Champions of Spain Versus Champions of Italy

Nine months till the final.

The lure of Euro­pean foot­ball tran­scends merely the mil­lion dol­lar incen­tives; rather the Cham­pi­ons League rep­re­sents a team’s arrival at the high­est ech­e­lon of world foot­ball.  Or at least it did when it was called the Euro­pean Cup.

Mar­ket­ing men have milked foot­ball for every penny that’s avail­able, and milked a few more pen­nies that weren’t.  With nine months to go until the Cham­pi­ons League final there’s almost an entire sea­son between now and the most pres­ti­gious game in foot­ball, and yet the best team in Spain and the league win­ners of Italy are some­how play­ing each other on a so called ‘Match Day #1’.  The com­pe­ti­tion is bogus.

http://www.skysports.com/football/match_report/0,19764,11065_3190160,00.html

In an effort to widen the reach of the Euro­pean foot­ball cap­ture it seems that a lit­tle intrigue got lost in the trade for prof­itabil­ity.  Once upon a time the legacy of the Euro­pean Cup car­ried a charm that was unde­ni­able.  The Euro­pean elite were pit­ted against the other elite Euro­peans in a for­mat that was both ratio­nal and palat­able.  Home and away fix­tures dic­tated who were the bet­ter team over the ran­domly selected fix­tures, and fail­ure to advanced offered noth­ing more than the exit.

If you wanted to be recog­nised as Euro­pean Cup win­ners and if you wanted to bask in all the acco­lades that were deserved by Euro­pean Cup win­ners then you first had to qual­ify by being the most supe­rior team in your domes­tic league.  Only domes­tic cham­pi­ons were invited and sec­ond placed teams, third placed teams and other placed teams were con­signed to subordination.

Once the list of elite teams was com­piled the Euro­pean Cup com­pe­ti­tion was con­ducted in a man­ner befit­ting a true ‘cup’ com­pe­ti­tion.  You could be drawn against a min­now from some new East­ern Euro­pean coun­try, still Cham­pi­ons, but sill a min­now.  Or you could be drawn against the best team from the Span­ish league or from Italy.  Either way, you had two games in fair exchange to advance or not.  There were no dead rub­bers, there were no visas for sup­port­ers and there was sig­nif­i­cant foot­ball each game and every game.

In an effort to incor­po­rate new emerg­ing mar­kets the Cham­pi­ons League umbrella has stretched beyond the usual con­tes­tants and engineered-additions have brought new tele­vi­sion con­tracts even if they haven’t brought new qual­ity foot­ball teams.  All of Liecht­en­stein or the major­ity of north­ern Ser­bia will pay to see their nau­se­at­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tive pre­serve a ter­ri­ble goal­less ignominy at Liv­er­pool or Madrid.  While teams like Liv­er­pool or Madrid will endure the ignominy in order to sell more replica shirts or to pli­cate improved spon­sor­ship talks.

The charm of the Euro­pean night has gone.  At least wan­ing.  And it’s been replaced by the most prof­itable busi­ness arrange­ment that can be negotiated.

Some nine months before the con­clu­sion of the Cham­pi­ons League final the cal­cu­lated and rather arti­fi­cial arrange­ment of the tour­na­ment for­mat has fab­ri­cated an anom­aly of a fix­ture very early on in the pro­ceed­ings.  Last season’s Cham­pi­ons League win­ners and Span­ish La Liga Cham­pi­ons Barcelona are play­ing Ital­ian Cham­pi­ons and one of the tournaments’s fan­cied cubs Inter­nazionale.  The game chrono­log­i­cally appears first on the cal­en­dar and so has some sig­nif­i­cance yet no real con­se­quence.  Given the rather mediocre con­tin­gent that irri­tates the group’s min­ion hier­ar­chy; the out­come of this spe­cific fix­ture was far from deci­sive, bor­der­ing on irrel­e­vant.  A win, lose or draw would almost cer­tainly con­clude with absolute an unequiv­o­cal advance­ment to the lat­ter stages for both supe­rior clubs.  The pan­tomime of qual­i­fi­ca­tion is inde­cently fuelled by busi­ness and has noth­ing to do with football.

More teams, more inter­ested cus­tomers and more money.  That could also read as; more teams, fewer sig­nif­i­cant games, and a lower qual­ity of football.

The one down­side to the old style Euro­pean Cup was that you only ever got to see one rep­re­sen­ta­tive form any given oppos­ing nation.  If AC Milan were domes­ti­cally bet­ter than Inter or bet­ter than Juven­tus then that was the team that we got to watch.  The same was true in Spain; if Barcelona deserved the Euro­pean Cup run then they were the only Span­ish team to enter.  It was lim­it­ing on your Euro­pean foot­ball geog­ra­phy, but it was at least uphold­ing to the integrity of the competition.

The one ben­e­fit of the larger more accom­mo­dat­ing Cham­pi­ons League is that you’re almost cer­tain to see the very best Euro­pean clubs regard­less of whether they are their very best domes­tic club.  I under­stand and con­sent to hav­ing both Barcelona and Real Madrid play­ing in the most pres­ti­gious Euro­pean com­pe­ti­tion, even though I also know that they can’t both be Span­ish cham­pi­ons.  The same goes for Italy, I want to watch Inter, AC and Juven­tus but they all can’t be league win­ners at the end of a sea­son.  And I’d rather watch the third placed team in Eng­land than the first placed team from pretty much all the other infe­rior and weaker Euro­pean Leagues.

The rub truly comes when you have to watch infe­rior teams from infe­rior leagues.  I’m not sure that French peo­ple watch the third best team in France play the fourth best team in France.  I’m almost cer­tain that I don’t want to watch them play on a Wednes­day night in the Champion’s League.

An extended hybrid com­pe­ti­tion makes sense.  We all want to see the best clubs play the best clubs in the best Euro­pean com­pe­ti­tion.  It just makes no sense when we don’t get to see the best clubs play­ing the best clubs.  Or worse, when we do get to see the best clubs play­ing the best clubs, but NOT dur­ing the best Euro­pean com­pe­ti­tion.  Dead rub­bers and infe­rior teams can go.

The fiasco runs abhor­rent when you cast an eye over the rule book of the now defunct UEFA Cup and you try to under­stand the fusion that is the Europa League.  Any pre­cious sem­blance of tier-two Euro­pean glory has been dis­man­tled and bathed in shame.  The con­vo­luted and almost tedious route to the final deems the per­ceived suc­cess of qual­i­fi­ca­tion as bated venom.  Sum­mer par­tic­i­pa­tion pre­cedes a sea­son cam­paign that can stretch the length and breadth of Europe and some­times well beyond.  Thurs­day night in a coun­try that has a land bor­der with Iran or Syria should be deemed void or super­fi­cial prepa­ra­tion for West Ham away on a Sun­day after­noon.  The thirst for expo­sure has gone too far.

The mock­ery or insignif­i­cance of the Europa League is now being mocked by UEFA them­selves.  The UEFA Cup and the UEFA Cup Win­ner Cup were once a pres­ti­gious punc­tu­a­tion on the Euro­pean agenda, a step­ping stone for aspir­ing teams ascend­ing the lad­der of the Euro­pean elite.  No such luck today.  Rather the Europa League is an ambigu­ous fer­men­ta­tion for exper­i­men­tal rule changes and rot­ten ideas.  Instead of accom­mo­dat­ing the tech­no­log­i­cal advance­ment that foot­ball requires the Europa League will host the sham­bles of five-official matches his­tor­i­cally exper­i­mented at youth games, school games and girl’s games.  And all this before the Cham­pi­ons League losers para­chute in on the wrong side of half time only to swell the num­bers to beyond comprehension.

Any­way, I cher­ish the fact that the Cham­pi­ons League has brought together the very best teams from the Euro­pean foot­ball land­scape and I’m glad that I don’t have to miss out or have to wait an entire sea­son to see the most glam­orous Euro­pean clubs.  It’s just that I find it odd that we have now engi­neered a sce­nario where we can watch a val­ue­less game obe­di­ently con­tested between two of the best teams on the continent.

I want to watch these two teams play, but not on some balmy Sep­tem­ber evening.  These teams should be play­ing the final and or at least play­ing for the final.

Cham­pi­ons League Final

Sat­ur­day 22^nd May 2010

San­ti­ago Bern­abéu Sta­dium, Madrid

From The Writ­ings Of Jonny Carter

www.JonnyCarter.com