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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.
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