New Champions League format is a disasterManchester City and Paris Saint-German

New Champions League format  is a  disaster.
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Manchester City and Paris Saint-Germain could be  eliminated from the Champions League tomorrow night.  Thank goodness for the new  tournament format, or so the  experts say. Yes,  it's the  joy most football fans feel when two of  Europe's oil-rich superclubs are  in trouble. But  experts also see  Manchester City's misfortune as  justification for a  change to the Champions League. Finally, the end of the  "boring party we've known for  years," says pundit Jamie Carragher. It's easy to get caught up in the  noise and even easier to forget  about the  big tournaments of  recent seasons.  However, officials at UEFA –  the governing body  of European football – decided  that the tournament needed  "more suspense" and  "more fun". So they turned the group stage into a mini-league by  adding extra  matches and then adding  a qualifying  round. This is the  "Swiss model", which was originally developed to  organize chess tournaments  in Zurich in the 1890s. There were too many players to  compete in a  round-robin tournament, so they  faced random opponents of varying  levels. This  allowed the competitors  to create a final ranking, but reduced the total number of games. UEFA  has neglected this part. It  did not want to increase the number of teams,  but only the number of matches.  The extra  matches for each club mean 52  extra TV events for  UEFA, increasing the prize  money by almost  25% to around £2.2  billion.
The clubs are happy with the extra  TV revenue. UEFA  is at the  service of the bigger and  more recalcitrant clubs, who threaten to form a  separate "Super League" whenever they  fail to get their way. The new format  transforms the group stage into a  championship where each team  plays eight others,  eliminating the suspension of major matches. Did it matter  if Barcelona lost a game  against Monaco?  It took them seven  more games to  catch up and  they are now comfortably in second place. Of the 36  teams in the competition, half have  already qualified for the next stage of the tournament, more than  in this stage under the old  system.
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The old group stage was simple and emphasised the gladiatorial atmosphere of the tournament.  Ultimately, the Champions League is the pinnacle of club football and  is supposed to pit  Europe's clubs against each other to  determine who will prevail. Four teams  play in the group stage, once home and  once away, and their final  standings determine their fate  - just like the World Cup. The top two  teams advance to the knockout stage, the  third-placed team is relegated to a lower  tier of European competition  - their frustrated fans  were forced to  travel to Azerbaijan instead of Spain  - and the bottom team  is eliminated. Playing a  balanced number of  home games  can give smaller clubs an advantage and in recent  years, just as many, if not more,  have beaten their  bigger opponents in the group stage. Manchester United were  eliminated by Copenhagen, Atletico Madrid by  Club Brugge and Inter Milan by  Mönchengladbach. What happens to the fans?  Take Aston  Villa as an example. When their fans sat down to  follow Villa's run in the Champions League, they had to  navigate a  winding list: away to Young Boys in Switzerland, followed by Munich and Bologna at home,  Bruges away, then Juventus at home, Leipzig and  Monaco. away. and, finally, Celtic at home.  In the  end, Villa  finished in ninth place, or so they hoped. Their reward?  Another round of  qualifying matches against,  uh, one of the teams  they've probably  faced before. Also, this  time it will be  a home and  away game, and if Villa  win overall, they  could progress to the knockout  stages, where the tournament really  begins.
Compare that to Aston  Villa's last  appearance in the Champions League in 1982. Villa had won the tournament the  previous year, so fans went in with high expectations.  They first faced Besiktas  of Turkey home and away,  losing to  progress and  doing the same  in Bucharest.  But in the  quarterfinals they  narrowly lost to a strong Juventus  team. It was  over. Curtains. Six  matches, all  with high stakes. Now it takes 144  matches to eliminate just 12 teams from the tournament.  There are four months of  matches left to  play.
The "Swiss model" is not helping Swiss  teams, who  continue to be destroyed every week and  eliminated from the competition  by their mediocre  Central European neighbours. The last time  a foreign team made serious progress in the Champions League was 13 years ago  - APOEL  of Cyprus  qualified for the  quarter-finals. The new format  has not made the tournament more competitive, it  has only  served to squeeze more money out of an already  saturated game.

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