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O/T European Cup Changes?

Re: O/T Champions League

They finished 3rd but how is that relevant?

The point relates to having another top team in this year's competition
 
Re: O/T Champions League

Some of you obviously arent old enough to actually remember the European Cup.
The problem with it was it contained the best teams from last season, the form teams in Europe were often stuck in the UEFA Cup or in the Cup Winners Cup.
With the Champions League you generally have the actual best teams this season coming head to head.
 
Re: O/T Champions League

only because there is less of a turnover in "best" teams, partly because being in the CL makes it easier to strengthen and stop other teams catching you up
 
Re: O/T Champions League

ArcspacE said:
I was making reference to your modern day scenario of having only 1 team from each league which you seem to believe was stronger back then eventhough the modern line up contains many more stronger teams (more from each league in other words). So your claim of being 'tougher' back then is rather strange
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Eh? My point was that it was a stronger competition because it had higher placed teams in it. This is just fact. Having more teams in the Europa League now? So what? The Championship has more clubs and games than the Premier League - anyone think that is a stronger competition?
 
Re: O/T Champions League

Harry_Perkins said:
Eh? My point was that it was a stronger competition because it had higher placed teams in it. This is just fact. Having more teams in the Europa League now? So what? The Championship has more clubs and games than the Premier League - anyone think that is a stronger competition?
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How is it a fact when the comparative list posted earlier suggests the very opposite?

Having more teams increases the overall quality by introducing extra teams from strong leagues - such as the Top 14 UEFA ranked coefficient leagues, etc. The Championship/PL comparison has absolutely zero relevance to this
 
Re: O/T Champions League

Harry_Perkins said:
It is relevant because they were higher placed than the Napoli of today - who would not have even been in European competition with a 5th place finish previously.
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How does that detract from their status as a 'strong' team? They're currently 2nd in Serie A
 
Re: O/T Champions League

Bottom line for me is "How would this affect Spurs?"

IMO this would be great for us. We are guaranteed ECL every season. With the extra cash we can pay higher wages. We are based in one of the most glamorous cities in the world with a reasonable tax regime compared to other countries. That means we have the edge in attracting better players.

Provided the new financial rules are adhered to by all clubs this could be happy days for Spurs.
 
Re: O/T Champions League

"Europa League? I don't give a brick about this competition." - Aurelio De Laurentiis - Napoli Chairman

"I cannot imagine playing in the Europa League.
"That is the worst that can happen. I think it is better if you don't play in it at all.
"Even winning the Europa League would not mean anything for me.
"That is not the title you want to win and it is not something I want." - Arjen Robben

"It is a nuisance." - Harry Redknapp

I am delighted with this news. The Europa League is a complete fudging pile of brick. By definition, winning this competition means that you are second rate. Without looking them up, how many Europa League finals can you remember off the top of your head? Hardly any for me. I even remember most League Cup finals. But nobody gives a brick about the Europa League. It's been described as the continental League Cup, but I think it's more like the continental League One.

Yes, ok, there's a couple of good teams in it, but most are unglamorous piles of brick that attract no interest, no money and no point. Considering the number of games that you have to play to win in it, with long trips to horrendous parts of the world that nobody wants to go to, it serves little purpose other than to tire out your players. You're not even guaranteed to win it if you're half decent, as the likes of Athletico Madrid or Lazio have it in them to beat anybody. But games against those teams hardly attract the glamour and widespread interest that Champions League games do. If I were in AVB's shoes, I would't even turn up to the games, I'd send Freund to manage an U18 squad. Harry had the right idea with this competition, he saw that our form rocketed in the 08/09 season when we got knocked out of Europe, we had our best league season in living memory the following year when we weren't in Europe, we struggled with league form the following year in the CL, and the year after we played a reserve team in the Europa League and were challenging for the title on the domestic front with fresh players.

Having only one competition would mean that anyone in Europe is playing in a prestigious competition. And you'd get the chance for GENUINE European giantkillings. The reason the FA Cup is great is because it gives non-league teams the chance to play with the big boys, and for smaller clubs to have truly historical nights that their fans remember forever. How many Man Utd fans remember, say, the quarter-finals of the 2002 Champions League?

One European competition has been an obvious solution for the best part of a decade now, I'm ecstatic that they're finally considering it.
 
Re: O/T Champions League

ArcspacE said:
It was re-branded and expanded in 1992, which is exactly what I said - but it is regarded as the same tophy/competition (i.e. Europe's finest) by everyone including the statisticians. Same for the Premier League and first division - fotball DID exist prior to that.
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I do know that old bean, my first ever Spurs away was as a wee nipper away to Barcelona in 1982 in the old cup winners cup that my dad took me too, although I can't remember much about it.

I am not arguing about the statistics and the continuity, you are being pedantic. The point is the Champions League in its current format can't be compared to the old European Cup in terms of ease/difficulty of winning the tournament. Much like Spain winning the World Cup in 2008 can't be compared to Uruguay winning it in 1930 other than the stats both state they are World Cup winners.

IMO the Champions League is a far more difficult competion to win than the old European Cup because of the strength in depth of the participants, its unlikely that a Steaua Bucharest would win the competition or a Malmo would make it to the final.

As a knock on effect the UEFA Cup and the Europa League has suffered because that strength in depth has been taken away from that competition and entrants who previously competed and competed seriously in the UEFA Cup will now be in the Champions League.
I can't see how the Europa League will recover unless the Champions LEague reverts to being Champions only which will never happen with the amountof money that has flowed into it.
The only solution as has been mentioned, is for the winners to get direct access to the following season's Champions League as reward for winning the competition
 
Re: O/T Champions League

ArcspacE said:
How is it a fact when the comparative list posted earlier suggests the very opposite?
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It doesn't. Those teams in 86/87 would have generally qualified in 2nd-4th in their respective leagues. Nothing can bridge that gap in quality between the Uefa and Europa now, even if you threw in half the English, Spanish and Italian leagues from 4th/5th downwards! And that is the point about the premier league and championship. The latter may be more internally competitive, and would be perhaps more competitive still if it was turned it into a 28 team league next year, but the bottom line reminds that the stronger teams are in the premier league. The exact same logic applies with the Uefa Cup and Europa League. If you're in England, Italy, Spain, Germany etc and finished 2nd you go into a different competition now. This isn't some trival difference, it is a major one!
 
Re: O/T Champions League

RigorMortis said:
IMO the Champions League is a far more difficult competion to win than the old European Cup because of the strength in depth of the participants, its unlikely that a Steaua Bucharest would win the competition or a Malmo would make it to the final.

As a knock on effect the UEFA Cup and the Europa League has suffered because that strength in depth has been taken away from that competition and entrants who previously competed and competed seriously in the UEFA Cup will now be in the Champions League
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Exactly. Although I disagree with your solution. If anything, it just hands more prestige to the Champions League if you say the winners get a place in it. Surely it should be regarded as a major standalone achievement?
 
Re: O/T Champions League

Harry_Perkins said:
It doesn't. Those teams in 86/87 would have generally qualified in 2nd-4th in their respective leagues. Nothing can bridge that gap in quality between the Uefa and Europa now, even if you threw in half the English, Spanish and Italian leagues from 4th/5th downwards! And that is the point about the premier league and championship. The latter may be more internally competitive, and would be perhaps more competitive still if it was turned it into a 28 team league next year, but the bottom line reminds that the stronger teams are in the premier league. The exact same logic applies with the Uefa Cup and Europa League. If you're in England, Italy, Spain, Germany etc and finished 2nd you go into a different competition now. This isn't some trival difference, it is a major one!
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Spot On
 
Re: O/T Champions League

I think we should keep the Europa league but whichever team wins it, regardless of the country of origin, goes into the following seasons Champions League at the expense of Chelsea.
 
Re: O/T Champions League

Harry_Perkins said:
Exactly. Although I disagree with your solution. If anything, it just hands more prestige to the Champions League if you say the winners get a place in it. Surely it should be regarded as a major standalone achievement?
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No I agree with you on that point, in an ideal football romanticist’s world the UEFA Cup, the FA Cup and the League Cup would be prestigious and financially viable.

Unfortunately the advent of the Champions League has created a money hungry beast that I can’t see being tamed, FFP if adapted correctly might level the playing field somewhat for entry into the Champions League but it won’t stop it from making other competitions sadly irrelevant in today’s money over glory climate.

Sadly Wenger is right, the clout is in finishing fourth, the glory of winning a cup will always stay with the fans but unfortunately winning a competition that isn’t the Premier League or the Champions League won’t help to bridge the significant gap between the have and have nots.
The only way to make any of these competitions prestigious is dangle the Champions League carrot in front of the winner.

It’s a sad indictment ( particularly for those of us of a Tottenham persuasion who lets face it are the ultimate romantics when it comes to football) of what football has become but IMO a truthful one
 
Re: O/T Champions League

From a purely selfish point of view, I'd love to be in the CL every year, and this would give us a much better chance of achieving that. UEFA are responsible for clubs and fans looking down their nose at the Europa league. Play the games on alternate Wednesdays to CL and stop letting the 3rd place CL teams into the tournament. Can you really blame teams for not taking the competition seriously when the financial rewards are so meagre?
 
Re: O/T Champions League

An expanded CL would distribute the money differently. They wouldn't give a guaranteed sum to the first group qualifiers, at least not at the same level. The money would be more dependent on results so would take away that top four bias. With a top seven competing for the money, there would be more of a financial gradation between top four and those outside Europe. I'd expect that to be much more fluid in terms of qualifying clubs. A club that could get to the QF every year would retain the advantage (fair enough) but those winning the 4th pace trophy wouldn't be as assured.
 
Michel Platini, the Uefa president, is expected to emphasise this week that there are no plans to scrap the Europa League, following reports that the competition could give way to an expanded Champions League involving 64 teams.

The questions over the future of the 56-club Europa League stem from some clubs' perennial dissatisfactions with the competition's status as secondary in quality, status and earnings to the Champions League. Those complaints sharpen this week, as the bigger clubs eliminated from the Champions League contemplate Thursday nights in the Europa League, which some perceive as more tiring for the players and distracting from domestic leagues than it is worth.

Platini, however, is preparing to explain that, when quoted by the French regional newspaper Ouest France last week, he was confirming only that Uefa keeps all its competitions under review for possible improvements. There is no concrete discussion within Uefa's committees entertaining as a possibility such a massive Champions League expansion, or abolishing the Europa League, which Uefa is in fact seeking to strengthen.

Importantly, the major European clubs, from whom any lobbying for change is taken seriously at Uefa, immediately rejected the reports last week. Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, the chairman of Bayern Munich and of the European Club Association, left no room for doubt in his response. "We are not in favour of the abolition of the Europa League and totally against the expansion of the Champions League," Rummenigge said, on behalf of the 207 ECA member clubs which compete in the Uefa competitions.

Explaining the top clubs' resistance to the suggestion that the Champions League be expanded, Rummenigge said: "We are not amenable to changing quantity at the expense of quality."

The major clubs do not believe the playing quality, attraction to supporters or commercial allure of the competition would be improved by expanding it, and believe their own earnings and power would only be diluted.

Having reorganised its junior competitions in 2006 to create the Europa League, and reduced the five-club group stage to four in 2009, Uefa is planning to develop the tournament rather than abolish it. Chief among the incremental changes being considered is for the winners, or even both finalists, to automatically qualify for the following season's Champions League. That degree of change, to invest the Europa League with more significance and give clubs a greater incentive to take it seriously, is, Uefa insiders say, most realistic.

Any changes can only be incorporated from the 2015 season, because the structure, sponsorships and television deals for both competitions have already been agreed for 2012-15. The respective earnings from TV and sponsorship deals illustrate the degree to which the Europa League is, as commonly viewed by the big clubs, the Champions League's humble relation. In this 2012-13 season, the Champions League's gross commercial income is estimated at €1.34bn (£1.09bn), including a small amount for the Uefa Super Cup). The Europa League, featuring 24 more clubs in total, earns an estimated €225m, just 17% of the figure for the world's most prestigious club tournament.

Hence the grumble, which has passed into received wisdom here, that the Europa League costs more to play in than clubs earn from it. That does not bear detailed scrutiny, but of course the individual earnings by clubs are much lower. Last season Chelsea and Bayern Munich, the two Champions League finalists, earned €60m and €42m respectively from going so far in the competition, calculated according to Uefa's complicated formula which partly rewards the commercial earnings of each country overall. Atlético Madrid and Athletic Bilbao, the two Spanish clubs which played adventurous and attacking football in the Europa League final, earned just €10.5m and €9.5m respectively, a sixth and a quarter of their Champions League counterparts.

Responding to the disparity, Uefa agreed in June to boost the Europa League with an additional €40m from the Champions League, to increase the second competition's attraction to the clubs. The distribution of the money within the Europa League is aimed at giving clubs incentives to progress in the competition. The 48 clubs in the group stages are expected to be paid €1.3m, with bonuses of €200,000 for every win and €100,000 for every draw. Payments increase as clubs progress, to a maximum possible of €9.9m, plus a share from the "market pool" payments per country.

Uefa's competition rules also stipulate that home clubs keep all the income from tickets and hosting matches, so this cash, from European nights which become increasingly meaningful and exciting as a club progresses, is earned as well as the share out from Uefa. As clubs' and countries' seeding is also graded according to their performance in the Europa League, Uefa believes there is a proper sporting incentive, as well as a decent and improving commercial reward, for clubs to field their best teams and do well in the competition.

The Europa League will always be the lesser event to the competition whose winners take home the famously outsized silver cup, but its attractions should perhaps be appreciated rather more than they currently are, because it is not a candidate for abolition anytime soon.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2012/dec/05/uefa-europa-league-boost-not-scrap
 
Re: O/T Champions League

RigorMortis said:
IMO the Champions League is a far more difficult competion to win than the old European Cup because of the strength in depth of the participants, its unlikely that a Steaua Bucharest would win the competition or a Malmo would make it to the final.
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Agree on the quality but would prefer it to be knock-out. Two legged ties all the way through .....seed it if you must but the group stages are tedious and give the 'better' teams too much chance to come back if they screw up a game.
 
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