Comments on: A Comparison of Champions

By: Trent

Trent — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 22:14:33 +0000

John, sorry your comment got tangled in the spam queue. (I bet it was from the word “stiffer” if you can believe it.)

But yeah, I would love to see the Champions League be for, you know, champions. I’d love to see league winners and domestic cup winners go into the current Champions League and have teams 2-4 or 2-5 go to a much sterner UEFASuperLiga thingy.

Of course, that’s very close to how it used to work and it was the big boys who whined about missing out on so much revenue year after year. The gap is so wide now that the top teams’ reserve sides are better than most of the other teams in the league, and I know people alleged Mourinho snapped up guys like Glen Johnson and Wayne Bridge not to play them, but to keep other teams from having them. Great…

By: Trent Hergenrader

Trent Hergenrader — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 21:09:55 +0000

Phil, I was only comparing professional teams. Sorry.

Leeds United is actually the textbook tragic/cautionary tale for medium-sized clubs. They mortgaged the house to bring in loads of expensive players to vie with the European powerhouses and, for a couple three years it worked. Then they went through a bad patch, didn’t qualify for the Champions League (which meant losing all kinds of crazy money) and the bottom fell out. They were relegated twice and now reside in third tier of English football. This would be like the Cubbies coming close to winning the World Series and three years later find themselves playing in double-A baseball on front of a few hundred people.

You can read Wikipedia’s summaries here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leeds_United#1996.E2.80.932001:_Living_the_Dream

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leeds_United#2001-2004:_Financial_implosion

By: Dr. Phil

Dr. Phil — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 17:48:59 +0000

As a long-time Cubs fan, I should point out that MLB has TWO Chicago teams. You do need to distinguish them. (grin)

Go Leeds! (my maternal grandmother, who died in the 1930s, was from Leeds)

Dr. Phil

By: John League

John League — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 18:27:38 +0000

Still, it’s hard to see how an eighteen-team, single-table European league wouldn’t be significantly more competitive and perhaps more interesting.

Agreed. I think one of the only ways you’ll ever see the top European leagues (especially England) get any more interesting individually is if you limit the number of automatic Champions League qualifying spots. Champions League money has become an annuity for England’s Top Four, one that gives them an almost perpetual monetary and status advantage (mismanagement of said money, a la Liverpool, notwithstanding). Even if they simply cut the automatic qualifiers to three and let the FA Cup winner into the CL instead of the UEoFA League, there would at least be a stiffer fight for third and for the cup.

Of course, it will never ever happen.