The old European cups' competition system

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Posted by K.I.K.E. on Nov-24-2006 13:02:

The old European cups' competition system

I read an article, some days ago, about the 'devaluation' of the UEFA Cup, and started to remember (and miss) the days when...:

- Only the league champion could play the European Cup (Champions League), making the national regular season more interesting: the strongest team in each country gained the deserved participation.

- The following 4 best ranked teams made the UEFA, a competition harder to win, some years, than the European Cup (you could see in the same UEFA edition, teams like: Inter, Juventus, Real Madrid, Valencia, Arsenal, Liverpool... Champions League 1st level teams), and with an enormous prestige.

- The national Cup champion, when the cup tournaments had more 'weight', were usually teams that, with nowadays' system, would have qualified easily to the Champions League. Strong teams that made Cup Winners' Cup (R.I.P.) interesting, with direct KO rounds, great comebacks, and usually heavyweight finalist and semifinalists.

They killed the CWC, UEFA Cup is not what it was, and the Champions League, making the rich, richer, is contributing to this.

Your thoughts.

Posted by Yohan on Nov-24-2006 16:45:

The thing about only the league winners making CL is that it detracts from quality of the league, since there are what 5 'big' leagues and few other 'decent' leagues (SPL, Turkey, maybe Danish league)

You're not going to get much of a fan draw on that league.

Posted by noikeee on Nov-24-2006 22:33:

The current system is the best that has ever been - it results in a very high competitive level in the Champions League, which is a great test of both consistency (the group stage) and getting the best out of a long knock-out stage. Granted, the UEFA Cup has become a bit of a lower reputation trophy, but it still is a good competition for developing teams to get european experience and overall it has a decent standard of football. The Cup Winners Cup didn't add anything special except for nostalgia - when it was abolished it had become even less important than what the UEFA Cup is currently.

All this talk about the old Champions League and how only the champions "deserve" to be in it - but if we kept the current 32 teams league format with only the national champions, this would be the list of teams for this season: (I picked the champions from the 32 best placed nations in the UEFA coefficients. Worst case, we could have the champions from San Marino or Iceland knocking off some of these teams.)

Barcelona
Inter
Chelsea
Lyon
Bayern
FC Porto
PSV
Olympiakos
CSKA Moscow
Steaua
Celtic
Anderlecht
Shakhtar Donetsk
Slovan Liberec
Galatasaray
FC Zurich
Levski Sofia
Maccabi Haifa
Valerenga
Austria Wien
Red Star
Legia Warsaw
FC Kobenhavn
Debreceni
Dinamo Zagreb
Djurgardens
Ruzomberok
Apollon
Gorica
Siroki Brijeg
MyPa
Liepajas Metalurgs

I don't know about you, but I'd much rather have a Valencia-Roma in the Champions League over a Decreceni-Apollon. Unless you want to reduce the number of teams, therefore reducing the number of games. Want to watch less top football? Turn off the tv and let others watch it.

I'm sorry if being a bit harsh, it's just that i'm a bit fed up of this "idea" that comes up regularly in a number of forums i visit, when i have a total opposite view. In my opinion it's just the natural tendency people have to look at the past and think it was better than what it actually was.

Posted by chesco on Nov-24-2006 22:58:

i think the way the champions league is set out at the moment is great. `The format of the tournament makes for the best games and the ultimately is the most entertaining, and really thats what its all about isn;t it?

The way they have the uefa cup running at the moment tho is stupid, they shouldn't have changed it's format and certainly not to a five team group stage, thats just retarded..