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At a time when some events are banning phones to ensure the audience is properly engaged in the experience, the perceived success of the new Champions League format was instead captured by the image of Aston Villa and Club Brugge players huddled around various devices anxiously checking the scores in Barcelona and Zagreb to see if they’d made the top eight and play-offs respectively.
Wednesday’s scenes at Villa Park and the Etihad Stadium had a palpable charm to them. Here was a modern twist on transistor radios being held to one ear, game-states being passed by word of mouth followed by cheers or curses, progress or elimination.
The broadly positive reception to the new formula called to mind Harry Lime’s immortal line in The Third Man. “In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.” Lime perhaps wouldn’t have been so disdainful if he’d known about the Swiss model, as the new Champions League format is known.
But aside from delivering more money to the clubs, more games to the broadcasters and more revenue to itself, did UEFA’s overhaul work?
There were some great stories during the league phase, from Lille and Brest over-performing to Manchester City’s unexpected psychodrama. Lille, for instance, lost their coach Paulo Fonseca to Milan in the summer and sold their best young player, Leny Yoro, to Manchester United. They needed to go through two preliminary rounds, where they eliminated Jose Mourinho’s Fenerbahce, just to make the league phase.
When Ruben Amorim’s Sporting beat them on the Swiss model’s opening night, most people would have tipped the Lisbon side, not Lille to be the gatecrashers into the top eight. But, no. Lille bounced back to beat champions Real Madrid, then neighbours Atletico. They drew with Juventus and only lost to Liverpool after going down to 10 men.
But past editions of the Champions League did not lack storylines like Lille’s, so it is hard to attribute theirs to the new format.
Brest, perhaps, benefited from playing eight games and eight different opponents instead of six against three other clubs, as was the case in previous seasons. It feels a long time ago now but the momentum for their qualification to the upcoming play-off round came from a light introduction to Europe’s elite club competition.
To the neutral, their fixtures felt less Champions League and more Austrian Bundesliga or Mitropa Cup in the early months as they beat Sturm Graz and RB Salzburg, then creditably held Bayer Leverkusen to a draw before overcoming Sparta in Prague. It was a heartwarming tale, even if Brest’s Cinderella story was a bit like giving Cinders a dating app with the best possible algorithm to help her find her happy-ever-after.
As the competition clashed for the first time with the winter transfer window, the notion of jeopardy was roundly heralded as the Champions League’s best new signing, hyped as a prospect capable of drawing more attention than the usual cast of stars. But, make no mistake, a lot of smoke and mirrors were in use here.
The real drama came from the random coincidence of the new format’s introduction with the one season in Pep Guardiola’s 17-year coaching career when his team are spluttering. In the end, though, the extension of the opening phase from six games to eight allowed big clubs like City, who left it last-minute compared with Paris Saint-Germain and Real Madrid, enough rope to pull themselves out of trouble.
It used to be that 10 or 11 points was the benchmark for qualification from a six-game group. Though in 2013, 12 points weren’t enough for Napoli. This time round, in the inaugural league phase, City, Sporting and Club Brugge reached the play-offs with 11 points from two extra matches. Less from more somehow represented progress.
By playing eight different teams, there is more variety, more curiosity and less sameness. However, the new format throws up another conundrum: when is a league not a league? By not playing everyone, your club’s fixtures can feel abstract and that abstraction could be like lifting the lid on Pandora’s box. Because if home and away isn’t a thing, does it matter where these games are played? Might it open the door to UEFA Champions League fixtures in New York and Riyadh?
So as with the illusion of jeopardy, the other trick here — a compromise, really — is that this is a Super League approximating format under UEFA branding.
“Are you not entertained?”
I’ll leave you with the image of Aleksander Ceferin, bloodied by the Super League insurrectionists, throwing his sword onto the Colosseum gravel.
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