Congratulations UEFA, your 'new' Champions League is already a joke

Paul Macdonald

• Updated: 3 Oct 2024 11:22 BST
• 6 min read

4-0, 4-0, 5-0, 7-1, 9-2... the Champions League is a competition that has only served to show how totally broken European football has become.

It should be something that, in the first instance, worries any producer or creator of content around football. But this is a football-wide crisis in the making.

Uefa’s much-vaunted Champions League revamp is barely two matchdays old, but this is a total and utter disaster, by any metric.

But it’s too soon, I hear you say. Give it a chance! It’s just started! And Real Madrid lost!

It’s never too soon to see the writing on the wall for a competition that was destroyed beyond repair in the first place.

1. European football and polarisation

Let’s address the most pressing point - the total disparity of quality and revenue generation across Europe. Make no mistake, Uefa is responsible for this and actively avoided confronting it beyond arbitrary FFP punishment that it couldn’t enforce in the end anyway.

But it’s never more obvious than when a domestically dominant side, one whose resources vastly outstrip their local competition, come to the big party and get utterly humiliated. Celtic and Dinamo Zagreb are kindred spirits in this regard; two absolutely unstoppable domestic sides who have only lost one league title each since 2011 and 2006 respectively.

Slovan Bratislava have won the last six Slovakian league titles, Red Bull Salzburg 10 of the last 11 in Austria, Red Star the last seven in Serbia, Young Boys six of the last seven in Switzerland, Club Brugge four of the last five in Belgium.

See a pattern? Small-to-medium countries are going through the most sustained period of one-team monopolisation ever, and it’s largely because they’ve been the side securing Champions League money, making it a self-fulfilling prophecy; they will always have more, so can always spend more, so can always stay ahead of their rivals (unless they seriously mess things up).

But on the European stage, they are laughably behind, losing by cricket scores to behemoths bounding over the top of them.

2. money > money » MONEY

There is having money, and then there’s having money, and the various stages of it rise quicker than ever before. The opportunity for a fluke win is still there but it’s now treated with such joy and, therefore, bizarre disrespect that it makes a mockery of virtually every contest.

This bloated group stage now has eight matchdays. Make no mistake, by the end of it City, Real Madrid, Bayern, Arsenal and Liverpool will be treating it like a domestic cup, a game to roll out the second string to give the regulars a bit of a break. Why, because the calendar is so destroyed - again, UEFA’s remit - that there’s too much football to play.

If UEFA had planned to make their flagship tournament a rest-stop for fringe players looking for a run-out, they’ve managed it, because this is exactly what will happen.

3. But there is PERIL, right?

There’s peril in this Champions League format in the same way that superhero movie fans think the protagonist might have died at the end; a brief moment of wonderment before we get back to normal.

It’s designed to be this way, to give a feeling that this is really great, and to give all the fans of the smaller teams the hope that they can go through, now that more teams can, and less go out.

It’s worked for the Nations League, it will probably work for the World Cup and it will work to a certain extent here because the weaker teams will play each other and, inevitably, win.

It gives a feeling of achievement to the weak. Like the entire idea of the Conference League did. But it does precisely nothing to resolve the massive inequality that is throbbing through football and what all of this rejigging of competitions will never resolve.

4. The UK coverage is what the product deserves

Despite what the cheerleaders and those who engage with football only through what’s chopped up and lobbed in front of them, CBS Sports’ coverage is utterly lightweight and drags two legitimately smart analysts - Thierry Henry and Jamie Carragher - down to degrading conversations about the host, Kate Abdo, and her husband.

It’s absolute bullshit, but compared to the asinine, lifeless TNT offering it may as well be up for an Emmy. Matt Smith is a really good broadcaster, but he’s like the substitute teacher trying to entice enthusiasm out of a classroom that’s been broken up for bad behaviour.

While James Richardson, James Horncastle, Julien Laurens and Raphael Honigstein played it up for themselves, and everyone, there were at least joyous cheers when a goal went in. But this is the deadest of dead programmes, a wake reconstructed as football TV.

And it’s one that can show the goals, something Sky’s Soccer Saturday have dreamed of for years… except, y’know, that game Amazon has live, which we need to pretend doesn’t exist.

5. We lost the Super League… for this

None of this is worth it for giving up what would have been a level playing field for the elite clubs.

No one is ready to hear it and it will almost certainly draw unlimited ire from pyramid fanatics, but this procession of glorified pre-season friendlies is not what TV companies want to pay for.

Champions League viewing figures in the UK have always been notoriously poor - it’s why Sky dropped it over 10 years ago. They are on another subscription view service in the UK - TNT - which has very little else to offer that football fans will actively pay for.

There is simply no way that their revenues will be sustainable based on viewing figures and that’s before this tournament gets REALLY boring before becoming interesting again.

At least in a Super League structure, you will be able to find some semblance of competitiveness, on a more moderate level playing field, which unfortunately makes most of the teams in the competition surplus to requirements.

Quite honestly, it’s probably better. But the argument for that is for another day.

For now, we’re stuck with another totally inadequate solution to a serious football problem.