Yours isn’t I suppose. Have you bothered asking any Little League people?
Changes in CL format
- Thread starter RedMachine03
- Start date
In thr last 10 years there have been 10 different finalists with only 5 different winners.
The last 5 years there have brreen two different winners.
What a great competition the champions league is.
The last 5 years there have brreen two different winners.
What a great competition the champions league is.
Nice posts, @FigmentOfYerImagination.
Not a massive fan of Baseball but I'd much rather watch a MLB team than a Little League one.
I agree with you too.
No, what you don't get is that with the rapid expansion of live football in the last 3 decades, the bigger teams in the bigger leagues get more money regardless of the CL.
Considering one team won 4 out of 5, obviously there's only been 2 winners in 5 years. But when was the last time a 3-peat happened in the CL?
Hint: Apple was just formed that year.
Can’t believe people want this to happen.
The BEST moment across all the top leagues in the last decade is Leicester winning. We need more of that
The BEST moment across all the top leagues in the last decade is Leicester winning. We need more of that
I don't think that comparing football to market capitalism is a healthy analogy, even if I accept that this is the direction that the modern football model has turned towards. Football having an equivalent Amazon monopoly club or a select group of oligarchic clubs is ultimately not what competitive football should be about, in my opinion. For example, I would like many more clubs than the current "Big Six" (even the name is patronisingly disgraceful to the other 14 clubs in the league) to have a realistic chance at the title and silverware at the beginning of each season. Football is not just about winning trophies, but every fan of every club should have the right to dream about improving their standing and winning trophies. The direction that football has been going in for the past 25 years has destroyed that, and it seems the pace of destruction is only increasing due to the asymmetrical relationship between the elite clubs and UEFA.
Obviously I'm a City fan, so an easy target here as I accept that City have only further restricted the potential of other clubs below us due to the ADUG takeover and the subsequently ridiculous spending spree. But actually I've seen this from both sides really. My first City game was in 1990, and prior to ADUG I had resigned myself to never seeing City win a trophy in my lifetime. Of course much of this was self-inflicted due to appalling management at the club, but now even a well-managed club currently in the bottom half of the Premier League is extremely unlikely to be able to sustainably compete with the Big Six in the near future under football's current structure and the grossly unbalanced revenue across clubs in the Premier League.
But I can see from your posts in this thread that we have diametrically opposite views of what football should be about, so I'm assuming you'll disagree with almost every word I've written! If you just want the elite clubs playing each other all the time in some sort of European Super League, then crack on, but I won't watch it or support it (even if City are "picked" to play in it).
I gather that this is a rather left-leaning forum and many people have socialist inclinations, but football has always been dominated by bigger clubs, which has very little to do with CL money.
As you say a smaller club can find it difficult to sustainably compete, but that was no different in the 90s before the explosion of the CL. Blackburn winning it was only made possible by their owner. In La Liga, Real/Barca have failed to win it 5 times since 1985.
Whilst City & Chelsea got their place in the "big 6" due to financial doping, the other 4 managed to do it with little outside capital, and there's little to stop a smaller club doing what Spurs has done.
Let them go. They would instantly lose domestic support for their elitarian attitude, their matches probably getting boycotted by fans from rival teams who see their chance to play in the CL taken from them for no reason. Their players could probably be expelled from UEFA leagues for being registered with a rival competition and thus not be allowed to partake in UEFA national teams or associated domestic leagues.
You can fight the trend if you want, thing is, UEFA and FIFA are run by people who are mostly into policies that fill personal wallets, rather than protect the interests of all football clubs and fans, despite being originally setup for that. Hopefully a Micheal van Praag type will take over in the future.
...You did actually read what I wrote before you concluded the opposite? I did even write that in capital letters at the end of the post you quoted?
Difference is I understand what it means. But what you completely fail to understand is that the number of fans does not create an entitlement to win anything in sports.
Sports is about everyone trying to compete to win. You’re of the opinion that if you own more you should be given more for free. Which is retarded, frankly. That you have a better chance at winning one on one due to purchasing better players is more than enough advantage.
There is no need to be able to buy a massive seeding advantage that reinforces that position further too.
I’m quite certain that is because you’re a self-centered person who supports a team that has benefitted from big money. You have come to conclude you are entitled to winning.
I support Ajax, financialy the biggest team in the Netherlands. But I fear the day no other team can compete in the domestic league because of the financial gap. I was very happy with AZ and FC Twente winning the national title with a much smaller budget years ago. Breaking the hegemony of the big three (Feyenoord, Ajax, PSV) and Vitesse coming close to it at one point. Why? Because domestic matches were getting boring. If you are likely to win everything, where is the satisfaction of defeating an opponent if you are bound to win by default?
What is the fun in facing demotivated teams who just park the bus because they are scared shit of your players? What you want is an open match of equal opportunity that entertains you and where a win is earned by hard work, not by bullying. Personally I’ve been watching matches less and less because of the lack of competition against us domestically, while internationally most years we are the only Dutch team that can try to compete. Not financially, because even Lyon is five times as big. But because we train young players to be able to beat up bully teams with teamwork. And people across the world love that. We’re the loveable underdog in Europe, but domesticaly we are the bully with literally up to 200x the budget of other teams. Luckily those other teams still stand a chance to win in cup football though. Because one bad cup match and you’re out and someone else can dream of winning. It invites smaller teams to give it their all and those matches are much more fun to look at, with amateur teams beating prof-teams at times (!).
You though want to remove any chance of that.
Basically, seems to me you’re scared shit of your team actually having to compete for that money and standing the risk of losing out on the big money year in year out.
Yeah... you really don’t understand fair play, the idea behind nor fun of competition in sports, nor the financial history of teams and that back in the day teams were not just domestic, but made up of locals with a normal day job. The beginning of the era of Cruijff still had half the Ajax team working as for example cigarette store salesman.
The Bosman arrest changed everything and made big teams explode in power, making it far less fun to watch for most fans in favour of the happy few.
Right. So cute to miss the point on purpose, but it just reinforces the point that you've got an arrogant snob attitude that makes you prejudiced and belittle people by snubbing at them. But hey, looking down at other people and disrespecting them, that's clearly your perogative, fair enough.
But if you would "rather watch MLB", is that why you're watching every match in some random other 'big' league?
Or isn't it true that you're watching about as many 'big league' matches as you watch regular Norwegian domestic league matches? Namely (next to) none because it has no personal interest for you? Now, I can understand you get an occassional whif of some big derby match from another league, but that's about it. I can't honestly see you watch every Barça match or every Juventus match. In fact, I'd predict your care level is about 0.1% of any game your own team plays regarding the outcome of those matches when you do see them.
Why should or would any (to stick with the previous example) Lithuanian want to see Barça every few weeks on their screen when they could have had their local heroes on there instead? Would you give up on every single potential match of your own team (as in, you get to see no matches of the team you support in an international setting) just to see more say... Brazilian top 4 clubs?
Why would you care if you have no connection with those four teams? Why should you be forced to watch that ever year for the rest of your life instead of the team you really want to see succeed? Or at least see them try to succeed?
The answer is: No. You would not want to watch Brazilian top 4 club football for the rest of your days, because you simply don't care for them. Sure, you might at most want to see an exceptional goal that went viral, but beyond that, zero f's given. Regardless of how well they play in comparison to your team. Hence your analogy falls flat.
The big problem in your analogy is perspective: consider that you rather watch MLB, because your team is already a member of that MLB. And you just made relegation impossible to protect your team's interests: now they can't ever fail to the point of moving down a step. At the same time denying any other team a chance to move up a step. But that's okay, from your perspective, because "wouldn't those people that support a club that could move up not just rather watch my team? After all, I like watching my team, so therefore should everyone else like watching my team over watching their team."
That's just arrogance to the point of narcissistic delusion.
You feel entitled to seeing your team and therefore cannot relate to people who do not have that entitlement, you simply cannot comprehend their sentiments and emotions. Therefore you don't care about the people supporting Little League wanting to see Little League teams duke it out. Would you, seeing your own team play in the MLB on a regular basis, rather watch MLB? Sure. Do people who have no stake in any MLB team want to watch anything other than the occassional exceptional bits? Sure, they might want to see an occasional big derby. But do they want to watch that all the time over watching their own team? No.
Be honest, most of the time you're only watching domestic league matches involving your own team. Subsequently you watch the matches that threaten your team's position in the league. You only spare a relative minimum amount of time for watching other teams from other leagues and that time is then allotted to the matches with the most interesting highlights potential.
And that's fine. However, where you go wrong is to think that everyone is content with the situation that they can't watch their team because they are forced to watch yours as their teams are scrapped from the competition for no reason other than that your team comes from a territory with more potential viewers in it.
And you miss out on this, because your team participates on a regular basis and when it didn't, it still had a relatively high chance to participate, so you figure "okay, maybe not this year, but then next year".
This is NOT the situation for people rooting for "Little League" clubs. They cannot compete fairly and this results in resentment and anger at the corrupt system that lets your - to them - 'ffing uninteresting club hog all the attention.
Are you really waiting to see Hoffenheim rank 3rd in the Bundesliga and getting to watch them play in the CL next season? No. No, you couldn't care less to see them.
So do you honestly think anyone in Europe was dieing to watch Tottenham Hotspur (ranked 3rd PL), Liverpool (ranked 4th PL) CL matches?
Do you honestly think they were happy to give up their chance to see their own domestic league winner take on big teams in their own hometown?
Do you honestly think they were happy to give away free millions to the number "Entirely Uninteristing" of the English Premier League instead of taking it home to invest in their own league?
Would they seriously argue "So hey, listen, you got a million domestic supporters and we got 400.000 right? So sure, it only makes sense that you should win, we shouldn't even be looked at in contrast to your divineness. So here, have all the money and fame and glory. Also, here, take our best players so we can't watch them in our hometowns and can't see them play for our own teams and defend our interests anymore."?
Really?
You've got to be fricking kidding me.
Why on earth would someone in Lithuania want to watch their «local heroes» instead of the likes of Real et al? In my 30 years I’ve attended a grand total of TWO live matches in the Norwegian Premier Division.
Rules to remember: no adult images or videos; mind your language; criticise the post not the poster; remain respectful to other posters;
In this situation, the attitude of the poster towards others is the foundation of the arguments used and is circular in that it requires the attitude for the argument to make sense. So unfortunately it cannot be avoided in this case.
After all, the root cause everyone on both sides of the argument agree with is:
Locality provides more fans, more money, creates a domestically bigger club -> Big clubs beat smaller clubs -> big team becomes richer, bigger, smaller team becomes smaller, sucked dry of talented players -> big clubs go to tournament that brings in more money, smaller teams get no extra external revenue -> big clubs get even more powerful in comparison -> small teams are even less capable of beating big teams
Now, there are those with an interest of breaking this circle and those with an interest in maintaining it. The argument to reinforce it is rooted in purely personal interest and a complete denial of other interests however. A complete disregard and disrespecting of other people.
The argument is based on attitude: "I support a big team, my team is in this league. Why should I watch small teams or give them a chance? Instead, we should reinforce big clubs and prevent them to fail against small teams, because they have more fans and therefore more chance to win anyway, so what's the point of playing small teams? Everyone wants to see that because after all, there are more fans of big clubs and I, as a fan of a big club, will now speak for everyone else who isn't and tell them what they really want or should want to see."
I would also like to point out that the person quoted made an unsollicited denigrating ad hominem trying to undermine character using my forum name earlier. I have 0 respect to give to this person and remained pretty damn civil all things considered.
I would also like to point out you didn't single out Cal when he insulted Lithuanians (and with them everyone else from smaller nation leagues who don't stand a chance to partake, pretty much on the basic of ethnic (numerical) superiority. Aka racism...).
But you're right, I should be respectful to racist, elitist attitudes in arguments and not point out prejudice so people can realise they have them and deal with their prejudices, rather than feel insulted by being pointed out they have prejudices.
I very much doubt more Norwegians have a season ticket for Madrid than they do for Molde FC.
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Obviously not, but that’s down to pure logistics. Most people want to see top quality football and world class athletes, not amateur leagues.
Has Real or Barca lost any domestic support for their elitist attitude in expecting most of the TV money in the last decade or 2? People have little interest in football teams in their own country other than their own. Will United fans be more inteested in Spurs in the CL or Real in the CL? There's no indication that domestic rivals are bigger draws than European rivals.
They may aim to protect the interests of football clubs and fans, but not all football clubs are equal and some have thousands time more fans than others.
I'll re-quote what you said:
No, the focus on the big teams is because they have lots of fans themselves.
If anything United have suffered a lot with the influx of oil money into Chelsea and City, so I don't see what you're moaning about.
We don't live in a communist system. The bigger clubs have always had an advantage due to their bigger fan base.
You'd have to ask the Juve/PSG/Bayern fans.
You clearly have a strange notion of fair play, and don't give me the good old days nostalgia.
I think you'll find most people want to see people they relate to try to succeed as they identify with them. Such teams represent them on the field.
Hence why most people support a local team and why derbies are more frequently and passionately visited and experienced.
That doesn't mean that what you describe doesn't exist. A lot of other people support teams that are successful (also to associate themselves with success), but then there's usually still something they can relate to, like nationality or a specific player. I'm also sure there are people for who just the quality of football is essential to what games they're watching, but to suggest they're the majority and people can identify with just about any team they have nothing in common with is a valid generalisation, that I don't consider justifiable in fact.
Top quality football and world class athletes can indeed be fun to watch and can definitely be appreciated, but if you can't relate to them, can't root for them, the interest dwindles. If what you are saying is true, then nobody would be watching domestic league football anymore and instead of say Eredivisie (which is quite argueably of lesser quality), we'd all be watching Premier League, Seria A and La Liga. Instead, we hardly get highlights of it and the decoder matches aren't that well rated: people aren't willing to pay for it (as they have no emotional investment in these teams).
Instead, hardly anyone I know watches foreign league matches on a regular basis (I know of only one, and then only Barça matches as he's got part Catalan roots), while domestic league and cups are the talk of the town. I work in a company where most people support NAC, because most are Breda locals. Half my family is from Amsterdam, the other half is from Deventer. You can be assured I'd rather watch Go Ahead Eagles try to win and draw or lose than watch any Juventus or Valencia match. Emotional detachment for the latter teams is infinitely greater and nobody follows their achievements unless it's rubbed in their faces. Virtually nobody buys their merchandise unless for tourist reasons.
To me and I would argue based on observation, seeing Liverpool, Atletico, Bayern Munchen, AS Roma or PSG play is of equal desinterest as long as they're not playing against a team I can somehow relate to. The only time I cared for a Tottenham match for instance was when NEC drew 1-1 against them. And then only because it was good for the national ranking coefficient.
Now, I won't speak for you to say that this is how you (should) feel, but I'm quite confident to argue you're not in the majority. As it goes against all my observations, I'm not sure where you get your statistics to base your claim about what most people want to see on.
Have you seen domestic and worldwide reactions to Real losing? No? May I suggest you look up some reactions...
And now that's commercial interest speaking, not fairplay. Since when is argueing "I have more supporters, so my team should win the cup and your team can't participate" a fair argument?
That's entitlement from wealth, not equal playing field. That's not even capitalism as you assert or free market with fair competition, that's a form of crony feudalism or oligarchical monopoly, where the elite gets priviliged treatment and they pay off the people that keep them in power, while accrueing more power.
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At this point in time, Ajax played way more matches than any other CL team to get to the position they are. Ajax having been No.2 in the Dutch league last year of course and thus IMO should not have been there at all (should have been a champion from another European league). Unfortunately PSV is lousy in European matches and it's up to Ajax to keep the European coefficient of the Netherlands in a position where we can partake at all as a nation. We ran the risk of not having any team in the CL this year and our national ranking is still contentious to the point we might lose not just direct access to the CL, but indirect access becomes more problematic as well. Making it impossible to easily get points from poule rounds as a guaranteed spot in the CL gives as you're not guaranteed as many matches to try for points and the CL points are worth more than EL points.
At this point in time, Ajax, being the sole internationally financially "competitive" team (even if someone like Bale earns as much as the entire Ajax team), is solely responsible for over 66% of the points accrued for the Dutch league in recent years. Historically though we had at least three Dutch teams compete very competitively for the various European Cups every few years. Particularly prior to the Bosman Arrest and reworking of the CL and Europa League, but even so a few times after that. In fact, there were 16 Dutch cup wins (10 by Ajax) and quite a few finals made.
England, with a four times as big population, got 40 cup wins in total spread over 13 teams. By population ratio, we're thus more competitive than you. However, we're hardly allowed to participate anymore and we're being obstructed as a nation by arbitrary rules benefitting teams from among others, England who get free CL points and millions by being awarded free positions.
As a consequence, our, and every other small nation's tv-money for European cups is redistributed to the benefit of nations with more teams. As pay-out is based on a participation basis. This has the consequence that they have the money to increase the existing gap. It's a vicious circle that benefits only a small amount of fans structurally on the whole.
How is that fair?
Mind, we're still in the top 10-12 of European leagues according to UEFA. I can only imagine how disheartening it must be for even smaller nations and leagues than ours. Like Scotland (4 cup wins) or Serbia (2 cup wins).
Some champions first have to get through 3 knock-out rounds, while some No.4 is allowed in directly for no reason other than ethnic demographic discrimination. How exactly you consider this fair is beyond me. "Clubs that have more fans" is an argument ad populum fallacy. If a team competes well, it should be able to advance and be rewarded. Not barred because they've got fewer people living in their vicinity and that fact of life would make them less commercially attractive for a third party (UEFA officials) to make profits off.
Football shouldn't be about commerce. If commercial relevance by supporters crowd size would be the sole, most important reason why one is allowed to partake and win, then stop bothering supporting any other club than the one with the most money, cancel all competitions and just hand them a "champions forever" plague and stop wasting everyone else's time.
Which is what I said, but I also stated these nations are targeted, because they have a wider domestic audience who might have national interests in watching a team from their country succeed. But that's not a basis for fair attribution of privilige.
That's a commercial gains optimalisation argument based on demographic discrimination. It's about empowering those who already had an advantage unfairly over others by means of redistributing/funneling the overall external revenue from Europewide broadcasting rights towards a very narrow section of Europe where there are more domestic fans.
You should realise this isn't fair to other teams and nations and that this process is hated throughout Europe.
This isn't an argument about United, but United has profited greatly from the CL setup and subsequent merchandising.
But that didn't always mean they got a seat in the finals from the start.
No, I don't need to. Maybe you should. And while at it, ask some other people, like Danish, Norwegians, Belgians, Austrians, Turks, Greeks, Albanians, Poles, Swedes, Fins, etc. how they feel about potential exclusion from participating on big tournaments.
Nice ad hominem and strawman.You clearly have a strange notion of fair play, and don't give me the good old days nostalgia.
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I don't want to get into my political views, because it's irrelevant to this conversation, but I certainly am able to compartmentalise football and sport more generally in terms of what I think is the best long-term model for the health of the game. For me, a healthy game is a competitive game, which requires more of a level playing field than we have now. United's revenue, for example, is over 5 times that of the smallest club in the Premier League. That's a problem season on season, particularly given the impact of FFP on smaller clubs' ability to spend. The Premier League loves to spread this narrative that "anybody can beat anybody" and that's what makes the league great, but this narrative is becoming increasingly false -- the bottom 3 have lost 31/31 against the Big Six this season.
I disagree that football has always been like this. The gap between rich and poor is wider than it's ever been, and that gap is only growing. There are plenty of examples in the past of clubs coming from lower divisions and achieving success quickly through excellent management. Off the top of my head, I can think of 1) my own club, City, getting promoted in 1965/66, and then winning the league in 1967/68, FA Cup in 1969, etc.; 2) Forest getting promoted in 1976/77, winning the league in 1977/78, and then two European Cups; 3) Derby getting promoted in 1968/69 and winning the league in 1971/72 and 1974/75. The reality is that this could never happen now. Indeed, it's probably impossible for even a mid-table Premier League club today to achieve sustainable success due to the revenue differential, and even any short-term against the odds success will soon be stopped because the Big Six are able to poach the best players and managers immediately from them.
Modern football has changed with the advent of the Premier League and the Champions League. It has allowed the creation of mega clubs who earn considerably more revenue each season than everyone else. Almost all of the changes to the Champions League over the years, and current change proposals, aim to lock-in guaranteed revenue for the elite clubs to maintain competitive advantage. What excites me is not repetitive glamour ties between the elite clubs, it's genuine sporting competition.
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Fantastic posts here from @FigmentOfYerImagination
I just can't understand how some fans actively wish for a smaller pool of big fish. Football is all about competition and these people want to reduce the competition further?
I just can't understand how some fans actively wish for a smaller pool of big fish. Football is all about competition and these people want to reduce the competition further?
Jog on snitch
@FigmentOfYerImagination and RoboCop for UEFA president.
Funny thing, those who defending this, not even surprised by them.
It's the usual suspects.
It would be unfair to expect anything else.
So Real are a bit like United, loved or hated, never ignored, that’s why they are one of (probably the) biggest clubs.
Having more supporters generally leads to bigger profit, simple market economics. Let’s clear one thing first, there’s been so many views in this thread, are you against the proposal? Are you against the CL in its existing format? or are you advocating a return to the European Cup days?
I think you'd find the domestic audience probably have more interests in watching a team (except their own) from their country fail. Why would any United fan want City, Liverpool succeed?
Same goes for Spanish fans, would Real fans be rooting for Barcelona now? 
So what are you advocating for? Uefa give the San Marino FA as much as they do the Italian FA to ensure fair distribution? At the moment those who succeed get more money, there's nothing stopping the Lithuanian champions from making it to the final (except their ability as a team).
The proposal does include a promotion and relegation system, there's no guaranteed spot.
As above, there ARE ways to get into the competition!
Because I'm a United fan more than a football fan.Fantastic posts here from @FigmentOfYerImagination
I just can't understand how some fans actively wish for a smaller pool of big fish. Football is all about competition and these people want to reduce the competition further?
Ah, I remember you saying in the past you want to move away from the shared income model the PL has currently, in favor of letting United keep all it's TV money.
Well thankfully, the charter of UEFA doesn't serve United at the detriment of the sport on the continent.
I'd love to see the PL TV deal broken up for individual deals.
What you want is to make football as boring and as predictable as it could possibly be?
United winning isn’t boring.
No, I want the best for United with little regard for the rest of the football world.
Well said.
City winning is hot right now.
Crazy line of thinking, guys. The joy of winning would soon wear off if there was no real competition.
Just look at the feeling we had a few weeks back overcoming the odds to beat PSG. Why would you want to do away with that?
Huh? You'd rather the occasional thrill of overcoming the odds than the type of domination Sir Alex brought us?
There would still be competition, United aren’t the only big club around.
My favorite league title is probably the third consecutive in 2009 - utter domination
Not at all, I want us on top of course, but I wouldn't want a Celtic or PSG situation. Pointless League football every season.
Yes there are other super clubs. All we are saying is the super clubs shouldn't keep getting more leg ups over other clubs as it will just widen the gap and make the overall competition weaker.There would still be competition, United aren’t the only big club around.
My favorite league title is probably the third consecutive in 2009 - utter domination
I think we don't have to worry about that with City and their oil money.