And so the microphone passes back. After the pretender made all the noise last week, Tuesday night sees the established powerhouse wrestle back control, and as the old football saying goes, they’ll hope to do their talking on the pitch – with two European heavyweights promising to do just that.
The timing of A22’s attempted European Super League relaunch, now with actual divisions, will likely have been by design, creating a hubbub just before Uefa’s premier competition returned that told us these plans are far from dead in the water.
It received the expected opposition, too. LaLiga called it “still the same selfish, elitist and greed-driven project”, several Premier League clubs are said to have distanced themselves from the proposals, while the European Club Association declared: “We have moved on, when will A22?”
But perhaps Uefa’s greatest asset in the bid to foil A22, the company behind the Super League, is its best club tournament, the Champions League, which resumes on Tuesday night with two round-of-16 fixtures.
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And then you have Paris Saint-Germain and Bayern Munich. The former spearheaded by a superstar forward line hoping to deliver a first Champions League triumph to the French capital, the latter an enduring force that have won six European Cups – most recently when beating PSG in the 2020 final.
With both top of their domestic leagues, once again PSG and Bayern are among the favourites to win the Champions League this year (they are second and third with the bookmakers respectively), while both teams also steered well clear of the original Super League plans – never mind the current rehash.
It is therefore the ideal start to the knockout stages for Uefa. In this high-stakes format, one of Bayern or PSG will be conducting a post-mortem by 8 March, evaluating why their Champions League pursuit ended three months before the final in Istanbul.
The victors, meanwhile, will be expected and heavily backed to make the 10 June showpiece – that is unless they meet current favourites Manchester City in the quarter or semi-finals.
Herein lies the beauty of a tournament heralded (largely…) the continent over, a tournament that drips out blockbuster meetings as opposed to making them a regular occurrence. PSG-Bayern would not be as eagerly anticipated were these two sides to meet twice a season without fail. Likewise, Liverpool and Real Madrid, with their 20 European Cups combined, meeting next week for just the ninth time in the Champions League era.
And for proof that European football already has a multi-division structure of sorts, an unlikely but enticing clash pits Barcelona against Manchester United this week for just the third time in a decade.
This was the Champions League final both 12 and 14 years ago, but now it is a Europa League knockout play-off tie, and albeit not the tournament many would have expected for this showdown, it is a chance for both Barcelona and United to prove that their respective resurgences of late have substance.
So, in essence, the current system seemingly works just fine. No need to change a thing. It’s perfect as it is. If ain’t broke don’t fi- … Ah. The Champions League format changes from 2024.
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Why oh why may be the cry, but at least the change is not overly drastic. Expanding to 36 teams, the “Swiss model” will hand teams eight group-stage matches as opposed to the current six – it was going to be 10 group games before Uefa listened to detractors, Jurgen Klopp included – while it is also worth noting that Uefa have left the tournament untouched from the round of 16 onwards.
Uefa have at least recognised the popularity of this format, and after last year’s knockout stage delivered in spades – with Real Madrid defying the odds round after round – the hope will be, in the Uefa corner at least, for more of the same and a months-long spectacle that brings the noise again, a noise that could drown out the Super League supporters once and for all.
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