Ruben Amorim, we salute you. You might just have saved the Champions League. At least for now.
Sporting Lisbon’s ambush of Manchester City at last provided a focal point for the amorphous slab that is the new configuration, hitherto a massively underwhelming experience.
Granted, any new format is going to take time to set down roots, to establish patterns. However, since this is a development responding to economic imperatives as opposed to the sporting motives upon which Uefa insist it is predicated, there was no following wind to provide impetus.
This is week four. The narrative force has been slow to emerge, with little sense of excitement in games. Sporting’s fixture with City, framed by Amorim’s imminent move to Manchester United, was relevant in the Premier League context not in the Champions League, despite both teams being unbeaten and in the top eight, which guarantees qualification for the last 16.
European competition has its own traditions. After four decades as a straight knockout competition the European Cup morphed into the Champions League with its group set-up.
This was itself a means of feeding the broadcast-driven football economy by keeping the top teams in the competition for longer.
Though the inevitable power centres emerged, reflecting the strength of the established national leagues, the groups at least offered a pre-Christmas rhythm that over three decades provided a recognisable dynamic. This just about held on to the cache of the prior orientation when less was more.
This vague league format is anti bums on seats. In week one, seven-times champions AC Milan attracted a crowd of 59,000 for the visit of six-times champions Liverpool.
This was European royalty. Only Real Madrid have won more. Three days earlier more than 70,000 turned up to watch Milan host Venezia, which underscores the significance of history and tradition. Football is a community enterprise that thrives on local rivalries.
European football has carved its place in the calendar alongside domestic competition. It is clear how this current format is an attempt to supersede national leagues, ushering in a European Super League by the back door. This ignores the ancient rhythms of European competition, which acquires its exceptionalism only in the later stages when jeopardy is in play.
Though pundits frequently offer the Champions League as a guarantee of quality, the highest expression of the game, that classification only really applies to the knockout arena when the major powers face off. The absence of jeopardy in these early stages, might explain the apathy felt by many.
Broadcasters sell this as the pinnacle. Advertisers measure those claims in viewing figures. Empty spaces in the stands may yet begin to close as the competition staggers towards a sweet spot, but identity is still lacking.
Week four kicked off with debutants Slovan Bratislava versus Dinamo Zagreb. The former are Champions League newbies, fulfilling the Uefa ideal of greater representation of national champions.
The problem is Slovan are champions of the Slovak First Football League, which has no equivalence to Europe’s superpowers, England, Spain, Italy, France and Germany.
We are all for spreading the love, broadening the base of the pyramid, but this was not a fixture driving neutral interest.
When City were in the Slovak capital on matchday two they pumped four past the hosts, demonstrating the flaw in an ill-conceived design. Even Dinamo recovered from the loss of an early goal to score four in what was a fourth consecutive defeat for Slovan, an experience that nourishes neither the Champions League nor domestic football in Slovakia.
PSV versus Girona was hardly a Tuesday night ticket-seller, Bologna against Monaco, neither. Real Madrid suffering a second Champions League defeat at home to Milan was helpful, but car-crash football at storied clubs is box-office in any setting, just ask Manchester United. It is not a marker of intrinsic European intrigue.
Shakhtar Donetsk against Young Boys led Wednesday’s scheduling. Not for you? What about Sparta Prague versus Brest at 8pm. Thought not. This is not to slight those teams, only to ram home the point about traction. Those fixtures require the knockout dimension to give them the necessary weight.
Moreover, the barmy idea of teams playing opponents only once further dilutes the product by removing the classic home and away dimension, not to mention assaulting the integrity of the competition.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly for coaches, the extra fixtures – from six to eight – increases the loading on players already at their physical limit.
Though Kevin De Bruyne returned for the trip to Lisbon after seven weeks on the sidelines, City were without Rodri, Ruben Dias, John Stones and Jack Grealish. You might argue that with more than 70 per cent possession and twice as many shots, City were undone by their own profligacy rather than injuries, but the point is made.
The new format is thus a drag on participants as well as observers, a double whammy from which there is no obvious reprieve. All this and an equally threadbare international break to come.
from Football - inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/G4OYg92
Post a Comment