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Champions League reforms threaten the soul of European soccer

Clubs like Villarreal will face a more difficult climb to reach the quarterfinals in the future. Sven Simon/Sip.

Decades ago, the World Cup was seen as the pinnacle of professional soccer. The tournament is still revered as the sport’s greatest jamboree, but there is common agreement that the Champions League is now where the careers of the very best are defined. Just look at Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, neither of whom have won a World Cup, but have been crowned European champion multiple times.

Indeed, the Champions League showcases European soccer at its most eye-catching. It pits the sport’s biggest clubs and best teams against each other and produces memorable moments season-on-season. Yet UEFA and many of its member clubs want to change the format beyond all recognition.

Members of the European Club Association (ECA) are set to lobby UEFA to allow teams to qualify for the Champions League on the basis of their coefficient. This would favour historically successful clubs and would provide them with a safety net to prevent them falling out of the Champions League following a bad season.

This proposal isn’t too far removed from the Super League proposal that was thrown out so emphatically and protested against by fans across Europe. It is against the essence of competition and the sport itself to award qualification places in such a way. Those at the top of European soccer don’t seem to care, though.

“We talk about being inclusive in football, that means to give all the teams the opportunity to get there,” David Moyes, whose West Ham team might be impacted by the new Champions League format, said recently. “If a smaller side won it, we’d expect to be treated the same way. Maybe if I was at a top-six regular, would I want that? I don’t think most people see that as the correct format to go. It should be on merit.”

Plans to reform the Champions League have already been approved by UEFA. The current format of a multiple groups of four teams followed by a knockout stage are set to be ditched from the 2024/25 season with teams instead pitted against 10 different opponents, half of the fixtures at home and half of them away. 

A single league table will determine which teams qualify for the round of 16, but not every team in that single league table will have played each other. This will result in a lopsided ranking, although UEFA contends the new format will mean more teams have more to play for until the final round of the first stage.

Part of the brilliance of the Champions League in its current form is in its simplistically. The tournament has used the same format for the past two decades and generally ensures that the best teams progress to the knockout rounds, where the real drama is generated. It’s a tried and tested formula that is used across the board in tournaments like the European Championships and World Cup.

It’s not just that the proposals to reform the Champions League compromise the essence of competition, they risk making the tournament overly convoluted. UEFA must look at how the format of the Nations League has been universally unpopular with supporters – is that really want they want for the Champions League, their most prestigious club competition?

Fans believed they’d protected the soul of soccer by forcing clubs to ditch their commitment to the Super League, but it’s become clear that the core concept of the ill-fated proposal has merely been adopted by the Champions League and UEFA, fearful of another breakaway attempt in the near future. 

Paris Saint-Germain and ECA chairman Nasser Al-Khelaifi has publicly pondered whether further changes could be made to the Champions League. “I can’t understand how the Super Bowl (can feel) bigger than the Champions League final,” he said in a recent interview. “The Super Bowl, and the US generally, have this mindset, creativity and entertainment.”

Al-Khelaifi’s comments might be offensive to the purists, but those who truly care about the sport have much more to worry about than the Champions League final mimicking the Super Bowl. There is also more than just one competition at stake. New ideas should be embraced, but not when they could fragment the foundation of the sport as the proposed reform of the Champions League threatens. The clubs pushing the plan forward will take a mile if they are given an inch.

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