Much more fun watching the champions of Lithuania or whoever than the 2nd placed team from Spain.
To Lithuanians, it definitely is. You're not saying Lithuanians are too inferior a people to deserve being allowed to root for their own teams?
Viewers prefer to have an emotional stake in watching their team defeat other teams. Are you really more involved in watching the 4th placed Spanish team play the fouth of Serie A, than you are seeing your own team or countrymen play say... "the champion of Country X"? I bet you only watch the highlights of the first, if that.
Unless the results of the game had been epic. Like how Real Madrid - Ajax was received and made headlines all over the world, exactly because it was a high rated Spanish team being kicked out by a supposedly chanceless team. Will you remember a 3-0 win by Tottenham over Dortmund from that same night, or a 1-4 victory over Real Madrid by a small team nobody thought could win because of having a tenth in budget?
Sadly arrogance leads bigger countries to think they're automatically entitled to a bigger share of the pie to the point the rest can't even get to fight over the crumbs, because they're not allowed to participate. In the real world, this is called corruption. In the minds of people like yourself, it's "only logical that superior competitions get superior representation and superior parts of the pie to ensure we not just stay, but become even more superior".
How would you feel if your country's teams could never even attempt to play for the biggest cup in Europe? Just for fun, imagine no Spanish, Italian or English teams participating in Europe for 20 years. Imagine you being a fan having to root for teams you have no personal connection with whatsoever, no rivalry towards whatsoever. Now imagine living in one of these small countries and being snubbed at, because you haven't won anything in 40 years, even though you havn't been allowed to participate in 40 years because you're too small. It's a case of the rich enriching the rich and trodding on the little guy.
Knock-out cups are fun, exactly because cup fighters can rise above themselves over two matches, which they likely couldn't repeat in a longer competition. Hence why we have Willem II (position 10/18 in the Eredivisie) in the Dutch cup finals and a team like Calais RUFC (sadly Calais RUFC, a team in 2000 consisting of teachers, dock workers and office clerks) made it to the French cup finals in 2000 (lost to Nantes 1-2, despite leading 1-0). Bankrupt, Calais was liquidated in 2017 over a few hundred thousand debt.
But yay we get to see teams with half a billion in debt win in the CL in no small thanks to buying players with their massive, unchecked debts. Debts that nobody adresses despite "financial fairplay"! Such funs for the neutral observer that corrupt money wins by default... Great messaging too:
"If you're not rich, you don't matter".
"If you're not already entitled, don't bother, because you're not going to be given a chance to succeed."
"Nobody likes you because you're poor/small."
"If you don't already have a tradition of winning, why should you become one of the potential winners?"
"If you're from nation X you're a lesser person than if you're from nation A."
"Everyone's equal, but Brits, Italians and Spanish are more equal."
That's what sportsmanship is about according to you, right? Who got the most money? Should we also just tell 95% of the Olympic contestants to sod off then? Because hey, who watches the Olympics when non-rich people can partake?
Anyway. The idea of these bigger CL groups is simply to ensure that the teams with most money stand a better chance of not being knocked out due to a fluke failure. The less matches there are, the less chance they have of correcting their point losses and the more unpredictable results will be. Predictability is bad for emotion. I would say this change is a horrendous proposal designed to stifle competition. It's another Coup d'État by the bigger teams, possibly a Coup de Grace for smaller clubs who'll have no chance left to compete. Even if they manage unicorn epic wins against a team they normally wouldn't beat considering finances.
Awful idea. Champions League for champions I say, both big and small. Knock-out rounds only. No preferential seeding. Pure chance.
fair enough