The Champions League is killing Football

You fail to comprehend the point of the Champions' League. And the Premier League, for that matter.

Both competitions are specifically designed not to distribute the wealth generated from within the game, but to channel it to an increasingly exclusive elite.

 

I understand i just don`t like

 

To me there no point in having merit payments as you reward for having a good season is the champions league or uefa cup and all the money that comes with that.

Like someone else said its not the CL, for the most part the same teams have dominated beofre the CL. I think the bigger problem is tv rights, especially where the indivdual team sells its rights, no ticket revenue sharing, and no merchandise revenue sharing. How is a club like Getafe with its limited local appeal ever able to compete against Real Madrid with its global appeal and all the money that comes with that?

 

Big cities will always dominate the club scene, if Real Madrid would cease to exist tomorrow Athletico would take its place.

It´s like asking how soccer clubs like Ogden Outlaws will ever compete against RBNY or LAG..

 

Well, I meant the salary cap would work in a more hypothetical sense-- say, if you could hammer out all the logistical and legal issues, I think a salary cap would save European football without dropping teams' quality too much. From a practical sense, though, it's never likely to happen, you guys are right about that.

 

Save us from what exactly...?

Soccer is still growing in Europe, rather fast actually..This "CL is killing footy" is mostly sour grapes from fans of clubs that struggle to compete in the top leagues.
Ask a fan of a 2nd or 3rd league club if CL is making any difference to their teams.
Take a look at things like attendances for the big leagues and you´ll see that "predictability" is not killing interest in any way.

http://www.european-football-statistics.co.uk/attn.htm

 

But sometimes it seems also that, that the big clubs, are able to spend money, and loose money, no matter how much. I think there are only a few Clubs in the World, which are able to pay transfer money and income of a player, just from their own bag or bank account. And I think a few of them are ManU and Bayern Munich.
Munich was spending 70 Mio Euro for new players just before the season, even they wont play in the CL. They just took the money right from their account. If I do look at the Italian, the big ones, Real Madrid, the all have a lot of loan. Even 400 Mio, nobody cares about that. And nobody would becomethe idea to close them down. Borussia Dortmund was a simliar cae a few years ago. Normaly, according to the License Regulation, the would had need to go down to second or even 3rd league. But nobody did everything. If you make financial mistakes, and have alot of loan, and you are a big club, you don't have to "pay" for. You can do what you want. If you are a small club, you don't have any chance against that.

 

The same way a small market teams like the Buffalo Bills and Green Bay Packers can compete against the Big market teams like New York Giants and Cowboys. Which is revenue sharing. If we had a system like europe the biggest teams financially like the Cowboys and Redskins would dominate the league while teams like Green Bay would be cannon fodders. In fact Green Bay would probably have to move to a bigger market to have a chance. Because of revenue sharing of tv rights and merchandise sales being split evenly, salary cap, and gate profits being split 60-40 the big cities are not able to dominate year in year out. Of course the NFL lives in a vacumn of a closed league with no competition so it makes it easier to make these policies.

 

Well, that doesn´t have anything to do with Champions league really...

But Germany got tight fiscal regulations for its clubs, you are allowed to spend money..but not really on players but on assets with substance, like stadiums and such.
Dortmund was more or less under administration by its creditors for several years but by selling their top players and keeping most of their attendances combined with some friendly banks carrying them they survived.
Bayern on the other hand never really spent 79m Euros, as they sold players as well they spent just 43m in reality.

Italian clubs are a mystery to everyone, I will not even try to see where the money comes from..someone might try to kill me

In Spain it´s no secret that there are a lot of iffy deals between clubs and certain banks, and certain local governments...So called "friendly" loans that never will get repaid, assets become overvalued and sold to their hometowns etc etc.
But in general minor spanish clubs survive by selling players to the big clubs and local sponsors contribute a lot.

 

Buffalo ain´t that small market really...

Green Bay is though!

And yes, the only hope for teams like Green Bay lies in revenue sharing for otherwise it would be a outmuscled financially in no time.
It´s a Chihuahua on steroids we might say...

NFL contains just 32 teams in a single league though, as compared to Uefa that contains 52 countries and are currently ranking 992 clubs that participates or have participated in its tournaments so we can just guess what the total number of teams under Uefa are.
In such a situation revenue sharing is only possible to a certain degree i.e like in the Champions league format we see today where 25% of the profit goes to national associations and the rest is dived by the participating clubs after certain formulas.

 

Fenerbahce advancing ahead of PSV is a huge surprise is it?


Come on! Once the draw was made, everyone knew it would be Inter by a mile and a toss-up between the other 3 teams in that group fighting for second-place. That's pretty much how it turned out in the end, except that the Moscow outfit never really showed-up.

 

Buffalo may not be considered a small market in europe but it is in the US.
As far as revenue sharing Im talking about within individual leagues not all of UEFA. One thing US league do is the league as a whole and not individual is supplied by one jersey company teams i.e Reebok supplies all 32 NFL teams their jerseys and the money the NFL recieves for that plus the sales of those jerseys are split evenly 32. Same with the NBA and Im sure if it wasnt for that policy the Houston Rockets would be flooded with profits coming in from China due to just one player.

 

Well it would go to the various FA's not the leagues, as the FA's are the UEFA members, of which their league teams are granted entry to the UEFA competitions.

Now, how exactly would 52 individual FA's sort out revenue sharing?

 

When was the last time a Turkish team reached the second round? When did Fener ever reach the second round? What teams of comparable strength to CSKA and PSV did Fener beat in the last 5 years?

I tend to agree that Fener has a pretty strong team, the Turks had a habit of underperforming in CL and UC in the last years and the group was not overly tough, but still, if that was not a huge surprise, what would have been? Slavia Prague or Rosenborg reaching second round maybe, but not much else.

 

Well, yes - but then that's what the Premier League was formed for. To get a bumper TV deal, keep it all to the elite clubs within that top division and get fat on the proceeds. The advent of CL was subsequent to that (albeit largely modeled on the same principle).

Yes, this is true. I've said this in other threads - money's nothing new in the game, it's the extent to which it is now a factor that is new. Twenty years ago there were five or six teams every season who had some form of realistic chance of winning the title. Now there's rarely more than two. And the reason for that calcification is that there are now a more or less permanent set of clubs who yearly receive anything between £10m and £40m from Champions' League football that the other 16 clubs are expressly and unapologetically barred from even contemplating.

We've dealt with how EPL TV rights are shared. And it's not possible for an individual club to sell their rights in Britain - that's Spain and Italy you're thinking of. With regard to ticket and merchandising revenue sharing, that's never existed anyway.

 

Yah I know thats it in spain and italy. As far as ticket sales wasnt their sharing beofre the 80s? And before there wasnt a big deal with merchandising. Nowadays you have the big clubs who go on their world tour selling thousands of jerseys and other product and bringing in all the money involved with that and other clubs whos only sales come from at best a national level.

In the end I dont really care. Its not really my concern. My question is how long will fans continue to shell out all that money for tickets just to see their overpriced team finish mid table again and where the 5th placed team is closer to the 9th then it is 4th?

 

Hey, that's great. If all you're looking for is attendances, then by all means enjoy your European football the way it is. I, personally, would prefer to see a Champions League with more than 12 clubs capable of lifting the trophy.

 

12? I thought I was being generous with 8.

 

I couldn't agree more.

No I don't care about the league stages. Yes, I think the CL is a result of what is ruining football in the larger sense.

The CL isn't the disease though, it's just an effect or a symptom of sorts. Make no mistake, the disease is relegation. The CL is just a natural result of decades of relegation under today's ridiculous money. Relegation demands that an ever increasing pool of have-nots be created in any one domestic system. This to be repeated in every country. Differentials will necessarilly always spawn further and deeper differentials. This due to the time value of money and the increase of money into sport. IMoney doesn't flow equally, it flows in a top-heavy fashion. This isn't a myth, it's a fact both in the mathematical and in reality.

Thus the big guns conspire to get together and talk of ways to exploit their position. WIth that you have G14 leagues and other ideas, etc. This leads to UEFA worrying about the loss of revenue and you get an expanded and convoluted CL with an increasingly irrelevant UEFA Cup. More bad Euro games and domestic football is lessened on all fronts. The rich do get richer and now every Euro leauge is an exercise that comes down to 2 or 6 fixtures if even that.

That's the bad side...if you view it that way.

The good is that with rich getting richer we do have better teams overall and therefore - at least come late February - we have roughly the best level of soccer on the planet. Good for the neutrals. Just don't tell me there is anything like a level playing field. Still, even before February in the CL you do have on showcase some fine teams running up indoor league scores on hapless uncompetitive Champions of meaningless Euro leagues...if you like that sort of thing.

On balance, CL seats sell in the only places that UEFA is concerned about; that being the perrenial CL teams with the uber-stadiums and uber-budgets. In other words, complain all you want. All that is likely to change is that the UEFA Cup might be revamped into some 3 or 4 tiered CL-like competition. THis maybe with it's own system of Euro relegation and promotion.

A solution:

For a neutral, it would be outstanding to have 4 9-team tiers on a Euro basis for the "Top 36" however determined. The balance of UEFA qualifying teams would compose the UEFA Cup or equavalent. UEFA Cup Champ gets a big to Tier 4 CL the following season regardless of finish.

CL has an 8-game season 4 home 4 away with each tier sending representatives into the 16-team post Christmas bracket.
Tier 1 = Top 8 of 9
Tier 2 = Top 4 of 9
Tier 3 = Top 3 of 9
Tier 4 = Top 1 of 9

Under this system you have more competitive (in theory) games throughout the whole of the CL. You also have fewer Euro games hopefully losing many of the blowout variety garbage games. Big Clubs get a reduced schedule so domestic cups would take on added importance as would some of the more congested league weekends. Even the lower tier games have an edge as a Championship trophy will be awarded and those teams are still competing at their level and not againt the Man U.'s of the world...at least not until the lesser Champions (Tier 3 and 4) have earned a title of some sort essentially. Rugby 7's has done this to good effect for a long time. They award multiple Champions a Cup, Trophy, Plate, and Shield for tier Champions. No reason UEFA can't do this in a 4-tier league stage.

4 title games instead of 1 (5 with the UEFA Cup), 6 Euro trophies awarded (4 tier trophies, UEFA, and CL Cups), and peaked interest at all times. I believe that would sell and so FIFA wins in the only department they truly care about other than open bars and free buffets, the almighty unit of hard currency.

Qualifying gets a little more complicated maybe, but you iron those things out with a combo of UEFA coefficients, previous CL results, and domestic standings similar to as is done now.

The current CL really is a disappointment. No reason to watch anything but highlights, if that, until March.

 

As long as Maple Leafs can continue to sell tickets I guess...

 

Lol, and there were more than 12 clubs capable of lifting the old European Cup? You're kidding me... European Cup, that's the English winning 7 titles in 8 years, Ajax & Bayern winning 3 times in a row, Real winning 5 times in a row... in the thirty-odd years of the EC, Spain, England, Italy, Germany and Portugal won every title but 3, and Red Star and Steaua wouldn't win anyting today due to Bosman. If we are talking about title contenders, a champs-only-cup would have less of them than the CL.

Apart from that, it's not only attendances in stadiums, it's also tv ratings, broadcasting deals, sponsorship deals, media coverage... football is booming, especially the CL, including its group stage.

 

A huge surpise would be if a team that is capable of winning the Champions League goes out in the group-stage. PSV is not one of those.

 

How can the disease be relegation? Relegation has been around forever, the disease hasn't. Take a look at the English, Italian or Spanish top-flight table of 15, 20, 30 years ago. Sure the popular teams playing in big cities like Barcelona and Juventus would consistently be near the top of the table, but rarely would a team ever accumulate 90 points/season (after converting to 3 points for a win ). Or even 80.

Today you don't just have the same teams on top every year (I could live with that). But they are blowing away the competition like never before.

 

Erm... yes, you are right, the last time that happened was 2 years ago ManU and it seems less likely for a pot 1 team to fail every year, but you are changing the subject, the original question my answer was related to was:

And Fener and Olympiakos clearly fit as answers to that.

 

When did I ever say the old European Cup was better? Don't put words in my mouth. And everything you just evidenced as the rise of the Champions League is entirely business-related (sponsorship deals, media coverage, etc). I really don't care how much money the Champs League is making, or that Manchester United is now sponsored by AIG. All I want is to make sure the tournament as a whole is as competitve as it can be. As of right now, there aren't any teams outside of England, Spain and Italy that stand a legitmate shot of raising the trophy; not a very good represntation of Europe as a whole.

Don't waste your time telling me that attendances are up, money is flowing, blah blah blah. Next time, just point me to the UEFA website where I can get my daily dose of corporate spin.