This is the first year in recent memory that my beloved Chelsea has not taken part in the UEFA Champions League tournament. It was a tough pill to swallow getting 10th place in the Premier League, but to be honest I almost forgot about Champions League play when it first started this season. After accepting the reality of a Chelsea-less tournament, I began watching the competition and began my unbiased viewing of what is supposed to be the most competitive tournament, besides the FIFA World Cup, in the football world.
Qualification into the Champions League is pretty self explanatory, be a top team in your domestic leagues and you earn a spot in a tournament composed of the best teams in Europe. Then, depending on your league and league standing you get drawn into groups where teams of similar resumes are distributed evenly so that no one group is consumed by multiple teams in the top 10 of Europe. The initial group drawing is pretty fair, those teams that performed are rewarded, for example Leicester won the EPL therefore they didn't face FC Barcelona in the group stage. Much like league play you face all the teams within your group with a home and away fixture, again that is more than fair - specially for the smaller teams (I could argue there are no small teams in the Champions League, but I digress) who benefit from a little home-field advantage, FC Basel and Galatasaray per say. I have zero problem with the way UEFA has initially set up the tournament - sorry Shaktar but you won't be a #1 seed in a group anytime soon, the Ukrainian league is just not there yet.. well unless you win the Champions League of course.
Once the group stage ends, and drawing for the elimination fixtures comes around is where the tournament has issues, in my opinion. Group winners have the privilege of not facing each other, and I have no problem with that. They earned it. But it's the secondary rules of the drawing that make the random/unpredictable aspect of the drawings much more of a predictability. "No teams of the same association (La Liga, EPL, Bundesliga, etc.) may face each other." Wait... what? Last time I checked, this tournament is the tournament of champions. You have to go through the best to be the best, right?... wrong. This rule basically protects the mega clubs from facing each other early on in the tournament. This very year, Barcelona won their group and Real Madrid got second (by Goal differential) in theirs. Meaning we could have an El Clasico scenario in the round of 16. But UEFA prevents this scenario from ever occurring with the rule mentioned previously. Other match-ups that could have occurred (and gotten amazing ratings, I may add) but were disallowed from becoming a reality include Barcelona vs. Atletico, Bayern vs. Dortmund, and even Leicester vs. Man City. This rule also explains scenarios such as Arsenal vs. Bayern or Real/Barcelona vs. PSG happening almost every year... seriously the Bayern twitter account predicted they would play Arsenal again this year..
I can see why UEFA thought it was a good idea initially, they want to get clubs to face teams they don't typically play against. Well here is my counter to that. THE GROUP STAGE OF THIS TOURNAMENT. Not interfering with the drawings after the group stage is what makes tournaments like the World Cup so great. Reigning champions Germany could face a second place Argentina team right after the group stage.. I mean, who wouldn't want to see these Titans face each other early on. It adds drama, it adds to the stakes, it only gives tournaments more prestige. And yes fans would be sad to see some of the favorites fall early on in the tournaments, but I can bounce back with another counter argument to that with what happened to Spain last World Cup. It was a shock to see them eliminated soon in the tournament, but from that elimination stories like the Costa Rica side gained popularity and support from people who didn't care about the Ticos ever before. That's the beautiful thing. And I can go back to the basics of the tournament, its called the CHAMPIONS LEAGUE. You're supposed to be playing the best teams in the Europe, if a team from your domestic league is there.. suck it up, they deserve to be there.
Again I may be nitpicking here, but this rule plays a huge part of who the Champion is at the end of the day. Real Madrid, Atletico Madrid, and Barcelona can't face each other until the quarterfinal... that's absurd. I'm not arguing that they may or may not be in the top 8 in Europe, but its unnecessary to "protect" them from each other until so late in the game. Why wait until then to let the tournament have teams with bad blood between them face off. I would love for Bayern and Dortmund to fight for a spot into the quarterfinals or for Sevilla to shock the world and send Barcelona home in the round of 16. But we are deprived that sort of headline by keeping teams from playing each other.
At this point many of you may be thinking, well this guy is a Chelsea fan. He's just hating on the big Spanish Clubs or Bayern or Juventus. I can admit that Real Madrid, Barcelona, Bayern, and other clubs are indeed better than their English counterparts. Put any of those teams in the EPL and they are instantly contenders and even possibly favorites to win this hypothetical scenario. So if these clubs are so good why do we need to protect them from each other until the final 8 teams of a tournament?
so hey UEFA.. "LET THE BOYS PLAY"
Feel free to comment, the whole point was to ignite discussion on the subject matter.
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