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As a Football Fan...
by Dan Philipson
Dan's column presents his own unique insight into the mad world of football.
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Euro Trash
Thursday 1st November 2007
As far back as I can remember, European football nights were always nights to relish - you would settle down on the sofa, watch an episode of M*A*S*H and then tingle with anticipation as the opening credits of Sportsnight rolled, safe in the knowledge that you would soon be witnessing England's finest take on the cream of Europe in a blood-and-thunder clash.
Nowadays, things are somewhat different. The old European Cup has morphed into the Champions League, with a qualification round being followed by a group stage and then a knockout round. In other words, the sudden-death excitement of the old-style tournament has been tempered.
Even more horrifyingly, the previously popular UEFA and Cup Winners' Cups have merged into one all-encompassing UEFA Cup, also incorporating (in competition with the Champions League) a group stage.
We all know why this has all taken place - because more high-profile matches generates more television and advertising income for the bigger, more glamorous clubs - even those who have not necessarily qualified on merit (or by being 'Champions') gain entry - surely finishing fourth in your domestic league cannot be deemed a success for an Arsenal, Chelsea or a Real Madrid.
Since taking the presidency of UEFA, Michel Platini has been a strong advocate of revamping the Champions League structure, firstly suggesting that clubs from smaller nations ought to be afforded the opportunity of entry to make the competition less 'elitist', and secondly that a nation's cup winners should gain access to a pre-qualifying qualifying round.
These suggestions are to be welcomed, as the two competitions are in desperate need of change - the Champions League now contains far too many unglamorous matches to justify the overindulgent nature of its television coverage (Fenerbahce v CSKA Moscow, anybody?), whilst the UEFA Cup pales in comparison and nobody really cares about it any more, bar the teams involved.
To my mind, Platini's suggestions do not go far enough. Rather than tinker with the formula, why not scrap the two competitions altogether and try to come up with a better, more glamorous, alternative?
One of the major problems with football is that there is far too much of it played during the autumn, winter and spring and not enough during the summer. To spread the number of games over the entire year would ensure that players could pace themselves better, placing less stress on their muscles and bones during intense periods of time like Christmas and Easter.
To combat this, I would move all European competition to take place in the domestic close season over the summer months. In other words, when there is no World Cup or European Championship (odd numbered years), let's have the European Club Championships instead.
Qualification would take place over two seasons, with both years' champions going automatically into the finals (naturally, if the same side won their domestic title two years on the trot, the side with the next best record would qualify). The rest of the places would be decided via the play-offs, with cup winners battling it out with teams who have proved the next best league performers over the two-season qualification period.
I would also ban teams from Turkey, who are not European anyway (and have proved more trouble than they are worth over recent years) and make it a free-to-all, non-elitist competition.
Obviously the formula would need refining, but the sense of occasion that such a tournament would create would be immense, and would render the outdated concepts of the elitist Champions League and the nondescript UEFA Cup completely obsolete.
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