The Champions League: A new dawn or will only the richest win in a more lucrative way? | Champions League

Oonce again, with the seeding. UEFA’s new format for the Champions League group stages is known as the “Swiss System” and, frankly, it’s something to make your own jokes about. It’s full of holes. It’s completely unaccountable and its inner workings largely inscrutable to outsiders. It’s a convenient conduit for seizing and laundering the money of some of the worst people in the world. It’s a complex and morally controversial method of putting people to sleep for long periods of time. Take your pick.

Perhaps fittingly, the first steps into this bold new era are taking place in Switzerland, where Young Boys v Aston Villa have been chosen as Tuesday’s early game, alongside Juventus v PSV. And of course, it’s a symbolic choice for other reasons too. The Bern-based club may be underdogs in the competition, having secured their place in a playoff against Galatasaray last month. But domestically they are an unbeatable force, claiming their sixth Swiss title in the last seven years despite a season marred by internal disputes and bland set-piece football.

How did they do it? In April, the Swiss Football League released the latest club financials, which showed that Young Boys have essentially left the competition behind. No one else comes close to them in terms of salaries, revenue, assets, profit and league points. Their broadcast revenue last season was roughly equal to that of all their Super League rivals combined.

And of course, the bulk of that revenue came from the Champions League, allowing Young Boys to invest in a league where everyone else has to sell. This year’s competition should bring them a guaranteed £36 million, more than the annual revenue of all but one of their Swiss Super League rivals and – by a happy coincidence – the planned cost of the new performance centre they are building on the outskirts of Bern.

Many of the mid-sized leagues in Europe can tell a similar story. Shakhtar Donetsk have won six of the last seven titles in Ukraine, Red Star seven in a row in Serbia, Dinamo Zagreb seven in a row (and 18 of the last 19) in Croatia. Local factors may vary, but the common thread that connects all these chains of dominance is Champions League revenue, which even in modest amounts has the potential to drive domestic competition into nothingness.

And so it’s a very special kind of person who looks over that landscape and decides that the modern competition really does need bigger prizes. But that’s always been the rationale for expanding the group stage, despite all the talk about Jeopardy and Uefa’s glossy promotional videos featuring Zlatan Ibrahimovic praising the new format because “the fans deserve more action.”

One can only imagine the irritation in the corridors of Aston Villa over the inflated ticket prices for the Champions League. After all, the obligation to squeeze as much money out of fans, brands and broadcasters as possible is the closest thing to a competition, the closest thing to a fundamental value. What did you think, was glory at stake?

And although UEFA has promised that the competition will make more sense once it starts, in some ways the logic of the competition is already clear enough: content for the sake of content, more games for the sake of more games, a structure built to benefit the continent’s biggest clubs and the investors who bankroll them. For the first time, there will be eight games for each club. For the first time, there will be Wimbledon-style seedings in the knockout rounds. For the first time since 2003, group matches will take place in the new year, bringing not only the winter break but also the January transfer window into play.

Meanwhile, with all this talk of danger, it’s probably worth considering a bit of context. While the old format of eight groups required 96 games to eliminate 16 teams, this format requires 144 games to eliminate just 12 teams. A single league table of 36 teams will determine qualification for the knockout rounds, with the top eight advancing directly and places ninth to 24 going into home-and-away playoffs.

What does this mean in practice? According to the website Football Meets Data, which has run 10,000 group stage simulations, 17 points practically guarantees a place in the top eight. Nine or ten points should They get a play-off. And so one of the classic problems of the old group stage – meaningless games – remains unresolved, with plenty of potential for discord in the final few rounds between teams still fighting and those already qualified or eliminated, and perhaps the temptation to rest a few players in anticipation of tougher challenges.

Considering that each has a different set of eight games, it’s clear that the new format is the continuation of a wider process by UEFA where sporting integrity is gradually being replaced by the contrived thrill of a television game show. If your aim was simply to find the best team in Europe, you’d have a round-robin league where everyone plays everyone else. If, on the other hand, your aim was to maximise danger and make every game important, you’d simply run a straight knockout system (as was the case until 1991).

But UEFA wants neither. Instead, there is a process that essentially deviates from the desired outcome: the best teams play each other from the start, but not to the point where they start to eliminate each other, because you still want them to play each other in the end. The meaninglessness, the lack of context, the confusion about whether, for example, Liverpool versus Real Madrid on November 27 really matters: this is not a mistake or a design flaw, it is deliberate, baked into the design.

So the really striking thing about the new format is not how much has changed, but how little. Last season, supercomputer Opta predicted there was a 79% chance the winner would come from one of the competition’s top eight clubs. This season, that percentage is 80%. Manchester City had a 99% chance of reaching the round of 16 last year, and now it’s 95%. The seeded knockout round is another concession for the giants after two consecutive seasons in which there were clearly stronger and weaker halves of the draw, producing underdog finalists in Borussia Dortmund and Inter.

That these two former winners can even be described in this way is a measure of how quickly the terrain has narrowed. Yet amid all this innovation and restructuring, a familiar pyramid of favourites is emerging again: City and Real Madrid are clearly at the top, followed by about half a dozen outsiders such as Bayern Munich, Paris Saint-Germain, Barcelona, ​​​​Liverpool, Arsenal and Inter.

Not Bayer Leverkusen? Probably not, although the draw is favourable and the new format gives Xabi Alonso’s side a little more time to get used to the competition. The same goes for Girona, Atalanta and Stuttgart, last season’s surprise packages, who will surely find it tougher this time around. Villa have some exciting games and should be able to secure a place in the playoffs. Celtic have one of the most favourable draws on paper but will need to find a balance between adventure and caution.

At this point, it’s worth thinking about what success would feel like for the new-look competition. More thrills? More surprises? Fewer dead games? Higher ratings? Has someone finally understood the point of Benfica? Or does it just feel like success feels any other year: a confirmation of existing financial realities, with the richest clubs simply triumphing in more complicated and lucrative ways?

Because, amidst the new developments and new rules, there is of course a familiar final in sight, with the biggest clubs simply deciding to make even more concessions next time around. If a group stage can consist of eight games, why not ten or twelve in the future? There are still plenty of free weeks in the calendar to exploit. Italy and Germany may have earned the two extra places this season, but why not give England and Spain extra places too? And how long will it be before the powers that be decide that Manchester United and Chelsea – as inept as they are at competing – simply have to be there for the attention?

Football fans are naturally conservative creatures, tied to ritual and seasonal routine, and inherently suspicious of change. The instinctive reaction to any innovation is to imagine all the possibilities of failure, and from confusion to boredom to unfairness, there is no shortage of contenders in this regard. But that is not, in fact, the worst-case scenario. If you are worried about what happens if the new Champions League fails, consider what happens if it actually succeeds.