Champions League Revision: Something for Everyone
Posted on January 15, 2012 9:21 am
I originally planned to kick off The Regional Review for this year with a calendar of competitions, so that regular readers can follow along and anticipate which championship is coming up on any given month. That will have to wait for next week: on Thursday, CONCACAF announced significant changes to the format of its Champions League, a topic that needs its own entry. Most of the reaction pieces that I have seen focus on how the new setup affects the interests of one particular league or another. While that should be taken into account, I will primarily look at this from a continental perspective, in terms of football saturation and the level of interest generated by the tournament.
Let’s begin with the announcement itself: starting with next season’s CCL (2012-13), the number of phases will be contracted from three to two.
(outgoing format)
Instead of having a preliminary round, group stage and knockout round, all 24 qualifiers will be drawn into eight groups of three. Only group winners move on to the quarterfinals; from that point on, other than the knockout-round draw having no restrictions whatsoever, the new format presents no change from the status quo.
It is important to note that all other aspects of the competition remain as is. Three of them merit particular consideration: first, the tiebreaker procedures currently used in the group stage and knockout round will remain the same, with head-to-head taking precedence in the former and away goals counting in both. Secondly, the allocation of qualifying spots remains the same, and the three existing pots (automatic group stage qualifiers, seeded prelim teams and unseeded prelim teams) will now be used to set up the eight groups, although CONCACAF has stipulated that US and Mexican clubs will be kept apart. Finally, the allocation of top seeds in Central America remains the same: one each to Costa Rica, Honduras, Guatemala and Panama. I have previously argued that El Salvador could convincingly lobby to get its top seed back, based on results from the last two tournaments. Correlation does not equal causation, but here is my slightly-educated guess about why El Salvador remains the odd man out: between Panama, Guatemala and El Salvador, can you guess which one does not have a compatriot on CONCACAF’s Executive Committee?
The big winners from this revision are the Caribbean qualifiers and the Nicaraguan champion; I would throw in Belize’s representative as well, but as far as I know the country still lacks a stadium up to CONCACAF standard. In the current format, the Nicaraguan and Caribbean CCL participants are obligated to upset higher-seeded opponents in preliminary series just to get to the tournament proper; now, they will get to participate in the group stage from the start. For instance, Nicaragua’s Real Estelí bowed out of the 2011-12 CCL after two games against Toronto FC; should they qualify for the 2012-13 edition, however, they will have a 50% chance of getting to host a high-profile Mexican opponent at the Estadio Independencia for the first time ever.
The top clubs from Nicaragua’s neighbors (Honduras and Costa Rica) will not find their CCL experience significantly enhanced; and the stipulation keeping US and Mexican teams apart also puts an end to Honduras-Costa Rica showdowns in the group stage. It is unfortunate that clubs from the two best leagues in Central America will only be able to cross swords in the quarterfinals at the earliest, since the matches between Deportivo Saprissa and Marathon in 2008 and 2010 (and Motagua’s home game with Alajuelense last year, when the Honduran champions still had a fighting chance at survival) turned out to be hotly-contested affairs in front of animated crowds.
Further north, US and Mexican clubs will also have to wait until the knockout round to face each other. Given the number of memorable matches between them in the group stage under the current format – the Pumas-Houston Dynamo series in 2008, the Real Salt Lake-Cruz Azul series in 2010 and the four matches between Monterrey and Seattle, to name a few – it is difficult to imagine that CONCACAF would view the end of USA-MEX first-round encounters as beneficial for the tournament. On the other hand, now every US qualifier to the Champions League will know in advance how many games to expect, making it possible to anticipate and offer the two home matches as part of the season ticket package. And General Secretary Ted Howard’s comments about reducing fixture congestion will ring a bell with MLS sides, for whom salary cap restrictions prevent most teams (especially new qualifiers) from building up the kind of depth needed for a drawn-out continental campaign. As for Mexican clubs, the main takeaway from this format change is that they will have fewer opportunities to field scrub teams, since they are obligated to win the group with only four games. Cruz Azul in 2010 and Morelia in 2011 could afford to drop road points left and right and still move on, but now just one poor performance will put their Club World Cup dreams in serious jeopardy.
The two CCL participants most negatively affected have to be the champions of Canada and El Salvador. They will find themselves in Pot 2, along with two teams each from the United States and Mexico; and thanks to the aforementioned stipulation, the latter four will automatically end up in the groups with the highest-seeded Central American sides. As a consequence, while Costa Rica’s and Honduras’s second qualifiers have the opportunity to avoid their fate by winning their respective country’s top seed, the Canadian and Salvadoran representatives will be automatically forced to challenge one of the US or Mexico’s best qualifiers for a single ticket to the knockout round. For instance, whoever wins the next Canadian Championship will have to throw down with either the LA Galaxy, Seattle Sounders, Tigres or the Mexican Clausura winner, and I would consider them serious underdogs in any of those pairings.
On a regional level, we can now rest assured that the CCL is here to stay. The new CONCACAF leadership could have decided to save money by reverting back to the old CONCACAF Champions Cup, but instead they tweaked the first round and left the tournament as is. The number of poorly-attended matches before the quarterfinal round most likely inspired the format change; now, each team will only have two matches to market, and each game will carry much greater significance, so hopefully more fans will show up to see their respective club fight for continental survival right off the bat. Furthermore, every qualifier will be involved until September, guaranteeing prolonged exposure to Champions League play in each participating country (especially Nicaragua).
The main drawbacks relate to the three-team melee for one qualifying spot that we will follow in each group. Say a Mexican club plays in three of the first four group stage fixtures and wins them all. Most likely they will have already qualified for the knockout round before Matchday 5, leaving two scrimmages that will probably attract poor attendance and low interest. Also, while CONCACAF could have allowed for simultaneous finishes in the group stage (and chose not to) under the current format, it is now impossible for that to occur: one team in each group will remain idle on Matchday 6. Should their chances of qualifying depend on the result in this last fixture, they will have to depend on the goodwill and honesty of their rivals, never a pleasant situation. Finally, with no runners-up moving on, any group winner can be paired against another one in the quarterfinals. For this reason it is more important than ever that the knockout-round draw be conducted and broadcast live, in order to avoid any accusations of protecting or favoring teams from any one league (by the way, this format change renders my geofixing proposal moot).
I will finish by suggesting that the stipulation keeping US and Mexican clubs apart points to the influence of a certain actor. As we found out in a rather blatant fashion in 2009, when the fixtures in the Herediano-Cruz Azul preliminary series got switched ex post facto, television networks get a seat at the table whenever the format of CONCACAF tournaments is up for discussion. With the stipulation, those networks are now guaranteed that only 16 first-round matches will not feature a team from the two biggest countries in the region. And for CONCACAF, this rule guarantees that no group will be ignored by international broadcasters; unfortunately we are not yet at the point where a group with San Francisco (PAN), San Carlos (CRC) and San Juan Jabloteh (TRI) sells itself.
Great post, good to see CONCACAF caring about the tournament and willing to make tweaks to it.
If these are the types of changes CONCACAF makes when they care about tournament then yikes.
This tournament really loses something now that Costa Rica and Honduras clubs aren’t guaranteed to play each other. Olimipia and La Liga played yesterday and it was a good atmosphere just for a friendly.
I don’t like this. It makes the group stages less competitive and decreases the likelihood of any given Central American team making the playoff stage. Under the old system, if a Mexican and American team traded ties or if one beat the other twice, then a Central American team could sneak in just by pulling off one upset. Of course American and Mexican teams might play their B-teams more often due to the decreased competitiveness allowing Central American teams through anyways. However, I doubt that’s a trade off anyone wants.
I got some questions for you:
1)Do you feel that USA3 and USA4 deserve automatic protection from Mexican teams, while HON1 and CRC1 do not?
2)Do you think it’s ok that home field advantage cannot be earned in any way now? That group winners who annihilate their group can still get home field disadvantage in the quarterfinals? And that all Mexican teams will likely be all bunched in 1 bracket no matter how good they perform in the group stage?
Thnx.
1) No, but in my opinion that decision had more to do with marketing (to the tv networks) than with football.
2) No, yes (a dominant group winner will have only proven itself better than its two group-stage opponents) and no. With the 2010-11 CCL, at least one could argue that Cruz Azul and Toluca made it possible for CONCACAF to bunch the Mexican teams together by slacking off in their groups. If that happens again without a live, random draw, red flags will be raised all over the place; and Justino Compean will certainly let Howard know what he thinks about it.
With respect to one team being idle for the last matchday of the round, I think the fact that only one team advances will reduce possible foul play. If team A is idle on the last matchday in which B plays C, neither B nor C can both (1) dog it to help the other of B or C and (2) advance themselves. In the old version (i.e. the 2010 version) of the group stage did they always play the last two matches at exactly the same time and day? I don’t remember that being the case and if it wasn’t that way then these new changes won’t make it any worse in that regard.
I think the issue is this: during the last match, A is idle. C is already eliminated. B needs a win (or maybe a win by X goals) to advance. C has the choice of either putting up a fight, or laying down and losing, guaranteeing B’s advancement.
Maybe this scenario is less likely in a 3-team group, but it isn’t out of the question.
good explanation. But that possibility or something very similar was already possible with the 4 team groups. So the change to the 3 team group doesn’t make this any worse.
What these changes seem to say, is that there are too many matches played in front of small audiences and without big TV contracts. In these days when African, Asian and even Oceania champions league matches seem like imitations of the European, it is good that Concacaf is confident enough to go it alone and choose a format that suits local conditions.
Or it means CONCACAF is the region that is most concerned with how much short term profits they can make in their international tournaments and has no long term vision of growing the game in the region. Unlike Asia and Africa that have improved the level of play of their clubs and national teams at a much faster pace then CONCACAF.
“Unlike Asia and Africa that have improved the level of play of their clubs and national teams at a much faster pace then CONCACAF.”
Based on what? I don’t mean to come off as abrasive, but I would like to hear the case for Asia and Africa having outdone CONCACAF in football development at the regional level.
For starters Africa rotates the African cup of nations which is a move that could really force improved infrastructure if it was done here. I know the gold cup is the cash cow so I am not holding my breath on even Canada hosting any time soon but they put money ahead of advancing the sport in even small things. El Salvador tried to get hosting rights of the Beach World cup qualifiers but was denied from even applying because instead of rotating it they will be hosting it in Mexico 2 cycles in a row.
It took CONCACAF until this WC qualifiers to get teams that don’t make the Hex more games while Asia and Africa had figured out more games for lower ranked teams was a good idea a long time ago. Lower ranked countries in Asia and Africa still get more games then countries in CONCACAF.
As far as the CCL CONCACAF has just made it very clear that unless your a Mexican or American team your just there to fill in numbers. There is definitely favoritism as far as I can tell in all other club championship tournaments but none of them favor one country as much as the CCL now favors American MLS teams.
Bottom line if you are a country like Honduras and were in Asia or Africa your national team would get more games. Your club team would at least have the possibility to earn not being treated like filler clubs in the regional club championship if they performed on the field.
For tournament rotation, the Copa Centroamericana and the Caribbean Cup do change hosts every two years, FWIW.
In World Cup qualifying, almost half of the Asian qualifiers get eliminated before we reach the first (current) group stage. For instance, this time around Puerto Rico played more World Cup games than the Philippines or India. And if you want to argue that Asian and African national teams are improving at a greater rate than CONCACAF ones, then let me ask: outside of Ghana, South Korea and Japan (the AFC can’t yet take credit for Australia’s current level), how many national teams have actually gotten better? Which country has improved to the same extent as, say, Panama? And mind you, our weakest region (the Caribbean) is much better integrated into continental tournaments than its counterparts in Africa (East Africa) and Asia (the Indian subcontinent and southeast Asia). When was the last time an Indian team got to play in the Asian Champions League? Or an East African team qualified for the World Cup?
As for Honduras, in any given World Cup cycle they will look forward to 16 World Cup qualifiers, plus two Copas Centroamericanas and two Gold Cups. The catrachos get plenty of games under their belt. And if Honduras played in Africa, Olimpia and Marathon would have to survive two-to-three playoff rounds just to make the group stage of their Champions League.
Having said that, I am also not in favor of the stipulation for US and Mexican clubs.
The UNCAF and Caribbean cup don’t require the host country to improve their infrastructure like hosting a Gold cup would. I doubt CONCACAF would allow a country to use one stadium for the Gold cup as happens in the UNCAF. I’ll give CONCACAF credit for doing it to a certain extent with the CCL though.
Its good that Puerto Rico played more games this time but that didn’t happen until the 2014 qualifiers and will see if it happens again. I would still give the edge to Asia though which may cut a lot of countries very early but still has a semifinal round that involves 20 countries and a final round that involves 10. I think CONCACAF should have followed through with having two final groups instead of the hex. Honduras may have been a bad choice for national team inactivity Guatemala and Jamaica are better. Which ever country misses the Hex will once again be without meaningful games for a long period of time. Its great Puerto Rico got more games but a few more games against Grenada doesn’t do much for improving Guatemala’s national team and if CONCACAF is tweeking things it would be good if they helped the mid tier teams once in a while as well.
I wouldn’t give CONCACAF to much credit for Panama’s success they played 2 World cup qualifying games last cycle. At the moment CONMEBOL has more to do with Panama’s success then CONCACAF. However if I am listing comparable countries to them in the other regions outside of the ones you mentioned I would go with Uzbekistan, Bahrain, Iran, Jordan, Iraq, Egypt, Tunisia, Burkina Faso and Algeria.
Honduras is still a good choice for the club team example though because even though they would have a longer path to the group stage they wouldn’t be shifted around to make another countries chances of advancing easier.
Hopefully this sets things up to add 8 more teams to the group stage and the knockout stages starting with 16 teams in the near future.
What an awesome way to explain this-now I know eevrhytnig!
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