Re: Europa league in vogue
But let's be honest, the group stages are painfully dull. The group stage of the CL had great games, Real Madrid-Emirates Marketing Project, Dortmund-Madrid for example. All of our group games were pretty dull.
CL group stages weren't
that great. Man United had 3 weak clubs in their group, Chelsea had Juve (good), Shaktar (played plenty of times in the Europa League) and a tiny club, Arsenal had Schalke and 2 fairly weak clubs.
The Europa League generally had groups with 2 good teams and 2 "who the fudge are they" teams.
Group stages in both competitions will have less than blockbuster games because both competitions are opened out.
I totally agree the Real Madrid CL group was fudging amazing, but that's because 4 good teams were drawn in one group. World Cups have the same thing sometimes. You get a group with all good teams, while other groups have teams with countries that couldn't beat 3rd division teams.
The CL would be fudging amazing if it was simply the best teams in the world. The problem is you're looking at 4-6 teams from a few of the major leagues and then a couple from other random places. UEFA keep going the route of letting more "little champions" in... If you look at the Europa League, it's pretty much an exaggeration of that. Even though it has qualification rounds before the group stages, the tournament generally has teams from all over the place.
It's fairness vs entertainment. If every UEFA member association had to put their champion and runner up into a seeded qualifier, you wouldn't see the champions of many countries.
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In general though, both competitions have great teams in them at this stage. The CL will always have the best 3-4 teams though. Man United or City might drop into the Europa League every once in a while, but Real Madrid, Bayern, Barca are not likely to find themselves in that situation. Take the absolute best out of the CL reckoning and you're left with United, Schalke, PSG, Malaga, etc. In theory Europa league teams like Lyon (3 points from PSG in the league and are more of a CL team than PSG has been until recently) can compare with those clubs without a huge huge huge loss in quality.
Although this year will be different, you had to watch EL to see Falcao play in Europe... This year Bale is in the EL... Again taking out those elite teams, the stars on show are comparable.
As for how good the Europa League teams are... Bilbao outplaying Man United in 2 games last year, Atletico smashing Chelsea in the super cup this year... It's not like stepping into the Europa League is like having to play 3rd Division teams.
By contrast, Celtic are in the CL still (until their next match), they usually struggle to get past any European qualification rounds they have. There are plenty of clubs in the CL which would be supreme underdogs against EL teams. There are plenty of teams in the CL which would be equal matches with EL teams... Of course there are EL teams that would be underdogs against CL teams, but that's because there are so many EL teams left and so many are from weak leagues.
Both competitions have weak teams in them at the start. Everyone's opinion on how many lesser teams should be allowed into the group stages will differ, just like how many runners up should be allowed from a league will differ.
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From our point of view, we can't meet Real Madrid, Barca, Bayern or Dortmund in the EL. So we may as well try to win, we aren't going to be underdogs that aren't even going to be given a hope of beating someone we face, so it's a chance to go for glory this year before focusing on money in a competition we probably won't be able to win next year. (Not to be too pessimistic, but even if we were somehow able to beat Barca or Madrid or Bayern, we'd probably have to play another of those three and we wouldn't be able to keep pulling off amazing wins.) If Dortmund perform at the same level they have this season, we'd probably have the horrible luck of having to play them too. But seeing as those 4 are the overwhelming favourites for the competition and United can't go into a slugfest with any of them and have to rely on defensive tactical performances, it shows I'm not being that pessimistic, I just feel that other PL teams have been a long way from being able to outplay their way to victory vs the best teams in the world.
As far as the actual achievement of winning the EL goes, how long has it been since the club won something as big as that? That'd be huge for us, huge for the players, huge for the coaching staff, huge for sponsorship and brand awareness and it'd be one of those cool little things we could use to keep Bale (won a major trophy with us) and lure new players (come to us and win trophies)...
The biggest problem with the EL is the sheer amount of games we have to play, we were looking at almost as many EL games as PL games if we wanted to get to the final, but 2 down so hopefully we'll be ok until the end of the season. It would suck to come close to an epic PL season and winning the EL but running out of steam and watching our season implode. At least the CL pays for a bigger squad, the EL barely pays for anything.
Hopefully we'll look back at this campaign next year and say "look at this easy CL group that we wouldn't have been able to get if not for those epic Europa League nights".
