Heavyweights. Rivalries. The champions. Knife-edge ties. Charged arenas. Comebacks. Floodlights. 

Contests.

This night had all of it and more. This felt like a proper European night. 

At Old Trafford, the mood was electric, mutual loathing between foes driving it just as it had at Anfield seven nights earlier. At White Hart Lane, there was a feeling of titans colliding, which is a strange sentence to type. At the Mestalla, the stands were rocking, European competition serving as a salvation, while at the Ramon Sanchez Pizjuan, the intensity of the pre-game hymn tugged at your soul. 

There were other sites too, but these were the ones.

At the first of the above addresses, the advantage started with Liverpool, swung toward Manchester United and then back to Liverpool; at the second, there were no swings in Borussia Dortmund vs. Tottenham Hotspur but the clash felt significant, like a forerunner for something big; at the third, Athletic Bilbao had arrived with the upper-hand, then watched it snatched away before they got it back; at the fourth, Sevilla exploded against a Basel with a puncher’s chance. 

This was European football at its finest. As it should be. 

On a Thursday. 

If ever there’d been a week in which the Europa League outshone the Champions League, this was it. Two nights earlier in the tier above, a pair of matches had failed to produce a goal between them. Atletico Madrid vs. PSV Eindhoven was highlight-lacking, while Manchester City vs. Dynamo Kyiv, so tedious that drying paint frustratedly watched it, might have been the worst game in the competition’s history. 

The following night, Barcelona’s ever-so-predictable 5-1 aggregate saunter beyond Arsenal wasn’t much better.

Only the exhilarating Bayern Munich vs. Juventus clash prevented this particular Champions League cluster from being a snooze, and yet still it was comfortably outdone by that belonging to the “other” competition. The one that no one supposedly cares about. The ugly one. The one with the weird-looking trophy. That schedules finals in locations that force fans to dust off their maps. That has beige in its colour scheme.  

Surprising? Not at all. 

For several seasons now, the Champions League has been taking on a growing feeling of staleness. 

For many, it’s the familiarity and sense of routine that’s concurrently striking and tiresome. In the round just gone, Chelsea did battle with Paris Saint-Germain. Again. Arsenal took on Barcelona. Again. In the group stage, Arsenal (again) met Bayern Munich, who they seem to have on some sort of weird rotation with Borussia Dortmund.

Likewise, Barcelona now have a habit of drawing Celtic, Ajax and BATE Borisov; Chelsea and Schalke are familiar with one another; Manchester City consistently enjoy the sort of luck Ed Rooney did with Ferris Bueller. 

When this year’s competition returns for its next round, we’ll get Barcelona vs. Atletico Madrid. Across two legs, the clubs will take their three-season tally of meetings to 14. Yep, 14. 

The staleness goes further than this, though.  

Throughout the group stage, a sense of inevitability lingers; in the round of 16 it continues, and often still does when the quarter-finals roll around. It’s not so much the format that’s the issue, but the growing absence of competitive balance driven by enormous financial discrepancies. 

Since 2010, Barcelona, Bayern Munich and Real Madrid have occupied 15 of the competition’s 24 semi-final slots. Since 2012, they’ve occupied 11 of the 16—almost 70 per cent—and this season are on track to take three of another four, given that the trio are strong favourites in their quarter-finals ties. Currently tipped to join them is PSG, who would round out a Super Club final four. 

That’s not a knock on those clubs; their job is to win and they do it better than everyone else. But simultaneously, it feels as if the Champions League is losing much of the essence of European competition: variety, unpredictability, new faces and new rivals, the connection of the continent, evenness and a sense of every round—every game—carrying context and possibilities. 

The current push for change isn’t surprising, then, even if the nature of it is disheartening.  

On Wednesday night, it was reported by the Guardian that UEFA, under pressure from Europe’s leading clubs, is considering a major revamp of the Champions League. 

Amid stagnating revenues, declining interest and concern about the Premier League’s growing financial might, a revised format has been floated that would feature a seeded knockout round followed by a 16-team group stage, split into two groups of eight. The top two from each group would then progress to the semi-finals. 

Such a development comes on the back of the meeting between representatives of Manchester United, Manchester City, Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool with Charlie Stillitano, chairman of Relevant Sports and organiser of the International Champions Cup, and whose apparent desire it is to oversee the creation of a closed competition for Europe’s elite. 

The intention in both instances couldn’t be any more clear: All the BATE Borisovs, Malmos and Astanas out; guaranteed heavyweight clashes in.

Or more bluntly: To hell with the rest of ‘em. To hell with upward mobility. To hell with the principles of competition. 

It couldn’t be more short-sighted. The Champions League’s problem is familiarity and repetitiveness driven by inequality, and this would only increase it: Chelsea vs. PSG again, year after year; Arsenal vs. Barcelona on a perpetual loop.

It would become a world of emotionally-detached, cash-driven mediocrity, where under-performing giants such as AC Milan, Inter Milan, Liverpool and Manchester United can exist without the need for qualifying—just like, funnily enough, is the case in the International Champions Cup. 

When that becomes stale—and it would—where do you go from there? What happens when there becomes an elite group within the elite group? When Milan or Inter become the Malmos or BATE Borisovs of the closed shop? 

Do you break away again? Go from 16 to 14, 14 to 12 and so on? Just eventually hand out a trophy for being the richest and be done with it?

Suddenly, the Europa League is looking pretty good. 

In the same period in which Barcelona, Bayern Munich and Real Madrid have totally eclipsed the rest in the Champions League, Europe’s second tier has felt fresh and diverse. 

Since 2010, the list of Europa League semi-finalists reads: Hamburg, Fulham, Atletico, Liverpool, Porto, Villarreal, Benfica, Braga, Valencia, Sporting Lisbon, Athletic Bilbao, Fenerbahce, Basel, Chelsea, Sevilla, Juventus, Napoli, Fiorentino and Dnipro. 

Of course, some will argue such diversity is the product of conflicted interests, that those with the best capacity to dominate haven’t always chosen to do so. There may be an element of truth to that, but concurrently such a notion seems as though it’s losing strength. 

Right now, the Europa League feels as if its emerging. 

Differentiating itself. 

In the current edition, the competition has unquestionably been helped by marquee ties such as Manchester United up against Liverpool and Dortmund going head-to-head with Tottenham. Dortmund vs. Liverpool in the next round looks pretty tasty, too, while the strength of the German outfit, Spurs, Napoli and Villarreal domestically this season has given the Europa League added weight.

It helps that prominent managers are leading the shift, too. 

“A game like this is the mother of all football games, a derby, two old rivals in a knockout competition,” said Jurgen Klopp ahead of Liverpool’s tie with United. “There is talk of it being a game at Champions league level, but I don’t really know what that means. I have seen a lot of rubbish games at Champions League level, but I don’t think this one will disappoint.”

As refreshing as ever, Klopp gets it, “it” in this case meaning the need to connect. Triumph. Stand for something. Sevilla’s Unai Emery gets it, too; he and his club cherish the Europa League and what it represents. 

In an interview with Pete Jenson of the Daily Mail ahead of last season’s final he said:

To win something and share it with the fans is the greatest feeling there is in football. The Champions League is nice, and we want to play in it, but you meet the very top teams in that competition and they overcome you. When you are in the Europa League, you know you can win it.

It’s the competing that keeps them happy. Fans want their emotions to come to the surface and the only to way to make that happen is to give them a team that transmits emotion: intensity, attacking, scoring goals, competing, fighting.

That awakens them. The fans want emotions. The Champions League generates more money and allows you to buy better players but what fans really want is to enjoy their team, to win things. If you have money but you don’t generate feeling and emotion, it’s worthless. You can be in the Champions League and generate money but if you get knocked out in the group it means nothing to the fans. Sure, you’ve made 20 million, but what does that mean to them?

Admittedly, the Europa League isn’t without its flaws—the sheer number of teams in the group phase can make it difficult to follow. Qualification cuts into pre-season, catching the game you want on television can be hard work and the dropping down of Champions League teams midway through leaves an uneasy feeling—but still, it’s delivering.

Delivering for entertainment and for competitiveness.

For stories. 

In recent years, the competition has featured a pre-Diego Simeone explosion from Atletico. The incredible run of Fulham. Athletic Bilbao’s defying of the odds. Benfica’s semi-final toppling of Juventus. Dnipro doing the same to Napoli. The journey of Carlos Bacca from bus conductor to two-time European champion. 

This is what it’s about. 

When the competition resumes in early April, Dortmund vs. Liverpool will give the round its glamour and ferocity. Bilbao vs. Sevilla, both unique and likeable, will give it personality. Completing the scene, Braga vs. Shakhtar Donetsk and Villarreal vs. Sparta Praha will give it diversity. New faces. New ties. 

Evidently, what gives continental football the element of fun is still out there to be found. 

You just might have to look in a different place to find it.  

 

Follow @TimDCollins

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