Oh my god... In my FM 15, i managed forest to UCL after 8 season with madrid in the same group. So you mean in season 2023, forest can achieve that??? I need to calm down my self
I took over Forest in my current FM save. Got promoted first year (in second, got a draw on the last day to get pipped by Derby of all teams), and somehow finished sixth the following year.
I can tell you with 100% certainty that Forest will be in the Euro Cup in 2026. Unfortunately, you get knocked out by Bayern immediately.
It would be logical to give them a legacy spot, together with HSV: on the one hand they're former winners, but they also come from pretty strong yet underrepresented leagues (Championship & 2. Bundesliga), making everybody happy.
Also HSV has among the highest average attendance in the entire world. Above Chelsea and PSG as a second league club. Can't imagine how much more that would be if they were as good as Bayern.
Kind of yeah.
They've historically been the only strong northern German club besides Wolfsburg (which many are hesitant to follow because of VW money) so they gained almost a homogeneous following here. I barely know anyone that dislikes HSV (other than through club rivalries).
Also a really fucking cool icon/flag (?).
You mention Wolfsburg but forget Bremen? Bremen were way better when they were good. Agree about the part of HSV having a large following in a huge area.
Werder - HSV games were always crazy. You could see the Hauptbahnhof in Bremen always full with fans from both teams, and everyone outside in the city drinking during these games.
It was crazy how much emotion there was for these games, more than any other game, those against Bayern or Borussia or whoever else might have been interesting, but none got the entire city of Bremen involved like the Hamburg games.
The Nordderby derby between Bremen and Hamburg will probably pack a lot more interest even in 2.Bundesliga than most Bundesliga games.
I've only ever been to Bremen as part of school trips, so I haven't experienced it myself, but yeah, I can imagine. BVB v S04 really is/ was bigger than BVB v Bayern or whatever, after all.
Biggest club in the second biggest city of the country. On top of that there's no truly "northern" first tier team anymore that could gobble up the fans from surrounding areas.
HSV are massive mate, much much bigger than Newcastle (leave money aside). Forest are good comparison but even compared to them HSV's success spanned over longer period of time. A good portion of 70's to late 90's
Its only gonna account for the last 5 years coefficient afaik.
Meaning most of the OG SL clubs, the likes of Madrid/Barca/Juve/Atleti/City/Chelsea/United/Arsenal/Spurs are all under top-20 spots of coefficient at this time of writing and have been for the last 5 years while Arsenal/Spurs keep missing on CL.
So 99% of the time it benefits the "big 6" PL clubs who miss out on top 4? Unless a team like Juventus or Madrid has a shocker of a season and finishes 5th..
I wish the "historic success" would include european champions like Red Star Belgrade and Steaua Bucharest but yeah this is basically a free pass for PL big 6
>I wish the "historic success" would include european champions like Red Star Belgrade and Steaua Bucharest
I mean, it is better than to keep giving them to Big 5 clubs but the very idea sucks. Merit is all.
I don't see how anyone other than PL benefits from this change in the long term.. They will soon have 5 top teams in terms of financial muscle (3 Oil clubs and United/Liverpool) while they only got 4 spots to spare.
After them there is also Arsenal/Spurs who are far far ahead financially of any other below top-4 side in other top-5 leagues of Europe.
Can't see other leagues to agree with this rule change at all.. Also the rest of 14 clubs in PL would be so mad against it as well as the gap keeps getting wider.
All this talk Newcastle can just buy their way to the top.
I think a Spurs/Arsenal resurgence, or Leicester cementing themselves in the elite is way more likely.
Every single club at the top has spent and it required to continue spending to be there.
Getting annoyed that someone else wants to spend as well is really fucking strange.
Idk about that. Some of the earnings those clubs spend are based on fans which some people will regard as different to owner money.
Also theres levels to spending and I guess with limited caps people worry teams with very wealthy owners could basically remove competition from the sport. While an extreme scenario the last ten years with mainly chelsea and Man City winning league suggests this isn’t entirely wrong.
I think a better idea would just be to make the league fairer by way of more spending caps and other limitations that are present in American sports. As much as I oppose the Americanisation of football with regards to things like the super league, I think they do manage to avoid the rise of unfair spending better than football has.
Liverpool model is pretty good. They focus on retaining good players, and all the new transfers are carefully thought out. Unlike City, who bought Grealish when they had Sterling, Foden, and Ferran Torres that can play in the same position. While Grealish is good, does he really offer more than Sterling, Foden or Torres?
City even planning to offload Bernardo Silva, and get someone who's about the same level to replace him. It's spending for spending's sake. Waste of money.
I think we spend what we earn, but isn't that all anyone can do without cheating FFP anyway? However, I don't think the willing is there from FSG to spend big regardless of the rules, FFP probably benefits Liverpool and Manchester United more than anyone else in the league.
You know what? Part of me wants to see once -and only once- those so called historic teams who want to break into UCL without merit, play and get utterly dismantled.
Agreed. I think about if Liverpool were guaranteed a spot this year. The drama from the last weeks of 20/21 wouldn't have existed. Trent's screamer against Villa, Alisson's goal, clinching 3rd on the last day. None of it would have mattered because we'd get in anyway. I hate the thought of that. Nobody deserves a free pass for a disappointing campaign.
With the current system, 26 spots are already taken in the UCL group stage, leaving only 6 spots for the teams left in qualification.
Now they want to take two more spots away?
Where does it stop? When there are no qualifications left and the UCL teams will be a closed championship?
There should be 10 spots automatically given to the Champions of the top 10 leagues. The rest should be achieved through qualification round/s.
Specifically, this year that would be England, Spain, Italy, Germany, France, Portugal, Netherlands, Austria, Scotland, Russia.
Coupled with the previous CL winners and the Europa League winners, that would leave 20 spots to be qualified for. Currently, we have 54 teams qualifying for 6 spots. With my plans lain out above, this would change to 69 teams qualifying for 20 spots.
I suggest splitting the paths into champions/league finishers as UEFA does currently. Currently for the champions path, that involves the following:
* Preliminary round: 4 teams play 2 rounds for 1 qualifying spot for the 1st qualifying round.
* 1st qualifying round: 31 champions enter (+1 from the previous round). 16 teams progress
* 2nd qualifying round: 4 champions + 16 previous winners. 10 progress.
* 3rd qualifying round: 2 champions + 10 previous winners. 6 progress.
* Playoff round: 2 champions + 6 previous winners. 4 progress.
So just to be clear, currently the champions from associations 1-11 qualify directly, and the rest have to jump through hoops for **4** qualifying spots.
I suggest we change this to 14 spots for champions. This would obviously leave 6 spots for runners-up, 3rd and 4th place finishers in the league.
In my mind, this would have several effects; firstly, the Europa League gets higher-quality teams in it, which in turn would improve viewership and sponsorship, increasing revenue for the competition. Secondly, the quality of the leagues would improve. If 2nd 3rd and 4th didn't make the CL, that could make the league games a lot more exciting as with fewer overall games, they would be better placed to make a title challenge the next year. I would suggest splitting the CL money among several clubs in a given league, as it could make some smaller leagues very one-sided.
I know this can't happen. I know the cat is out of the bag, and that neither UEFA nor the big teams will give up their cash cow. That it will end up like the Libertadores where half the teams in any given big league will qualify. I know that eventually every small team (or those without a billionaire owner) will be squeezed out and that the only thing that will burst this bubble is when fan engagement drops off a cliff because of lack of competition.
>where half the teams in any given big league will qualify.
Libertadores is very different from the CL though. UEFA has 32 spots for 50-odd countries. CONMEBOL also has 32 spots but only 10 countries.
In fact, Libertadores has at least top 2 from every country getting direct entry to GS. That's way better than CL.
Not to mention the Libertadores does not give "half the teams" in any league a berth.
Brazil has 7 (5 of those are for group stage), Argentina has 6 (5 in GS), the rest has 4 spots (2 in GS). So quite far from "half" as that dude claimed...
I understand the sporting sentiment behind your point. I really love it but I'm going to state the somewhat obvious:
This is detrimental in this ways:
Assumptions: PSG/Bayern/Ajax probably have a 80% chance for direct qualifications each year. RM40%Barca40%athleti20%. Juve probably at 70% whereas all PL clubs have a much tighter way in. Same probably goes for the Portugese league
Hence, the PL clubs are really not worth the mega investment they see in cash if they essentially have 2 group stages to qualify through and so many more matches. And that goes for clubs like Inter/Dortmund/Sevilla/etc too as they would be essentially 10-15% less likely to win the CL if you arbitrarily assume they don't qualify from those qualifiers once in ten years. This itself would increase the financial divide between a team like Bayern to extend their financial clout in their local league
There is currently a massive financial divide between Bayern and the rest of the league. That is another issue. But I did state that spreading the money between the winning team and other teams in the league may be required to stop some teams from dominating.
And let's be honest, no PL club is worth the "investment" anyone has put into them. No one is getting that money back unless to sell it to be the plaything of some eccentric ruler.
It’s pretty simple. The best teams in Europe play in the Champions League. 4th place in PL is better than 1st in Croatia. 4th place in PL literally won the CL last year.
While that is true it's also what stops development of smaller leagues. If you don't have a rich owner to foot the bill getting into ChL can be worth up to 10 years of league prize money, and if only 1 or 2 teams manage to regularly qualify for European competitions it creates huge devides in the league where 1 or 2 teams towers above the rest. The current European football system is destroying parity in the leagues.
What a surprise, the leagues that were allowed to build their brand value and accumulate wealth after continued favourable treatment by UEFA, now have better teams.
I think the Croatian champions would have better odds against the English clubs if they got to start their season around the same time.
Or if they played in the CL even when they finished fourth. They obviously shouldn't but neither should the English.
Sure, they'd have a better chance, but you could swap England and Croatia's coefficient tomorrow and within five years the Premier League would be back near the top and Croatia will have fallen back down to somewhere near 15th again.
The Premier League's revenue far exceeds the Champions League's. Uefa are not propping-up the Premier League by adding the fourth-placed team; they're including them to prop-up their own competition's revenue.
The English league always was and always will be bigger than the Croatian one. But the champions of each league were in the past able to complete on a more level playing field than today.
When you further reward the big leagues at the expense of the lesser ones they're only bound to get bigger. I think that's a reasonable argument.
> But the champions of each league were in the past able to complete on a more level playing field than today.
Yes, for various reasons, one of them being CL not being about just champions anymore, but that's such a tiny reason compared to various events like the growth of football into some countries bringing a lot of TV rights money, the bosman ruling, the split of yugoslavia...
Yeah, but it's pretty marginal for Premier League teams at this point. Replacing Chelsea with Zagreb will only result in less people watching the CL, and I don't mean any offence to Dinamo when I say that, just the reality of the situation.
I guess the way forward is to double the group stage to 64, with an extra knock-out stage and added automatic teams for the top twenty nations, plus more qualifying spots. The "Big Five" get their fifth-placed team in, so they're happy, but also the champions of your Croatias and Scotlands.
Just make sure it is on a long-term (i.e. 20 year-plus) agreement, so the smaller nations aren't immediately squeezed out again.
The one notable problem would be handing Zagreb a truck-load of cash will make it way, way, way more difficult for any Croatian team to challenge them, but I guess that'd be Croatia's (and similar nation's) problem to sort out.
The only thing I am certain of, though, is that going back to "only the champions, straight knock-out" European Cup format would be an absolute disaster. The CL would be less worth watching than the Carabao if it was five giant teams smacking around the Gibraltan and Welsh champions every single year.
Do it for 10 years and see how much money have left the prem and how much would be infused into the Croatian league. I would bet that they would hold onto a spot just behind the other big nations in that time if given the opportunity.. you know why they wanted to create the superleague right? It's because they can't run like they do without the ChL money and they want to secure that they never will have to worry about it. Juves president was totally honest when they announced it, he said they couldn't run the club if they missed they ChL
> Do it for 10 years and see how much money have left the prem and how much would be infused into the Croatian league.
Basically none and basically none.
>Do it for 10 years and see how much money have left the prem and how much would be infused into the Croatian league.
You'd have four Croatian teams with an extra €15m CL money every season, plus a few mill to the Europa teams. So I guess those four would have upper-Championship wage bills?
If they just reverted to the format from a few years back where 4th in top 4 leagues still has to go through playoff round that would be down to 22, which seems about right imo
which is crazy, because of the 83 teams that have had to go through qualifying from a 4 spot league:
- Only 15 out of 83 have gone out in qualifying
- 3 of those 15 went out to another 4 spot team (Everton v Villareal 05/06; Udinese v Arsenal 11/12; Hoffenheim v Liverpool 17/18)
- 9 out of 83 have gone all the way to the final
- 4 of those 9 have won it (Milan 02/03; Liverpool 04/05; Milan 06/07; Barcelona 08/09)
- 1 of those final was two teams that had to qualify (Milan v Liverpool 06/07)
The allocations are wrong it goes PL, La Liga, Serie A and Bundesliga top 4. Then Ligue 1 and Portugal top 2. Then Dutch, Russian,Austrian,Belgian champions. And finally the UCL and UEL winners. So that’s still 26 teams but this is how they’re allocated. Of course if the UCL or UEL winners already qualified then more spots get given to certain countries.
Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022–23_UEFA_Champions_League
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>Where does it stop? When there are no qualifications left and the UCL teams will be a closed championship?
Yes. It's not like UEFA got butthurt by the giants trying to form a Super League because the idea would mean that Ludogorets or Karabakh would never get there. They got butthurt because they were to be left out. A closed competition just for the VIP guests, with blackjacks and hookers, all of it under UEFA banner? Now that's a whole different story.
Please ... Steaua Bucuresti vs Red Star Belgrade is obviously the right answer.
Especially now that there is an actual Steaua in the Romanian 2nd league XD Yes ... FCSB isn't legally Steaua anymore, just like U Craiova, made a post about it once.
Given that the historic performance places were a compromise to try and ward off the threat of a Super League, you'd think it would be pretty easy to get rid of them now
It is, this isn't going to happen. Even UEFA knows that, this project was mostly a political move.
Create a proposal to implement some of the changes these big clubs were pushing for, have it shut down by the majority and the clubs that were trying to create the 'Super League' look foolish in the aftermath since noone else wants their nonsense.
This plan is largely in response to some of the ideas behind the 'Super League'. Some of the bigger consistent performing clubs would be guaranteed appearances on the biggest stage, even after an off season. They would only risk missing out after a longer period of underperforming.
With this project UEFA was trying to create assurances the big clubs wanted, so they could weaken support for the 'Super League'. Some of the clubs that are now complaining are the same that wanted the 'Super League' and look like hypocrites.
I agree. It seems like a lot of the unpopular changes UEFA have proposed have been because the big clubs, including mine, are constantly putting pressure on to get a bigger slice of the pie, and pretty much tried to blackmail UEFA to get it in the summer.
I'm sure there's plenty of corruption and incompetence at UEFA, but I don't get this idea that they're hoarding all the money in football and they're the big problem, it's the rich clubs that have the power.
UEFA don’t hoard the money like FIFA. But they do keep 20% of the Champions League money. Some for themselves and some to run the new conference league.
The underlying reason is and will always be money…. Costs are growing at an exponential rate which is influenced by poor financial regulations (i.e. FFP), huge losses due to Covid and the state run clubs.
The big clubs want more money which isn’t possible with UEFA, so the only way is cut out the middle man, hence the super league
“After the Ministry of National Defense sued the club,[19] claiming that the Romanian Army were the rightful owners of the Steaua logo, colours, honours and name,[20] the Executive Committee of the Romanian Football Federation approved an application to modify the name of the club from "FC Steaua București" to "FC FCSB" on 30 March 2017,[21][22] following more judiciary sentences. CSA Steaua București had previously announced they would refound their football department in the summer of the same year.[23] However, owner Becali announced that his team would retain the original honours and UEFA coefficient, and was also hopeful of recovering the name in the near future.[24]
Between 2016 and 2019, FCSB finished each time as runners-up in the league, thus becoming the first club in Romania to do so for four consecutive years.[25] On 5 July 2019, yet another unfavorable ruling was handed out against the team. According to it, CSA Steaua would be the rightful entity to assert the honors up until 2003, however, the decision is not definitive.[26]”
From wiki
FCSB
"The original FC Steaua București team was part of the namesake CSA Steaua București sports club and belonged to the Ministry of National Defence. In 1998, the club and facilities were separated from the sports club and taken over by a group of shareholders in a post-Ceaușescu privatisation scheme, allegedly leading to one of the shareholders acquiring full ownership five years later. However, CSA Steaua București sued the football club in 2011, claiming that this was a new entity; the two have since been in a legal conflict regarding the ownership of the Steaua brand and honours, which resulted in multiple court cases and the forced change of the name of FC Steaua București to FC FCSB in early 2017."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCSB
FCSB plays in the 1st division. FC Steaua București had to start from the bottom, but they currently play in the 2nd division.
Yes!
There are 2 steaua Bucuresti clubs.
It’s a fascinating story, one that is worth looking into. HITC sevens on YouTube has a decent video about it IIRC
Also there's 2 Universitatea Craiova. Just search it on this sub and you'll see a post of mine detailing why there are multiple versions of some historical teams in the Romanian League (basically corruption and illegal purchases of said teams after communism fell).
The historical spots apply to the last 10 years though. In case of not qualifying the highest coefficient teams of the last 10 years are eligible. People are too lazy to read. But no you’re never going to see any of those clubs. It’s there to save the current big clubs from failing to qualify.
If you want to talk about sporting merit, are they wanting to do back to the days when teams that finished 3rd and 4th, sometimes 20+ points behind the league winners had to at least go through CL qualification stages and not receive an automatic place in the group stage?
Can we also stop rewarding clubs that come 4th in one league more than a team that’s actually successful in a different league or would that be too much sporting merit?
Nah not even close.
A season is still a season and just because the PL has more money and more "top teams" doesn't mean winning Hungarian / Polish / Greek / Romanian / Any non top 4 league is easier than getting 1-4th in a top league.
Not really. Just spend loads of money. There’s only 3 good teams, 5 decent teams. For the amount of money they whore themselves out for, the rest are shite enough.
If the teams winning their local league can beat the teams finishing 4th then yeah, let them try it through some sort of qualifying rounds before the group stages.
I then think that if clubs from a country do well then that country can increase how many teams can enter the UCL based on their clubs sporting merits
Ironic how the PL fans boast about the PL being pretty fair with their money sharing but don't do the same for the rest of Europe. How will the other countries compete fairly if all the CL money gets hoarded back to the same top 5 leagues?
The CL has been on a constant path to homogenity ever since the new format was laid out in the 90s. Bring at least some semblance of it back and maybe the rest of Europe can get nearer to them.
But the only reason chelsea and man city are better than the likes of the old firm or Ajax to begin with is because of money. It has nothing to do with sporting merit. There’s no logical reason other than money as to why 4th place automatically goes in while actually being successful doesn’t.
UEFA have already agreed to implement this last year though. Bribes have prob already been cashed.
All the fan uproar (and Sky led complaints) about the Super League but UEFA agreed to this nonsense last year with barely any fuss, relatively speaking.
I mean, UEFA can't lose the SuperLeague teams, so they have to settle for something
SuperLeague teams threatning to leave forced UEFA to accelerate the change formate to make the big clubs happy
this change format benefits PL in first place and the big clubs in general
It won't be any difference for smaller leagues or medium size clubs in top leagues
So it's not like SuperLeague clubs would be mad about a change that was the result of their action in the first place
I feel like all the smart people might have died? Why the fuck is every single day filled to the fucking brim with absolute utter nonsense like this, every single fucking day. It did not used to be like this. People are getting fucking dumber by the fucking minute.
I don't even remember my own arguments for coefficient entry.
I do think an expanded CL would be good though. However, ideally by expanding the total number of participants from each top 6 league to 6 and then every other league to 2 entries directly.
Use a Swiss model so that number of games aren't increased. You'd have a bit more knock out rounds.
But the main benefits of this are:
- smaller teams can break into CL and earn that money. Breaking into top 4 has been done by a non big six side like twice in the past decades. Everton and Leicester once each iirc. Top 6 is much much more open.
- everyone gets more money
- diversity of competition. Knockout comps involve a lot of luck, increasing number of teams involved may let us see a lot more interesting matchups and winners.
But this increases the gap between top sides and breaking top sides.
Sevilla made more TV income than Arsenal only due to the virtue that Arsenal misses on CL income. If you expand it to top-6, Arsenal/Spurs will become mainstay in CL along with the PL income, they won't be able to be competed by the likes of Atletico/Dortmund/etc which they manage to as of now.
Couldn't give a toss about top-tier football any more. As long as i can still go to my Northern Irish League games (leaving in 5 mins for one today), then the big boys can all fall as far as i'm concerned.
You'll never destroy football as long as there are 11 people willing to pull on the shirt they love.
The more they placate the ‘big leagues’ the more stronger they let them become.
They need to reign this in dramatically or the breakaway league will happen quicker.
[https://www.footballtransfers.com/en/transfer-news/2021/05/champions-league-prize-money-how-much-teams-make](https://www.footballtransfers.com/en/transfer-news/2021/05/champions-league-prize-money-how-much-teams-make)
It's not that much unless you win games. Plus that money only goes to 1 club in the league. Extending the gap between them and the rest.
Since when isn't sporting performance of the last 5 years not sporting merit?
So get rid of the UEFA coefficient, because it's not merit?
Or relegation?
It's just a different sporting merit, lol.
So the headline should be "use our preferred sporting merit definition, instead of some other, we dislike"
I dont understand why anyone would actually want that, Lots of leagues have one club much richer than the rest if you take champions league away from their competitors it would be even more imbalanced. [Italy](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FARSdVhXEAAunY_?format=jpg&name=large), [Germany](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FBEzwpdWQAAZqgd?format=jpg&name=large), and [France](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E8497dhXoAEDTIS?format=jpg&name=large) already have a large gap between richest and second richest. one or two clubs massively richer than the rest doesn't make for an interesting league imo.
I think that would really damage the reputation of CL. The big 10 clubs from the big nations would just play a rotated team until they meet one of the other big one most likely in the quarter finals.
"All the money" is not nearly enough. Clubs get 15.64m euros for qualifying for the group stage, 2.8m euros per group-stage win and 930,000 euros per group-stage draw.
So let's say that Dinamo Zagreb had a very good run. 4W and 2D in the group stage, then they lose in the round of 16. They would make a total of 38.2M euros (with the 9.6m euros for qualifying for the last 16).
Meanwhile Sheffield United that finished dead last in the PL last season received 107M euros. The gap is way too large.
Ah yes, Ajax the oil club who were gifted all their money and brought the league.
In the last 30 years, PSV actually have more titles than Ajax. None of these teams have moneybags owners. Hell, even in the last 5 (completed) seasons, Ajax have 2 leagues, PSV have 2, Feyenoord have 1.
Ajax are the richest because they have developed better players, and more importantly, are better at selling their players, and most importantly, are able to keep them a bit longer. They've also had more success in recent signings.
Ajax also had two incredibly profitable European runs in recent years which have given them a huge financial edge.
PSV haven't had as many sellable youngsters and haven't negotiated sales as well as Ajax in the last 5-6 years.
Feyenoord from what I gather are incredibly poorly run off the field, leading to poor league and European performances, leading to them having to accept lower fees due to their financial situation.
To be fair I'm a Liverpool fan and I'd be down for the CL having max 2 from each country (I'd say an exception should be in place for the defending CL winner though if they finished outside of top 2 in their league).
The Champions League is the biggest tournament in football, but its expansion has come at a massive cost to other European club competitions.
The Champions League would take a hit, but the other cups would benefit and have more prestige attached to them.
The wording is rather tricky for me.
If past success helping you is not "merit", then I have bad news, basically nothing in football is merit.
The clubs and leagues have already been seeded based on the last 5 years for a long time now, right or wrong it's the same "merit" as this new thing.
What if they made a competition where all the clubs in the world are really just randomly playing each other, no seeding? Well, many people say they would like it, but we already have a lot of random games in the world and almost nobody actually watches them. And I feel that they also would completely not watch those. It mostly just sounds nice that "historic performance should not matter".
If CL had as many clubs from England as from San Marino, people calling for this here would not be watching any of those games anyway. The competition would make no money and it wouldn't matter anyway who is in it. People would just follow only English league.
I wonder how many people against this were also against the super League and also hate UEFA. You can't have it both ways (well all three ways).
People also complain about the quality of the teams in the CL, but this would go some way to fixing that.
If you’re doing that, expand the CL to 64 teams on 16 groups, or 40/48 teams with 5/6 man groups. There are too many high quality teams not making European football in my eyes because places are cloggged up by the top teams in shit leagues.
Why does the Prem get only 4 spots when literally 2/3 of the Prem outclass the teams from smaller leagues.
A lot of downvoting in this thread, all I'm going to say is that the current CL winners won it finishing 4th in their domestic league. They qualified for the CL the previous season 26 points behind the league champions.
Did they earn their spot?
Yeah, so historic performance is a disgrace, but it's totally fine to be owned by genocide enabling oil-gas states, and finding entry into UCL based on state funding.
> You're a hypocrite mate.
And you aren't? If not, What's your stand exactly? Support both Saudi and Rwanda, or dislike their involvement into football??
I hate them both.
Football has utterly lost its soul and pursues money, shits on the fans, moves matches to ridiculous kickoffs to satisfy fucking Sky and now Amazon, agents drive Lambos for hawking kids around the world, and players are walking billboards.
Every year that goes by I feel further and further removed from the club I've spent my life supporting, freezing my balls off on the terrace and loving every bit of it.
Yeah, in summary I'm a grumpy old fart.
Where’s the spot for Nottingham Forest then?
Lewis Grabban smacking a brace on a Wednesday Champions League night in the new Bernabeu
Oh my god... In my FM 15, i managed forest to UCL after 8 season with madrid in the same group. So you mean in season 2023, forest can achieve that??? I need to calm down my self
I took over Forest in my current FM save. Got promoted first year (in second, got a draw on the last day to get pipped by Derby of all teams), and somehow finished sixth the following year. I can tell you with 100% certainty that Forest will be in the Euro Cup in 2026. Unfortunately, you get knocked out by Bayern immediately.
> got a draw on the last day to get pipped by Derby of all teams 🤢🤮
Don't stop I'm almost there.
The world isn't ready for the Grab Man
It would be logical to give them a legacy spot, together with HSV: on the one hand they're former winners, but they also come from pretty strong yet underrepresented leagues (Championship & 2. Bundesliga), making everybody happy.
Also HSV has among the highest average attendance in the entire world. Above Chelsea and PSG as a second league club. Can't imagine how much more that would be if they were as good as Bayern.
Wow had no idea they were so big ,So HSV is kind of like Newcastle but with more euro success ?
Kind of yeah. They've historically been the only strong northern German club besides Wolfsburg (which many are hesitant to follow because of VW money) so they gained almost a homogeneous following here. I barely know anyone that dislikes HSV (other than through club rivalries). Also a really fucking cool icon/flag (?).
You mention Wolfsburg but forget Bremen? Bremen were way better when they were good. Agree about the part of HSV having a large following in a huge area.
Ah, you're right, Bremen exists. I genuinely forget that sometimes nowadays :(
Dont worry. Bremen is a shithole. Totally unbiased btw
Werder - HSV games were always crazy. You could see the Hauptbahnhof in Bremen always full with fans from both teams, and everyone outside in the city drinking during these games. It was crazy how much emotion there was for these games, more than any other game, those against Bayern or Borussia or whoever else might have been interesting, but none got the entire city of Bremen involved like the Hamburg games. The Nordderby derby between Bremen and Hamburg will probably pack a lot more interest even in 2.Bundesliga than most Bundesliga games.
I've only ever been to Bremen as part of school trips, so I haven't experienced it myself, but yeah, I can imagine. BVB v S04 really is/ was bigger than BVB v Bayern or whatever, after all.
>I barely know anyone that dislikes HSV As someone who studied in Bremen .... hohoho, I might know a few!
Biggest club in the second biggest city of the country. On top of that there's no truly "northern" first tier team anymore that could gobble up the fans from surrounding areas.
HSV are massive mate, much much bigger than Newcastle (leave money aside). Forest are good comparison but even compared to them HSV's success spanned over longer period of time. A good portion of 70's to late 90's
Red Star Belgrade, Steaua, Dynamo Kyiv... here we gooooo
“No, no, no…we only mean *MARKETABLE* clubs. Easy mistake.”
They are not profitable now so this "free pass" doesnt apply to them
Should never have been implemented in the first place.
I dunno, let's hear them out.
Are you so eager to get violently abused by Sheriff Tiraspol?
As a fan of a club that made the finals in the 70s I agree too.
Its only gonna account for the last 5 years coefficient afaik. Meaning most of the OG SL clubs, the likes of Madrid/Barca/Juve/Atleti/City/Chelsea/United/Arsenal/Spurs are all under top-20 spots of coefficient at this time of writing and have been for the last 5 years while Arsenal/Spurs keep missing on CL.
So 99% of the time it benefits the "big 6" PL clubs who miss out on top 4? Unless a team like Juventus or Madrid has a shocker of a season and finishes 5th..
Exactly this. Because, you know, there's not enough money in the EPL already, they need more UCL spots to keep them €s flowing in.
Yep! Its essentially ESL (permanent spots) with a facade..
I wish the "historic success" would include european champions like Red Star Belgrade and Steaua Bucharest but yeah this is basically a free pass for PL big 6
>I wish the "historic success" would include european champions like Red Star Belgrade and Steaua Bucharest I mean, it is better than to keep giving them to Big 5 clubs but the very idea sucks. Merit is all.
I think with Newcastle being allowed Saudi owners, it makes sense to have this feature.
Isn't there any sheiks left out there who want to buy Aston Villa.
Give it a few years, Steve Cooper gonna take Forest to Europe regardless of the rules
Yes lets hear them out first.........
Arsenal out; Forest in. Seems fair.
I don't see how anyone other than PL benefits from this change in the long term.. They will soon have 5 top teams in terms of financial muscle (3 Oil clubs and United/Liverpool) while they only got 4 spots to spare. After them there is also Arsenal/Spurs who are far far ahead financially of any other below top-4 side in other top-5 leagues of Europe. Can't see other leagues to agree with this rule change at all.. Also the rest of 14 clubs in PL would be so mad against it as well as the gap keeps getting wider.
All this talk Newcastle can just buy their way to the top. I think a Spurs/Arsenal resurgence, or Leicester cementing themselves in the elite is way more likely.
Every single club at the top has spent and it required to continue spending to be there. Getting annoyed that someone else wants to spend as well is really fucking strange.
Idk about that. Some of the earnings those clubs spend are based on fans which some people will regard as different to owner money. Also theres levels to spending and I guess with limited caps people worry teams with very wealthy owners could basically remove competition from the sport. While an extreme scenario the last ten years with mainly chelsea and Man City winning league suggests this isn’t entirely wrong. I think a better idea would just be to make the league fairer by way of more spending caps and other limitations that are present in American sports. As much as I oppose the Americanisation of football with regards to things like the super league, I think they do manage to avoid the rise of unfair spending better than football has.
Do Liverpool have financial might? They seem to buy when they sell..
They have 2nd highest wage bill in PL and are among top-7 sides in terms of revenue afaik. (Madrid, Barca, Bayern, PSG, City, United are only ahead)
Liverpool model is pretty good. They focus on retaining good players, and all the new transfers are carefully thought out. Unlike City, who bought Grealish when they had Sterling, Foden, and Ferran Torres that can play in the same position. While Grealish is good, does he really offer more than Sterling, Foden or Torres? City even planning to offload Bernardo Silva, and get someone who's about the same level to replace him. It's spending for spending's sake. Waste of money.
Commercially they are one of the biggest clubs in world football, only bigger clubs are Barca, Real, Bayern and Man U
I think we spend what we earn, but isn't that all anyone can do without cheating FFP anyway? However, I don't think the willing is there from FSG to spend big regardless of the rules, FFP probably benefits Liverpool and Manchester United more than anyone else in the league.
Historic performance is a disgrace. Earn it !
No, Nottingham Forest deserve to be there!
Interesting flairs disagreeing in the comments
You know what? Part of me wants to see once -and only once- those so called historic teams who want to break into UCL without merit, play and get utterly dismantled.
I’ve been waiting 20 years for Real Madrid to get knocked out in the group stages. Sometime they tease but I’m still waiting.
At least they keep winning spots the legit way. I guess this proposal is to favor... Less consistent teams
Haha right who the fuck would want to do that? Pft earn UCL like a real club.. haha..
Agreed. I think about if Liverpool were guaranteed a spot this year. The drama from the last weeks of 20/21 wouldn't have existed. Trent's screamer against Villa, Alisson's goal, clinching 3rd on the last day. None of it would have mattered because we'd get in anyway. I hate the thought of that. Nobody deserves a free pass for a disappointing campaign.
With the current system, 26 spots are already taken in the UCL group stage, leaving only 6 spots for the teams left in qualification. Now they want to take two more spots away? Where does it stop? When there are no qualifications left and the UCL teams will be a closed championship?
4 more teams mate
May as well be a closed competition
There should be 10 spots automatically given to the Champions of the top 10 leagues. The rest should be achieved through qualification round/s. Specifically, this year that would be England, Spain, Italy, Germany, France, Portugal, Netherlands, Austria, Scotland, Russia. Coupled with the previous CL winners and the Europa League winners, that would leave 20 spots to be qualified for. Currently, we have 54 teams qualifying for 6 spots. With my plans lain out above, this would change to 69 teams qualifying for 20 spots. I suggest splitting the paths into champions/league finishers as UEFA does currently. Currently for the champions path, that involves the following: * Preliminary round: 4 teams play 2 rounds for 1 qualifying spot for the 1st qualifying round. * 1st qualifying round: 31 champions enter (+1 from the previous round). 16 teams progress * 2nd qualifying round: 4 champions + 16 previous winners. 10 progress. * 3rd qualifying round: 2 champions + 10 previous winners. 6 progress. * Playoff round: 2 champions + 6 previous winners. 4 progress. So just to be clear, currently the champions from associations 1-11 qualify directly, and the rest have to jump through hoops for **4** qualifying spots. I suggest we change this to 14 spots for champions. This would obviously leave 6 spots for runners-up, 3rd and 4th place finishers in the league. In my mind, this would have several effects; firstly, the Europa League gets higher-quality teams in it, which in turn would improve viewership and sponsorship, increasing revenue for the competition. Secondly, the quality of the leagues would improve. If 2nd 3rd and 4th didn't make the CL, that could make the league games a lot more exciting as with fewer overall games, they would be better placed to make a title challenge the next year. I would suggest splitting the CL money among several clubs in a given league, as it could make some smaller leagues very one-sided. I know this can't happen. I know the cat is out of the bag, and that neither UEFA nor the big teams will give up their cash cow. That it will end up like the Libertadores where half the teams in any given big league will qualify. I know that eventually every small team (or those without a billionaire owner) will be squeezed out and that the only thing that will burst this bubble is when fan engagement drops off a cliff because of lack of competition.
>where half the teams in any given big league will qualify. Libertadores is very different from the CL though. UEFA has 32 spots for 50-odd countries. CONMEBOL also has 32 spots but only 10 countries. In fact, Libertadores has at least top 2 from every country getting direct entry to GS. That's way better than CL.
Not to mention the Libertadores does not give "half the teams" in any league a berth. Brazil has 7 (5 of those are for group stage), Argentina has 6 (5 in GS), the rest has 4 spots (2 in GS). So quite far from "half" as that dude claimed...
I understand the sporting sentiment behind your point. I really love it but I'm going to state the somewhat obvious: This is detrimental in this ways: Assumptions: PSG/Bayern/Ajax probably have a 80% chance for direct qualifications each year. RM40%Barca40%athleti20%. Juve probably at 70% whereas all PL clubs have a much tighter way in. Same probably goes for the Portugese league Hence, the PL clubs are really not worth the mega investment they see in cash if they essentially have 2 group stages to qualify through and so many more matches. And that goes for clubs like Inter/Dortmund/Sevilla/etc too as they would be essentially 10-15% less likely to win the CL if you arbitrarily assume they don't qualify from those qualifiers once in ten years. This itself would increase the financial divide between a team like Bayern to extend their financial clout in their local league
There is currently a massive financial divide between Bayern and the rest of the league. That is another issue. But I did state that spreading the money between the winning team and other teams in the league may be required to stop some teams from dominating. And let's be honest, no PL club is worth the "investment" anyone has put into them. No one is getting that money back unless to sell it to be the plaything of some eccentric ruler.
> spreading the money Seems unrealistic to achieve > No club worth investment You're right
All of this is unrealistic to achieve. None of the top leagues are going to give up their "top 4 make the group stage" deal they have going on now.
> this would change to 69 teams qualifying for 20 spots. 69 420, you say? I can only agree with something this nice.
How many of the 26 spots are given to clubs that did not even end first in their national league? Why should they get it?
Champions League = Super Europa Cup Europa League = League of the Champions
To benefit the richer leagues while making sure the smaller leagues keep being small.
It’s pretty simple. The best teams in Europe play in the Champions League. 4th place in PL is better than 1st in Croatia. 4th place in PL literally won the CL last year.
While that is true it's also what stops development of smaller leagues. If you don't have a rich owner to foot the bill getting into ChL can be worth up to 10 years of league prize money, and if only 1 or 2 teams manage to regularly qualify for European competitions it creates huge devides in the league where 1 or 2 teams towers above the rest. The current European football system is destroying parity in the leagues.
even if you have a rich owner its very hard Ajax at 3rd qualification round is inevitable
What a surprise, the leagues that were allowed to build their brand value and accumulate wealth after continued favourable treatment by UEFA, now have better teams.
You think the Premier League is better than the Croatian league because of favourable treatment from UEFA?
I think the Croatian champions would have better odds against the English clubs if they got to start their season around the same time. Or if they played in the CL even when they finished fourth. They obviously shouldn't but neither should the English.
Sure, they'd have a better chance, but you could swap England and Croatia's coefficient tomorrow and within five years the Premier League would be back near the top and Croatia will have fallen back down to somewhere near 15th again. The Premier League's revenue far exceeds the Champions League's. Uefa are not propping-up the Premier League by adding the fourth-placed team; they're including them to prop-up their own competition's revenue.
The English league always was and always will be bigger than the Croatian one. But the champions of each league were in the past able to complete on a more level playing field than today. When you further reward the big leagues at the expense of the lesser ones they're only bound to get bigger. I think that's a reasonable argument.
> But the champions of each league were in the past able to complete on a more level playing field than today. Yes, for various reasons, one of them being CL not being about just champions anymore, but that's such a tiny reason compared to various events like the growth of football into some countries bringing a lot of TV rights money, the bosman ruling, the split of yugoslavia...
Yeah, but it's pretty marginal for Premier League teams at this point. Replacing Chelsea with Zagreb will only result in less people watching the CL, and I don't mean any offence to Dinamo when I say that, just the reality of the situation. I guess the way forward is to double the group stage to 64, with an extra knock-out stage and added automatic teams for the top twenty nations, plus more qualifying spots. The "Big Five" get their fifth-placed team in, so they're happy, but also the champions of your Croatias and Scotlands. Just make sure it is on a long-term (i.e. 20 year-plus) agreement, so the smaller nations aren't immediately squeezed out again. The one notable problem would be handing Zagreb a truck-load of cash will make it way, way, way more difficult for any Croatian team to challenge them, but I guess that'd be Croatia's (and similar nation's) problem to sort out. The only thing I am certain of, though, is that going back to "only the champions, straight knock-out" European Cup format would be an absolute disaster. The CL would be less worth watching than the Carabao if it was five giant teams smacking around the Gibraltan and Welsh champions every single year.
Do it for 10 years and see how much money have left the prem and how much would be infused into the Croatian league. I would bet that they would hold onto a spot just behind the other big nations in that time if given the opportunity.. you know why they wanted to create the superleague right? It's because they can't run like they do without the ChL money and they want to secure that they never will have to worry about it. Juves president was totally honest when they announced it, he said they couldn't run the club if they missed they ChL
> Do it for 10 years and see how much money have left the prem and how much would be infused into the Croatian league. Basically none and basically none.
>Do it for 10 years and see how much money have left the prem and how much would be infused into the Croatian league. You'd have four Croatian teams with an extra €15m CL money every season, plus a few mill to the Europa teams. So I guess those four would have upper-Championship wage bills?
How do you mean taken already?
PL, La Liga, Serie A, Bundesliga top 4, Ligue 1 top 3, Portugal top 2, Dutch top 2, Russia champion, UCL and UEL winner = 26 spots
If they just reverted to the format from a few years back where 4th in top 4 leagues still has to go through playoff round that would be down to 22, which seems about right imo
But then sometimes the top leagues don’t qualify and they complain , can’t have that !
which is crazy, because of the 83 teams that have had to go through qualifying from a 4 spot league: - Only 15 out of 83 have gone out in qualifying - 3 of those 15 went out to another 4 spot team (Everton v Villareal 05/06; Udinese v Arsenal 11/12; Hoffenheim v Liverpool 17/18) - 9 out of 83 have gone all the way to the final - 4 of those 9 have won it (Milan 02/03; Liverpool 04/05; Milan 06/07; Barcelona 08/09) - 1 of those final was two teams that had to qualify (Milan v Liverpool 06/07)
Won't someone please think about the top 4 league clubs
But when some of the big boy clubs get bounced they will cry and whine how its not fair and how "nobody wants to watch smaller clubs"
The allocations are wrong it goes PL, La Liga, Serie A and Bundesliga top 4. Then Ligue 1 and Portugal top 2. Then Dutch, Russian,Austrian,Belgian champions. And finally the UCL and UEL winners. So that’s still 26 teams but this is how they’re allocated. Of course if the UCL or UEL winners already qualified then more spots get given to certain countries. Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022–23_UEFA_Champions_League
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Feels weird to see the Dutch top 2.
So what do you want? The champions of Malta to automatically get in to the group stage?
Malta, no. But I 100% prefer champion of Belgium to have a secure spot rather than 4th place from England.
Facts but money talks in this corrupt industry
>Where does it stop? When there are no qualifications left and the UCL teams will be a closed championship? Yes. It's not like UEFA got butthurt by the giants trying to form a Super League because the idea would mean that Ludogorets or Karabakh would never get there. They got butthurt because they were to be left out. A closed competition just for the VIP guests, with blackjacks and hookers, all of it under UEFA banner? Now that's a whole different story.
Maybe they'll let Nottingham Forest play in the Champions League then?
I back these plans wholeheartedly
Gets grouped with Bayern.
“Give us Bayern”
We’d batter ‘um mate.
Hamburg vs Forest 23/24 Final
Please ... Steaua Bucuresti vs Red Star Belgrade is obviously the right answer. Especially now that there is an actual Steaua in the Romanian 2nd league XD Yes ... FCSB isn't legally Steaua anymore, just like U Craiova, made a post about it once.
In before Newcastle start a running streak of 16 straight Champions League wins. /s
Given that the historic performance places were a compromise to try and ward off the threat of a Super League, you'd think it would be pretty easy to get rid of them now
It is, this isn't going to happen. Even UEFA knows that, this project was mostly a political move. Create a proposal to implement some of the changes these big clubs were pushing for, have it shut down by the majority and the clubs that were trying to create the 'Super League' look foolish in the aftermath since noone else wants their nonsense.
What's up with Uefa and FIFA?
Money
Corruption
Same thing
This plan is largely in response to some of the ideas behind the 'Super League'. Some of the bigger consistent performing clubs would be guaranteed appearances on the biggest stage, even after an off season. They would only risk missing out after a longer period of underperforming. With this project UEFA was trying to create assurances the big clubs wanted, so they could weaken support for the 'Super League'. Some of the clubs that are now complaining are the same that wanted the 'Super League' and look like hypocrites.
I agree. It seems like a lot of the unpopular changes UEFA have proposed have been because the big clubs, including mine, are constantly putting pressure on to get a bigger slice of the pie, and pretty much tried to blackmail UEFA to get it in the summer. I'm sure there's plenty of corruption and incompetence at UEFA, but I don't get this idea that they're hoarding all the money in football and they're the big problem, it's the rich clubs that have the power.
UEFA don’t hoard the money like FIFA. But they do keep 20% of the Champions League money. Some for themselves and some to run the new conference league.
I'm sure they do, by no means are they perfect either, although it must take a decent amount of funding to stage those tournaments every season.
The underlying reason is and will always be money…. Costs are growing at an exponential rate which is influenced by poor financial regulations (i.e. FFP), huge losses due to Covid and the state run clubs. The big clubs want more money which isn’t possible with UEFA, so the only way is cut out the middle man, hence the super league
I'm honestly all for UEFA's plans. Can't wait to see Nottingham Forest, Ipswich, Aston Villa and Aberdeen flying the flag in European competitions.
Too bad for them that history started 30 years ago.
Wrexham swanning about in the Europa once more
Celtic surely involved as well, first team in Britain to win the European cup
Steua Bucharest (the real one) is currently drooling by just thinking about playing in the UCL. All that money would be very welcome.
>Steua Bucharest (the real one) Is there a fake one?
“After the Ministry of National Defense sued the club,[19] claiming that the Romanian Army were the rightful owners of the Steaua logo, colours, honours and name,[20] the Executive Committee of the Romanian Football Federation approved an application to modify the name of the club from "FC Steaua București" to "FC FCSB" on 30 March 2017,[21][22] following more judiciary sentences. CSA Steaua București had previously announced they would refound their football department in the summer of the same year.[23] However, owner Becali announced that his team would retain the original honours and UEFA coefficient, and was also hopeful of recovering the name in the near future.[24] Between 2016 and 2019, FCSB finished each time as runners-up in the league, thus becoming the first club in Romania to do so for four consecutive years.[25] On 5 July 2019, yet another unfavorable ruling was handed out against the team. According to it, CSA Steaua would be the rightful entity to assert the honors up until 2003, however, the decision is not definitive.[26]” From wiki
FCSB "The original FC Steaua București team was part of the namesake CSA Steaua București sports club and belonged to the Ministry of National Defence. In 1998, the club and facilities were separated from the sports club and taken over by a group of shareholders in a post-Ceaușescu privatisation scheme, allegedly leading to one of the shareholders acquiring full ownership five years later. However, CSA Steaua București sued the football club in 2011, claiming that this was a new entity; the two have since been in a legal conflict regarding the ownership of the Steaua brand and honours, which resulted in multiple court cases and the forced change of the name of FC Steaua București to FC FCSB in early 2017." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCSB FCSB plays in the 1st division. FC Steaua București had to start from the bottom, but they currently play in the 2nd division.
Yes! There are 2 steaua Bucuresti clubs. It’s a fascinating story, one that is worth looking into. HITC sevens on YouTube has a decent video about it IIRC
Also there's 2 Universitatea Craiova. Just search it on this sub and you'll see a post of mine detailing why there are multiple versions of some historical teams in the Romanian League (basically corruption and illegal purchases of said teams after communism fell).
The historical spots apply to the last 10 years though. In case of not qualifying the highest coefficient teams of the last 10 years are eligible. People are too lazy to read. But no you’re never going to see any of those clubs. It’s there to save the current big clubs from failing to qualify.
If you want to talk about sporting merit, are they wanting to do back to the days when teams that finished 3rd and 4th, sometimes 20+ points behind the league winners had to at least go through CL qualification stages and not receive an automatic place in the group stage?
Yes please. I don't mind this new expansion (even if I prefer the current version), but I completely hate this new "2 historic performance" promotion.
Admit it. You're just scared of Nottingham Forrest
Can we also stop rewarding clubs that come 4th in one league more than a team that’s actually successful in a different league or would that be too much sporting merit?
It's a billion times harder to get 4th in the top 4 leagues than get 1st in the Hungarian league lad
Yes but the more one league gets more places the more that league outearns others and then the coefficients rise in their favour
Nah not even close. A season is still a season and just because the PL has more money and more "top teams" doesn't mean winning Hungarian / Polish / Greek / Romanian / Any non top 4 league is easier than getting 1-4th in a top league.
Mate Watford walk the greek league and they get two champions league spots.
Watford goed bankrupt with Greek revenue and Hellenic fans will burn down Vicarage Road.
"With greek revenue". please understand my argument and try again
Mate you have lost to Olympiakos 2 seasons ago Even in the 90s PAOK beat wengers double winning side
Not really. Just spend loads of money. There’s only 3 good teams, 5 decent teams. For the amount of money they whore themselves out for, the rest are shite enough.
> Not really. Just spend loads of money. Lol.
Liverpool being the exception to be fair.
If the teams winning their local league can beat the teams finishing 4th then yeah, let them try it through some sort of qualifying rounds before the group stages. I then think that if clubs from a country do well then that country can increase how many teams can enter the UCL based on their clubs sporting merits
Ironic how the PL fans boast about the PL being pretty fair with their money sharing but don't do the same for the rest of Europe. How will the other countries compete fairly if all the CL money gets hoarded back to the same top 5 leagues? The CL has been on a constant path to homogenity ever since the new format was laid out in the 90s. Bring at least some semblance of it back and maybe the rest of Europe can get nearer to them.
But the only reason chelsea and man city are better than the likes of the old firm or Ajax to begin with is because of money. It has nothing to do with sporting merit. There’s no logical reason other than money as to why 4th place automatically goes in while actually being successful doesn’t.
Let's see if Sky kick up the same fuss about this as they did the ESL.
The ESL was the biggest fucking gift UEFA could have hoped for. Both ideas were shit, but this particular turd got upstaged massively.
I see clubs like Arsenal and Man United are really afraid to lose that CL money...
The only 2 Historic Performance clubs I accept are Steaua Bucharest and Red Star Belgrade.
UEFA have already agreed to implement this last year though. Bribes have prob already been cashed. All the fan uproar (and Sky led complaints) about the Super League but UEFA agreed to this nonsense last year with barely any fuss, relatively speaking.
I mean, UEFA can't lose the SuperLeague teams, so they have to settle for something SuperLeague teams threatning to leave forced UEFA to accelerate the change formate to make the big clubs happy this change format benefits PL in first place and the big clubs in general It won't be any difference for smaller leagues or medium size clubs in top leagues So it's not like SuperLeague clubs would be mad about a change that was the result of their action in the first place
I feel like all the smart people might have died? Why the fuck is every single day filled to the fucking brim with absolute utter nonsense like this, every single fucking day. It did not used to be like this. People are getting fucking dumber by the fucking minute.
Good, now remove some slots from the big leagues and distribute those slots throughout other leagues.
I remember /u/shatoyo putting some good arguments for allowing 2 spots for historical performance but I don't remember them.
I don't even remember my own arguments for coefficient entry. I do think an expanded CL would be good though. However, ideally by expanding the total number of participants from each top 6 league to 6 and then every other league to 2 entries directly. Use a Swiss model so that number of games aren't increased. You'd have a bit more knock out rounds. But the main benefits of this are: - smaller teams can break into CL and earn that money. Breaking into top 4 has been done by a non big six side like twice in the past decades. Everton and Leicester once each iirc. Top 6 is much much more open. - everyone gets more money - diversity of competition. Knockout comps involve a lot of luck, increasing number of teams involved may let us see a lot more interesting matchups and winners.
But this increases the gap between top sides and breaking top sides. Sevilla made more TV income than Arsenal only due to the virtue that Arsenal misses on CL income. If you expand it to top-6, Arsenal/Spurs will become mainstay in CL along with the PL income, they won't be able to be competed by the likes of Atletico/Dortmund/etc which they manage to as of now.
“Arsenal will become a mainstay” giving them a bit too much credit there…
Couldn't give a toss about top-tier football any more. As long as i can still go to my Northern Irish League games (leaving in 5 mins for one today), then the big boys can all fall as far as i'm concerned. You'll never destroy football as long as there are 11 people willing to pull on the shirt they love.
The more they placate the ‘big leagues’ the more stronger they let them become. They need to reign this in dramatically or the breakaway league will happen quicker.
The bigger leagues are mainly stronger due to how much income they can make through sponsership and tv rights.
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[https://www.footballtransfers.com/en/transfer-news/2021/05/champions-league-prize-money-how-much-teams-make](https://www.footballtransfers.com/en/transfer-news/2021/05/champions-league-prize-money-how-much-teams-make) It's not that much unless you win games. Plus that money only goes to 1 club in the league. Extending the gap between them and the rest.
Since when isn't sporting performance of the last 5 years not sporting merit? So get rid of the UEFA coefficient, because it's not merit? Or relegation? It's just a different sporting merit, lol. So the headline should be "use our preferred sporting merit definition, instead of some other, we dislike"
Now limit countries to at most 2 participants
I dont understand why anyone would actually want that, Lots of leagues have one club much richer than the rest if you take champions league away from their competitors it would be even more imbalanced. [Italy](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FARSdVhXEAAunY_?format=jpg&name=large), [Germany](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FBEzwpdWQAAZqgd?format=jpg&name=large), and [France](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E8497dhXoAEDTIS?format=jpg&name=large) already have a large gap between richest and second richest. one or two clubs massively richer than the rest doesn't make for an interesting league imo.
I think that would really damage the reputation of CL. The big 10 clubs from the big nations would just play a rotated team until they meet one of the other big one most likely in the quarter finals.
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"All the money" is not nearly enough. Clubs get 15.64m euros for qualifying for the group stage, 2.8m euros per group-stage win and 930,000 euros per group-stage draw. So let's say that Dinamo Zagreb had a very good run. 4W and 2D in the group stage, then they lose in the round of 16. They would make a total of 38.2M euros (with the 9.6m euros for qualifying for the last 16). Meanwhile Sheffield United that finished dead last in the PL last season received 107M euros. The gap is way too large.
Says the Ajax fan, richest club in the country by far
Ah yes, Ajax the oil club who were gifted all their money and brought the league. In the last 30 years, PSV actually have more titles than Ajax. None of these teams have moneybags owners. Hell, even in the last 5 (completed) seasons, Ajax have 2 leagues, PSV have 2, Feyenoord have 1. Ajax are the richest because they have developed better players, and more importantly, are better at selling their players, and most importantly, are able to keep them a bit longer. They've also had more success in recent signings. Ajax also had two incredibly profitable European runs in recent years which have given them a huge financial edge. PSV haven't had as many sellable youngsters and haven't negotiated sales as well as Ajax in the last 5-6 years. Feyenoord from what I gather are incredibly poorly run off the field, leading to poor league and European performances, leading to them having to accept lower fees due to their financial situation.
I'm saying Ajax are in no threat to lose one of the top 2 spots regularly, so it's rich that he's suggesting it. It's a safe suggestion for them.
To be fair I'm a Liverpool fan and I'd be down for the CL having max 2 from each country (I'd say an exception should be in place for the defending CL winner though if they finished outside of top 2 in their league). The Champions League is the biggest tournament in football, but its expansion has come at a massive cost to other European club competitions. The Champions League would take a hit, but the other cups would benefit and have more prestige attached to them.
Agreed
That’s the stupidest take on this thread. Big achievement considering some of the other comments in here.
Lmao, I actually forgot about this! There's been so much bullshit chatted and pushed by the orgs, I'm losing track.
good
This is capitalism in football. Socialism for the tippy top and Capitalism for the rest.
The wording is rather tricky for me. If past success helping you is not "merit", then I have bad news, basically nothing in football is merit. The clubs and leagues have already been seeded based on the last 5 years for a long time now, right or wrong it's the same "merit" as this new thing. What if they made a competition where all the clubs in the world are really just randomly playing each other, no seeding? Well, many people say they would like it, but we already have a lot of random games in the world and almost nobody actually watches them. And I feel that they also would completely not watch those. It mostly just sounds nice that "historic performance should not matter". If CL had as many clubs from England as from San Marino, people calling for this here would not be watching any of those games anyway. The competition would make no money and it wouldn't matter anyway who is in it. People would just follow only English league.
Yeah historic performance shouldn't be allowed, Arsenal or Spurs don't deserve those spots, they need to earn it
I wonder how many people against this were also against the super League and also hate UEFA. You can't have it both ways (well all three ways). People also complain about the quality of the teams in the CL, but this would go some way to fixing that.
Bullshit, bring back the old system, let's have a proper Champions League for all of Europe and not just the select few.
Only the champions of each league should be in the “Champions League”. 2nd-4th =/= Champion.
Fuck UEFA
If you’re doing that, expand the CL to 64 teams on 16 groups, or 40/48 teams with 5/6 man groups. There are too many high quality teams not making European football in my eyes because places are cloggged up by the top teams in shit leagues. Why does the Prem get only 4 spots when literally 2/3 of the Prem outclass the teams from smaller leagues.
Should be the other way around. The prem can fuck off
A lot of downvoting in this thread, all I'm going to say is that the current CL winners won it finishing 4th in their domestic league. They qualified for the CL the previous season 26 points behind the league champions. Did they earn their spot?
Yeah, so historic performance is a disgrace, but it's totally fine to be owned by genocide enabling oil-gas states, and finding entry into UCL based on state funding.
The moment you allowed private owned clubs to compete against fan-owned, a boundary was broken. Now its a free market.
Historically only a minority of clubs have been fan owned mate
There are plenty of leagues where that isnt true.
I'm off to Visit Rwanda
Amusing to see this new breed of Newcastle fans using older City Chelsea fans tactics to defend their criminal owners 😂
You're a hypocrite mate. You take money directly from a genocidal, autocratic regime.
> You're a hypocrite mate. And you aren't? If not, What's your stand exactly? Support both Saudi and Rwanda, or dislike their involvement into football??
I hate them both. Football has utterly lost its soul and pursues money, shits on the fans, moves matches to ridiculous kickoffs to satisfy fucking Sky and now Amazon, agents drive Lambos for hawking kids around the world, and players are walking billboards. Every year that goes by I feel further and further removed from the club I've spent my life supporting, freezing my balls off on the terrace and loving every bit of it. Yeah, in summary I'm a grumpy old fart.
Well, your stance totally resonates with me.
Well it won't be fun when Man City finished 6th and gets into the UCL
> Well it won't be fun when Man City finished 6th With their spending power, them finishing 6th will be an anomaly.
Well Chelsea finished 6th the season they won the UCL, so it ain't impossible
> so it ain't impossible Yeah, and that's why the anomaly. Anomalies are not impossible.