Cup giant-killers such as Scotland’s Gretna or Germany’s St Pauli look set to have their dreams dashed of one day playing the mighty Real Madrid in the Champions League.
UEFA president Michel Platini’s plan to award domestic cup winners a berth in Europe’s elite competition is due to be shelved following opposition from the top leagues and clubs. But did anyone ask the fans what they thought?
Surely for most English fans at least, soccer is all about that boyhood dream of winning at dreadful grounds on rainy Tuesday nights in order to walk out on the hallowed turf at a sun-drenched Wembley in May?
That vision is echoed by Platini in his plan. “Soccer is inclusive and should not be exclusive. It is the game of the people,” the former France international told me recently. But his idea seems to have fallen on deaf ears.
In return for achieving his ultimate goal of allowing more champions and clubs from less high-profile countries into the lucrative Champions League pot, he looks set to ditch his cup winners formula for at least a couple of years.
The decision comes after the likes of the English Premier League and Barcelona said it would “devalue the competition”. Devalue it for who? The sponsors? The billionaire owners? Or as Roy Keane put it - the prawn sandwich brigade?
Would the innovative idea help a competition that has in some people’s view become stagnant and dominated by the few? The leagues and clubs say the fans are the most important people in the game, but is this really true?
Platini has been having discussions with supporters groups and plans to give the fans a seat on his new strategic committee - the inner top table at UEFA - in the next few years. Then they will have to listen.
Darren Ennis, Brussels
PHOTO: UEFA President Michel Platini during a visit to the St. Jakob-Park soccer stadium in Basel October 4, 2007. REUTERS/Michael Buholzer
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6 comments so far
I’m happy that the idea with the cup winners entering the competition has been abandoned. Not because I would despise a Champions League with a greater variety of teams, but because it would actually be the worst thing to happen to smaller clubs in the Bundesliga.
The DFB Cup in Germany has a great history of upsets and that’s also thx to its format (pure knockout: 90min + 30min + penalties and only the first round is seeded). Yet, along with one great minnow coming through, there is usually also one of the big guns like Bayern or Bremen making it to the final. And the final is almost always won by the big club and not by the minnow. The great thing about the current format is, that the runner up gets the UEFA Cup spot, if the winner already qualified through the league. This has given many lower end of the table Bundesliga and even second division sides a once in a lifetime European adventure. With the new format, the runner-up gets nothing. And the German league already contemplated about changing the format of the cup to favour the big clubs, had Platini’s plans come to fruition.
- Posted by JanI couldn’t agree more, Jan. If Cup competitions give a chance of entry to the Champions League it won’t be long before the big teams insist on the format being changed to suit them. They will also take the competition far more seriously than they have done in the past, meaning fewer upsets, and the likes of St Pauli getting nowehere near the semi-finals. Bring this sort of measure in and you’ll see the same handful of clubs contesting the semi-finals in each country, year after year.
- Posted by KevinThe fundamental problem is that almost every country in Europe now has a 2-tier league - and the Champions League riches are making those divisions deeper. In England, the question in recent years has been which of 3-4 clubs is going to win the title, and which teams are going to finish 5th/qualify for the UEFA Cup. I’m not convinced that the Cup Winner is the ideal solution - but it would be a start as there needs to be some way of narrowing the financial gap so that there are more than 4 teams in each country with a realistic chance of winning the league. Perhaps there should simply be a number of “wild cards” (e.g. 4) for cup winners/near qualifiers - but done in a way that doesn’t automatically exclude less traditional teams. One could argue that these exclude countries which already have 4 quaified teams (E.g. England, Italy & Spain). The other option would of course be to reduce/freeze the amounts that teams receive for Champions League particpation and spread the money more evenly in the respective national leagues.
- Posted by roger[...] Darren Ennis placed an observative post today on Champions League dream looks in tatters for Gretna and Co.Here’s a quick excerpt:Surely for most English fans at least, soccer is all about that boyhood dream of winning at dreadful grounds on rainy Tuesday nights in order to walk out on the hallowed turf at a sun-drenched Wembley in May? … [...]
- Posted by www.soccersecrets.info » Champions League dream looks in tatters for Gretna and CoWhy would we want to see mediocre (not to say crap) teams in the Champions League? What’s wrong with the concept of an elite competition? We should be limiting the access, shouldn’t we?
- Posted by LondonThe problem with an elite competition in football is, that you need money to be elite. The money is only in the Champions League. A crap Champions League performer like Hamburg last season, can lose almost every match, end up fourth in the group and cash in €15m for this effort (plus ticketing etc.). Sevilla got around €6m for actually winning the UEFA Cup.
- Posted by Jan