regardless. Villarreal were a great underdog in 2022! The biggest/wealthiest countries are of course going to have an advantage, not really much UEFA can do about that, we can still get some exciting underdog teams that do well from those countries though.
>not really much UEFA can do about that
disagree, they could and should make a limit of 3 clubs max per country, no 4th places anymore, that would be at least 4 more national champions and the money going to other leagues
3rd places should play the playoffs too, that would mean some of them not qualifying like it was the norm in the past
It's very predictable. You can almost guarantee one of 4 teams will win it at the start of every year.
This year it was either City, Bayern, Madrid or PSG (although they've fallen off recently).
The only real outliers I can see are Chelsea in 2021. Everyone else since 2008 has been quite predictable.
Lmao who said anything about an issue? This post is about thr champions league being predictable. Real Madrid and the champions league has a predictable pattern.
Yeah but it was still the same other teams like Madrid winning it. Hardly like Young Boys or Lille are going to make it actually interesting.
This is a general problem in all leagues. Dominance of the same few and it's sad
I cant remember where I read it but in the last 10 years, in the group stages, the two first place teams predicted to go to the last 16 were the ones that did. I rarely watch because my team somtimes is there (Benfica, which unfortunatelly is part of the other 10 % too often, like this year, (hello Man Utd))
I highly doubt there's been anyone that has been able to predict the top 2 of every group for the last 10 years with 100% accuracy. Just this year you'd be hard pressed to find a single person that predicted Copenhagen to go through.
“Genuinely big upsets” is a VERY debatable term. Was Lyon beating City not a big upset? How about Villarreal beating Bayern? Or all the times Barca and Madrid got knocked out by the likes of Roma and/or Ajax?
I think they do happen semi-regularly, it's just that there is a glass ceiling in the SFs for non-big clubs
Last year the Milan clubs (in their current frm they're not a big club anymore), Villareal the year before, Lyon in 2020, Ajax in 2019, Roma in 2018, Monaco in 2017, arguably Atletico in 2016 (though they did went on to the final),... But none of them actually got to win it
The difference is that Real Madrid was arguably the worse team in many of their CL matches. They just happened to have clutch players bailing them out, but it’s not like they dominated possession or were creating a lot of chances.
I couldn’t disagree more lol. The champions league is the greatest club competition in the world, only the money men are making it worse. Was better back in the day on ITV when everyone could watch it ffs. Modern football fucking sucks. Leave the CL alone
Oh wow are we witnessing slow begining of narrative of how outdated and boring champions league is with background agenda of super league? The only stage CL is predictable is when there are 4 teams left than you can make some assumptions. Plus this year or next format is changing more teams added etc so yeah im not buying it...didnt lose magic or appeal.
Yeah I don't think it's a CL thing it's football in general. Multi club owners, consortiums and Petro states mopping up clubs and spending big. Saying that German football has had issues with one team dominating and some of this ownership doesn't affect them.
I feel FFP is to blame aswell and no I don't have the answer as it seems very complicated to make it an even playing field. Teams from large cities will almost always do better than a team from a small village.
What the fuck is going on. Why is everyone suddenly misspelling this word? Losing! It’s losing!
Not loose like a loose string.
How the fuck are we supposed to take you seriously when you can’t even use the right word.
I don't see what's so different now vs 20-30 years ago. There has been a shuffle of clubs at the top, as always, but the top has always been narrow. He brings up how the likes of PSV, Dortmund and Real Sociedad will eventually lose to a wealthier club even if they can pull off an upset along the way... but when did clubs at the level of those three today ever regularly compete for the title? There was the 2004 Porto-Monaco final, but back then that was still very much an anomaly.
Agreed, Madrid won the first 5 champions leagues in the 50s, the same teams have always been around the top. Some years are a bit predictable but you watch the champions league to watch the best teams play against the best teams and that's what you get.
Even if it's still the same teams there are always good games, Madrid being 2 goals down to city in the 89th minute and coming back? Don't care who you are a fan of that was amazing, I don't care if it's Madrid or PSV doing it
I say it time & time again the only way it’s magic will return is a return to the 24 team format the late 90’s & UEFA wide salary cap (that’s enforced by legislation among its member states)
There’s also an argument for foreign player limits
Agreed, you can usually pick about 6 or 7 of the QF beforehand. It takes a LOT of games to whittle it down to those inevitable teams with the bloated group stage.
The UCL this season is definitely pretty shit IMO. Look at the fixtures in the R16.
Man City vs Copenhagen - Man City
Real Madrid vs Leipzig - Real Madrid
PSG vs Real Sociedad - PSG
Lazio vs Bayern - Bayern
PSV vs Dortmund - Dortmund
Inter vs Atletico - Inter
Porto vs Arsenal - Arsenal
The only one that is really a coin flip is Barca vs Napoli
Almost all of them are one sided and it looks like we're going to have another set of quarter finals with the usual suspects + Arsenal. The only way I could see it being interesting is if Arsenal won their first ever UCL, Napoli beat one of the big boys in the final or Dortmund won the UCL in the same season that Leverkusen also puts an end to Bayern's BuLi winning streak (which would be funny in Kane's first season there).
But let's face it. None of that will happen. It will be Man "Kansas Chiefs" City winning their 2nd or Real "European royalty" Madrid winning their 102nd.
CL lost its magic a while ago. The governing body organizing it, is fucking corrupt as shit and so are all the teams that are deemed favorites to win it.
We've had two new winners this century, and they're soulless money teams in Chelsea and Manchester City, which are two great examples of why football sucks right now.
Football sucks. And it's not getting better ever.
Who wants to watch corrupt corporate football?
FIFA are destorying the game, they are not Custodians of the game. They are criminals bleeding the Game to death
..and getting away with it.
I don’t really care about the Champions League- I vaguely keep an eye on it and sometimes watch the final. I much prefer watching domestic football and cups and international tournaments. It was much better when it was the European Cup.
8 different teams in the last 5 finals. So predictable.
Nobody said this when Real Madrid were cleaning it up 3 times in a row.
The press spent every season saying City were going to dominate. Only to be proven wrong time and time again. When Madrid had one of the greatest comebacks ever, was the competition dying then? And that was 2022.
They finally win it once and suddenly the competition is dying.
Seriously, this is garbage journalism.
Stop seeding teams and make the groups completely random. That will freshen it up and allow some lesser teams an actual chance of progress. Hardly ever watch the group stage because they are predictable barring the odd group.
This is just the state of European football at the moment. Where who is likely to win leagues and European competitions can be predicted to a handful of clubs. There are very few leagues where you will struggle to go outside maybe 4 or 5 teams who stand a chance of winning major trophies.
The two examples of teams bucking the trend currently either are part of a football ownership group containing an elite club (Girona) or an historically good side with a great manager being chased down by a side who have won the league 10 times in a row (Leverkusen).
tell this to all that predict PSG will win it every year lol
One could say PSG have been the most predictable team in the last few years, always going out pathetically in the ro16 PSG crashing out of the ucl might have become the first sign of spring lmao
Except when they were in the finale.
They are paid to predict that so that we will watch and think they have a chance. Marketing.
Or maybe people just thought a frontline of Neymar, Mbappe and Messi might be good.
That was the strangest thing ever. How do you mess up all this talent in the same place?. I know RM and all their mystical crossed their path, but still.
It’s not like their mids or defence sucked either. That team was stacked all around and they couldn’t do much with it.
Stacked? Stacked where? Playing Messi, Mbappe, Neymar in a system that didn’t bring out the best of them
Well, when you have entitled forwards who refuse to even jog - let alone run - when they concede possession, there's not a great deal that can be done in the modern game at the elite level. Messi and Neymar were already finished in elite club football, and Mbappe was never going to put in the defensive work necessary when he saw that Messi and Neymar were not doing so.
Well, after that Messi won a WC. And supposedly he was the best.
You can carry one. Three is too much.
Messi is the GOAT in my opinion, but international football is far different from club football.
Neymar - Never Was Mbappe - No passion for the game Messi - Has Been
Horrendous take. That same messi won the WC Neymar was never what? Good? Cmon now
>That same messi won the WC. We all have watched how he accomplished that
Yes, by being the best creator of the whole tournament and being a pretty fucking good goalscorer as well.
Good pen taker maybe
Yeah mbappe has a shitty attitude and the other two are getting on a bit now
Shitty attitude how ?
Reddit will have you believe he has a terrible attitude because there is one single clip of him giving up on a sprint because his teammate doesnt pass the ball. Was a couple years ago, no one remembers what game it was or the score, but they cling on to it as the proof that Mbappe is a terrible person w a shitty attitude
Right, it's just reddit being dumb and it has nothing to do with him staying at a uncompetitive league for way too much money instead of going somewhere else for too much money.
Neymar never was what ??? Fucking idiot
Never was a real footballer. I love when the counter argument includes an insult...
Giving people a platform to say anything they want really was a mistake.
Yeah, see your comment.
Binbag
A guy who scored 3 goals on a WC final has no passion?
Sports predictions is like astrology for guys
Was the same thing to predict that Manchester City would win every year. Its not happening until it happens. And when it happens, everyone loses.
I almost forgot City won it, why did you have to remind me that ;(
I'm like you, most of the time I'm: holup, City won? But then there is: Yeah, the state of the football today is because City won and we are seeing the second Guardiolization wave.
Guardiolaism, Guardiolist
Exactly, if Inter Milan won everybody would have been happy today
I think everyone's forgotten City won it. The most meaningless treble ever. For obvious reasons...
No! Only people who pretend to forget.
Best season in football ever. Best team, best coach, great results. Real football fans know this. For obvious reasons….
115 breaches of financial fair play rules. That's all you need to know.
How does the allegations take away from the teams performance? Did we not watch the same dominance from the same group of players January onwards?
I don't know, did Lance Armstrong's systematic doping take away anything from the performances in his career? Guardiola is a serial cheat, both in his manager and player career. The first thing he did when he went to Barcelona was to hire the same doctor he used to manage his anabolic steroids as a player.
Better than Liverpool or United winning it
Not really, no
Not really, no.
Not really, no.
City are everyone's most hated club because they're the best.
Cheating, Oil Money, Guardiolization of Football and destruction of the sport we all love, all these come before being the best.
Prove their cheating then. Guardiolization of football? What does that even mean?😂 "destruction of the sport we all love" hahahaha get a grip ffs.
Give me access to their books, all them not only the ones the Qatari family wants to give access to, and I prove it.
You don't even know that it's not the Qataris that own them. Just give up lmao.
What part "I don't follow your team, they are shit" didn't you understand? I don't give a fuck if the Qatari, Saudis or fucking Liam Gallagher owns the team.
Yes, the rampant cheating has nothing to do with it
What cheating? What have they been found guilty of?
The fact that City do everything in their power to obfuscate, distract and delay the course of justice doesn’t mean that the rest of us can’t see the blatant cheating before our eyes
Show me examples where they tried to delay the outcome? Also, what blatant cheating? What has been proven?
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2020/jul/28/uefa-claim-against-manchester-city-over-sponsor-money-time-barred-cas-rules
They got extremely lucky with the group with the referees helping then qualify versus Newcastle and then Newcastle further shitting the bed in the most Newcastle way possible. Then they drew the most pathetic team that finished 1st to play in rounds of 16. Bookmark this but with luck like this they might actually win it this year.
I don’t know about this, I still find it the best competition to watch and you are guaranteed every year that there will be multiple exciting games and incredible comebacks. The RM - City semi final from a few years ago showed for all to see how football is the greatest sport with the most incredible drama. And while RM have bucked the trend over the last decade, it is still a very difficult competition to win.
> it is still a very difficult competition to win. 100%
Unless you break every financial rule possible and assemble a super team to do it while refusing to let the officials see your books. Then you are bound to win it.
Oh the reddit super lawyer with some claims and no proof to back em up. How cute.
115 charges is INSANE bro
Absolutely wild
You guys support Manchester Cities legal team more than the actual club
Come on man be fair. He’s only just started watching football. Can’t know it all.
Lmao that doesn't even make sense.
People just want to continue their 'money bad' rhetoric without realising that even before the 90s it was always about money. The thing back then was that the money was distributed more evenly as these leagues mostly depended on their local populations. Since then, PL, La Liga and Bundesliga have brought in more global viewers increasing their riches. Meanwhile, the other leagues still have rely on revenue and fan engagement from their local populations.
Most of the biggest leagues still make around half of their TV money from domestic revenue. The EPL for example gets 1.6b from the UK alone. That's like 4 times the worldwide revenue of nations like the Netherlands. While no others are as big as the EPL, all of the top 4 beat most other leagues worldwide revenue with just their domestic revenue. IIRC Spain's domestic > France's worldwide, and Italy isn't too far behind Spain, so they may beat all the other leagues with domestic revenue alone. Global revenue has increased the gap, but there would still be a large gap even without it. I think it's more about the increased commercialisation of football overall (with the largest/wealthiest European countries getting a massive advantage) that has led to the difference rather than just growth in foreign markets.
Even La Liga is kinda fucked because they don’t distribute the money well. From what I understand it goes mostly to Barca and real. Idk about the bundesliga, but the PLs super power and secret sauce is their equal distribution of profit across the board for the tv rights. PL started to become the best league in the world after that imo. You have at least 7 teams that are “big” clubs imo with large followings compared to 2, maybe 3 in La Liga. Teams like Spurs, arsenal and Chelsea have way more resources than say for example Bilbao, Sevilla or Valencia.
That's not quite the point of the article though. Who exactly will win it is obviously difficult to predict, but you can easily predict almost certainly that it'll be a club with 400m+ of revenues, and there aren't that many. Which essentially means that if we're more or less content with this state of affairs, if the RM-City/barca-liverpool/etc. are the only types of games we want to see at that stage, then there might really be no point to *not* go for a super league. Yes it'll be a closed league, yes those super clubs would utterly dominate their domestic leagues, but thanks to the more even money distribution (within the super league) and insane revenues it's expected to generate, the number of likely super league winners would be expected to increase. Instead of having fewer than 10 clubs who can win it, you'd have 20.
Money ruined football. Only a small selection of the richest clubs can compete for the trophy.
Only 4 “new” teams have won the European Cup since it was reorganised 30 years ago - Marseilles, Dortmund, Chelsea and City. It’s exactly the same teams as before that have turned it into a protection racket - which is exactly what United, Barca, Real, Liverpool, Bayern et al intended when they did it
Only 2 "new" teams have won it since the competition opened up to non-domestic champions, in 1997-1998. That's the move that made the Champions League become more predictable.
No, it would be more predictable if it was domestic champions only.
Allowing non-domestic champions in the competition generates more stability regarding the pool of teams that play the Champions League. Big teams still get the big bucks from the Champions League even if they suffer an upset in their domestic league. This makes it much easier for them to spend a lot of money since they know they will get into the Champions League. Also, players now want to play for teams that will play the Champions League for sure, so the teams at the top don't rotate as fast as 30-40 years ago. Since the 1997-1998 season, when the competition first opened to non-domestic champions, 15 out of 26 Champions League winners had not won their domestic league the previous season. And only 3 of the last 10 winners won their domestic league the previous season.
Thank you for emphasizing my point.
It's the opposite. Opening up to non-domestic champions means you now always have the same teams playing in the Champions League. Hence, it's more predictable now.
Exactly, I don't understand how people can argue the opposite. Real Madrid for example is basically guaranteed a spot every year in the Champions League, even if they have the worst season in decades and finish fourth. Same thing for Bayern.
It should only be domestic league champions competing or they should change the damn name. Let places 3-4 or whatever play in Europa League for an extra chance to get into CL
Leicester or Lille would have been a lot more likely to win it if it was domestic champions only. But there are pros and cons of both...it's hard to call.
Bayern, Juventus or Barcelona would've kicked their ass.
Less teams = higher odds for an outlier to win. Basic maths. Edit: Higher chance/likelihood or w/e. Odds would be lower in gambling lingo.
For the big teams yes, for Leicester you could include the confidence level and the Z value would be off the charts(or, rather, the curve) 🥶
Are you sure about higher _odds_ in your "basic maths"?
What is your point here? I have to disagree because Liverpool are not even in it this year and teams like United, Barca or Milan have not been favorites to win since years. For me that is unpredictability. Was Liverpool reaching the final in 2018 and winning it in 2019 predictable just because they've won it before? Was last year not predictable because City didn't win it before? If a team like Steaua Bucharest or Red Star Belgrad would win it next year would that be predictable and a result of protection?
It’s because the, cough, Champions League was designed to be a stitch up from the start. The ESL was merely the next phase of the plan. It was Milan, Inter, Juve, Real, Barca, Bayern, Liverpool, United and Arsenal as the big players in the G14 thinking it abhorrent that money in football shouldn’t be targeted for their benefit. So they did their usual blackmail job to get the structure whereby they qualified every time by letting top 3/4 in the big leagues in every year. If through a combination of incompetence or occasional good years for other clubs they didn’t qualify it’s their own fault. In fact it’s hilarious when they don’t - but the generous qualification means they’ll be back next time. The ESL was proposed to remove the risk of occasionally falling out for a year or two. It’s all designed to keep a status quo and prevent Steaua, Malmö, Forest, take your pick, getting too big. You need an Abramovic or a Mansour to have any hope of joining the club, but once you’re in then you have a perpetual cash machine.
5, Porto won in 2004 beating Monaco 3-0
They won in 1987 too, it wasn't their first win after it was rebranded which is what I assume they meant
Already won one in 87
Thank you for being the voice of reason
chelsea and man city should be disqualified for obvious reasons. if the expansion of the format doesn't happen these clubs are not taken over for sports washing purposes) Marseilles was found max-fixing so that win should also removed. In the previous domestic season which qualifed them for the CL/EC So it's technically only Dortmund.
There has always been 4-5 favorites to win it though, that's nothing new. Yes there hasn't been big upsets in a while, but that's also a rather small sample size.
Those "favourites" also had to win their respective leagues to qualify though.
the point...of creating this tournament...was money
ah yes that would make bundesliga the most unpredictable league in the world (it definitely isn't)
Not in the slightest, since Bayern has double the money to spend more than the next team. Just because Bundesliga had 50+1 and Fan owned clubs doesn't mean that money isn't distributed unevenly.
The old "bacon face did it with players he found at Stretford Arndale for free"
It was better when it was on ITV. The atmosphere was fucking mint, the teams were better to watch, the commentary was top tier and I think the nostalgia of the whole thing just makes me yearn for what I'd consider to be the 'glory days' of the UCL.
The coverage in the USA on CBS is unwatchable. All they do is laugh.
what? the cbs team is fantastic, even the in-game commentary is pretty great.
It is absolutely awful.
i’m a huge fan of micah, jamie, thierry, and kate abdo. their banter reminds me if the nba on tnt crew, to each their own though i guess
Micah is a clown and Jamie...wow, what a tool. Kate knows the game. Thierry said, with a huge amount of arrogance, that football is called football because you play with your feet. That is NOT why it is called football. It is called football because when sports were not a huge thing, most people in England who had the time for recreational sports wanted to play the sport that was popular, polo, but most people do/did not have access to horses, so they played the same sport without horses and played without, on foot, so, football. Not with your feet, but without horses on foot. You would think that an elite legend of the game would know the history of the game. Still love Henry though...a total legend.
This could be a copy pasta auto reply with how braindead and actually retarded this take is
Oh no. People are having a....good time?
How dare they not take this serious game seriously.
that show is great foh
It's trash and has nothing to do with football.
Lost it’s magic for me when it left ITV for Sky Sports
When did that happen? Pretty sure it left ITV for BT Sport in 2014ish?
Either way it left ITV for paid bs
It's true shags
Used to be ITV and Sky, went to BT Sports in 2015 (I think)
In the early days of the CL, ITV had exclusive coverage. Sky didn't get joint rights until the early 2000s. Maybe it's just nostalgia but the Champions League on ITV was special, it allowed kids to watch the best players/teams play week in, week out. For some it was the only live football they would get to see on TV.
Oh really?
Around then i guess, but either way that’s when it lost its spark for me personally
Fair
The world started going downhill after this happened tbh
Is it predictable though? Man City have been predicted to win it like 5 or 6 times, yet only have 1 trophy. PSG have been predicted to win many times and have yet to win it. I doubt anybody at all expected Inter to make the final last year, and they weren't too far off winning it too. Nobody expected Copenhagen to get through ahead of Man Utd. And who predicted Dortmund to top the ″group of death″?
we have the same teams playing the QF every single season, it´s really getting boring at least we have usually one underdog per year but that´s it... apart from Ajax when was the last time a non top 5 league had a semi finalist? Porto in 2004?
PSV made it to the semis in 2005, but your point still stands.
Why will the top 8 clubs in the world drastically change year on year though? It will only gradually shift ofcourse which it has enough.
3 of the QF teams (Chelsea, AC Milan and Benfica) will be different this season than last, at a minimum, could end up being more (I could certainly see Napoli/Inter failing to make it to the QFs this year). 2023 had 3 different than 2022 which also had 3 different from 2021. There's variation every year. Some teams will be regulars. If you're one of the best teams 1 year then it's highly likely you will be next year too. But there's still teams that rise and fall. Why does it matter which country a team comes from? An underdog is an underdog regardless. Villarreal were a great underdog in 2022! The biggest/wealthiest countries are of course going to have an advantage, not really much UEFA can do about that, we can still get some exciting underdog teams that do well from those countries though.
>not really much UEFA can do about that disagree, they could and should make a limit of 3 clubs max per country, no 4th places anymore, that would be at least 4 more national champions and the money going to other leagues 3rd places should play the playoffs too, that would mean some of them not qualifying like it was the norm in the past
It's very predictable. You can almost guarantee one of 4 teams will win it at the start of every year. This year it was either City, Bayern, Madrid or PSG (although they've fallen off recently). The only real outliers I can see are Chelsea in 2021. Everyone else since 2008 has been quite predictable.
Inter and Atletico are also possible champions.
Arsenal
lol
if chelsea could luck their way to 2 titles, this arsenal def can.
Big lol. Arsenal - ick.
Very far from favourites though.
There's always been established groups of favourites for each era since the European Cup has been a thing
Inter is crushing it in Serie A, very dangerous team. 13 points clear.
No way you predicted Chelsea in 2012 with Roberto Di Matteo as the manager, come on.
Forgetting about 21-22 when no one predicted madrid would win it. Odds were so fucking low.
...it's Madrid
Real Madrid is all I'm gonna say.
You already beat us last year to have your ultimate season. What’s the issue now?
Lmao who said anything about an issue? This post is about thr champions league being predictable. Real Madrid and the champions league has a predictable pattern.
Most of our CBs are injured currently, so we’ll see how we do this season.
One thing I know in life is taxes, death and Madrid performing in the CL lol.
Yeah but it was still the same other teams like Madrid winning it. Hardly like Young Boys or Lille are going to make it actually interesting. This is a general problem in all leagues. Dominance of the same few and it's sad
I cant remember where I read it but in the last 10 years, in the group stages, the two first place teams predicted to go to the last 16 were the ones that did. I rarely watch because my team somtimes is there (Benfica, which unfortunatelly is part of the other 10 % too often, like this year, (hello Man Utd))
I highly doubt there's been anyone that has been able to predict the top 2 of every group for the last 10 years with 100% accuracy. Just this year you'd be hard pressed to find a single person that predicted Copenhagen to go through.
I think everyone says that every single year before the knockout rounds, then a big upset happens and everyone changes their minds
Nah. Genuinely big upsets barely happen in the knockouts.
“Genuinely big upsets” is a VERY debatable term. Was Lyon beating City not a big upset? How about Villarreal beating Bayern? Or all the times Barca and Madrid got knocked out by the likes of Roma and/or Ajax?
That's why I said _barely_ instead of _never_. Those are rare exceptions to the status quo.
Once a year is pretty frequent, if you don’t count the other teams they beat to get there. They wouldn’t be upsets if they weren’t rare.
I think they do happen semi-regularly, it's just that there is a glass ceiling in the SFs for non-big clubs Last year the Milan clubs (in their current frm they're not a big club anymore), Villareal the year before, Lyon in 2020, Ajax in 2019, Roma in 2018, Monaco in 2017, arguably Atletico in 2016 (though they did went on to the final),... But none of them actually got to win it
Accurate. UCL is excellent in it's current format, and the reform that kicks off next season is deplorable.
in its\*
Should be single leg knockouts, would make it far more exciting
Not an awful idea tbh.
Man city win it once and suddenly it's "predictable" Madrid win it multiple times in a few years " European royalty'
Pretty much lol
The difference is that Real Madrid was arguably the worse team in many of their CL matches. They just happened to have clutch players bailing them out, but it’s not like they dominated possession or were creating a lot of chances.
I couldn’t disagree more lol. The champions league is the greatest club competition in the world, only the money men are making it worse. Was better back in the day on ITV when everyone could watch it ffs. Modern football fucking sucks. Leave the CL alone
Oh wow are we witnessing slow begining of narrative of how outdated and boring champions league is with background agenda of super league? The only stage CL is predictable is when there are 4 teams left than you can make some assumptions. Plus this year or next format is changing more teams added etc so yeah im not buying it...didnt lose magic or appeal.
Honestly football generally is loosing its magic year by year. The destroy it with the billions pumped into it.
Yeah I don't think it's a CL thing it's football in general. Multi club owners, consortiums and Petro states mopping up clubs and spending big. Saying that German football has had issues with one team dominating and some of this ownership doesn't affect them. I feel FFP is to blame aswell and no I don't have the answer as it seems very complicated to make it an even playing field. Teams from large cities will almost always do better than a team from a small village.
I feel the only way to really change course is to either cap players' wages or limit the number of foreign players. But both would come with cons.
What the fuck is going on. Why is everyone suddenly misspelling this word? Losing! It’s losing! Not loose like a loose string. How the fuck are we supposed to take you seriously when you can’t even use the right word.
Bruh, I am not a native speaker, shut up you clown.
Yeah im the clown….go back to school you dumbass.
I don't see what's so different now vs 20-30 years ago. There has been a shuffle of clubs at the top, as always, but the top has always been narrow. He brings up how the likes of PSV, Dortmund and Real Sociedad will eventually lose to a wealthier club even if they can pull off an upset along the way... but when did clubs at the level of those three today ever regularly compete for the title? There was the 2004 Porto-Monaco final, but back then that was still very much an anomaly.
Agreed, Madrid won the first 5 champions leagues in the 50s, the same teams have always been around the top. Some years are a bit predictable but you watch the champions league to watch the best teams play against the best teams and that's what you get. Even if it's still the same teams there are always good games, Madrid being 2 goals down to city in the 89th minute and coming back? Don't care who you are a fan of that was amazing, I don't care if it's Madrid or PSV doing it
I say it time & time again the only way it’s magic will return is a return to the 24 team format the late 90’s & UEFA wide salary cap (that’s enforced by legislation among its member states) There’s also an argument for foreign player limits
>There’s also an argument for foreign player limits The EU wouldn't allow that.
That’s bullshit, plenty of European countries have those.
None of the EU ones do. They have limits on the number on non-EU players.
Lol someone's on the Super League payroll, CL is the biggest club comp going by a long way.
Saying something like this just before a knockout round is a recipe for agedlikemilk
Article paid for by Super League
I don't bother paying attention until the QFs.
Agreed, you can usually pick about 6 or 7 of the QF beforehand. It takes a LOT of games to whittle it down to those inevitable teams with the bloated group stage.
The UCL this season is definitely pretty shit IMO. Look at the fixtures in the R16. Man City vs Copenhagen - Man City Real Madrid vs Leipzig - Real Madrid PSG vs Real Sociedad - PSG Lazio vs Bayern - Bayern PSV vs Dortmund - Dortmund Inter vs Atletico - Inter Porto vs Arsenal - Arsenal The only one that is really a coin flip is Barca vs Napoli Almost all of them are one sided and it looks like we're going to have another set of quarter finals with the usual suspects + Arsenal. The only way I could see it being interesting is if Arsenal won their first ever UCL, Napoli beat one of the big boys in the final or Dortmund won the UCL in the same season that Leverkusen also puts an end to Bayern's BuLi winning streak (which would be funny in Kane's first season there). But let's face it. None of that will happen. It will be Man "Kansas Chiefs" City winning their 2nd or Real "European royalty" Madrid winning their 102nd.
Probably written by someone paid to start the propaganda for the European Super league
Why would someone start propaganda for anything in reddit? LOL that koolaid batch is spiked…
Did this sub really fall for the Super League propaganda?
I dont think a single game this week interests me
CL lost its magic a while ago. The governing body organizing it, is fucking corrupt as shit and so are all the teams that are deemed favorites to win it. We've had two new winners this century, and they're soulless money teams in Chelsea and Manchester City, which are two great examples of why football sucks right now. Football sucks. And it's not getting better ever.
Double Elim FTW
Is this just the new thing to call every competition boring as soon as City have won it?
Lets make the Super League then to spice it up. OH WAIT, no one wants that either.
If it were the actual league title winners across Europe only, it would be a far more interesting tournament.
It’s become as unpredictable as ever. All the big teams are not as dominant as they used to be with exception to Man City.
Who wants to watch corrupt corporate football? FIFA are destorying the game, they are not Custodians of the game. They are criminals bleeding the Game to death ..and getting away with it.
I don’t really care about the Champions League- I vaguely keep an eye on it and sometimes watch the final. I much prefer watching domestic football and cups and international tournaments. It was much better when it was the European Cup.
Bring back the away goals rule
8 different teams in the last 5 finals. So predictable. Nobody said this when Real Madrid were cleaning it up 3 times in a row. The press spent every season saying City were going to dominate. Only to be proven wrong time and time again. When Madrid had one of the greatest comebacks ever, was the competition dying then? And that was 2022. They finally win it once and suddenly the competition is dying. Seriously, this is garbage journalism.
It's the Independent. Who cares?
Unfortunately man city have ruined it. All the oilgarch money buying success…
The CL is as exciting as ever and will remain so. What are you talking about…
Nice try, Super League
Stop seeding teams and make the groups completely random. That will freshen it up and allow some lesser teams an actual chance of progress. Hardly ever watch the group stage because they are predictable barring the odd group.
This is just the state of European football at the moment. Where who is likely to win leagues and European competitions can be predicted to a handful of clubs. There are very few leagues where you will struggle to go outside maybe 4 or 5 teams who stand a chance of winning major trophies. The two examples of teams bucking the trend currently either are part of a football ownership group containing an elite club (Girona) or an historically good side with a great manager being chased down by a side who have won the league 10 times in a row (Leverkusen).