UEFA Champions League 20-21

[Ann Dan Otherthing]

On 09/03/2021 at 23:12, pandarilla said:

That was more than just qualifying for the last 8 though - that was an incredible victory against the odds (after the ref card and the comeback).

It absolutely goes down in their history as an amazing victory.

‘the ref card’ - assuming you mean the double yellow, do you think either card was unwarranted, seriously?!?

[Bairnardo]

Some pure shite in here.
https://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2021/mar/09/champions-league-andrea-angelli-risks-futile-push-for-fan-of-tomorrow
Sadly, what Agnelli says about how unprecedented things quickly become normality is a film we've seen many times before in football. In years gone by the suggestion that there'd be a European Cup Final between two teams from the same country, neither of whom had won their league for a combined near-century, you'd have been laughed out the room. It happened two years ago and everybody was cool with it.

That transfer thing is the death of top level football.

Watch that be followed up with 2 yearly auctions where top players agree to go into a pool and be whored off to the highest (exclusively CL clubs) bidder

[Guest TheJTS98]

28 minutes ago, Bairnardo said:

That transfer thing is the death of top level football.

Watch that be followed up with 2 yearly auctions where top players agree to go into a pool and be whored off to the highest (exclusively CL clubs) bidder

Who knows how that ends up.

I think there is something in the final paragraph of the article. One thing that has struck me for years about this is how mysteriously light on detail and evidence the big clubs have been.

Where is the market research showing the demand for this kind of hyper-elite project? Surely they've done some? Surely if it said what they wanted it to say we'd all have heard about it?

There's something very interesting going on here, and it's very possible that the big clubs are making a real miscalculation. Paywall football is simply not all that popular. It never really has been. Loads more people are reading newspaper reports of Champions League games than are paying to watch them on tv. I'm not sure what is convincing people like Agnelli that there is a huge market for what he's proposing.

[ahemps]

1 hour ago, Bairnardo said:

That transfer thing is the death of top level football.

Watch that be followed up with 2 yearly auctions where top players agree to go into a pool and be whored off to the highest (exclusively CL clubs) bidder

Not buying from each other has some advantages. Imagine if PSG didn't take Mbappe from Monaco. Lewandowski didn't leave Dortmund for Bayern, would these leagues have maintained a better level of competition. Ultimately you feel Haaland is going to leave Dortmund and will go to one of a handful of clubs (the same handful of clubs). if Dortmund were to keep this squad together or Monaco had kept theirs they would have had real potential to compete with Bayern and PSG and for the champions league but in the current climate you feel they get 1-2 yrs before they get taken apart and have to rebuild which the aforementioned teams don't need to as they hoover up the best players from their competitors.

[Bairnardo]

28 minutes ago, ahemps said:

Not buying from each other has some advantages. Imagine if PSG didn't take Mbappe from Monaco. Lewandowski didn't leave Dortmund for Bayern, would these leagues have maintained a better level of competition. Ultimately you feel Haaland is going to leave Dortmund and will go to one of a handful of clubs (the same handful of clubs). if Dortmund were to keep this squad together or Monaco had kept theirs they would have had real potential to compete with Bayern and PSG and for the champions league but in the current climate you feel they get 1-2 yrs before they get taken apart and have to rebuild which the aforementioned teams don't need to as they hoover up the best players from their competitors.

Theres no way there wont be a mechanism for big money, big show pony transfers. It will be as I described IMO continuing the Americanisation of the game. It's as close to a draft as football can get. 

[ahemps]

1 hour ago, Bairnardo said:

Theres no way there wont be a mechanism for big money, big show pony transfers. It will be as I described IMO continuing the Americanisation of the game. It's as close to a draft as football can get. 

I actually admire a lot of things about American sports. If transfers involved more trading and less spending I would see that as good thing. 

The draft system is designed so the weakest team gets the best up and coming player which is to maintain competition and doesn't allow for the huge disparity we have in our game. Every year the lowest ranked teams are only a good draft pick and few trades away from being able to genuinely compete.

There's a lot of good things about the way US sports are ran.

[Bairnardo]

8 minutes ago, ahemps said:

I actually admire a lot of things about American sports. If transfers involved more trading and less spending I would see that as good thing. 

The draft system is designed so the weakest team gets the best up and coming player which is to maintain competition and doesn't allow for the huge disparity we have in our game. Every year the lowest ranked teams are only a good draft pick and few trades away from being able to genuinely compete.

There's a lot of good things about the way US sports are ran.

Well yeah but this is already being openly pitched as a closed shop

[PB1994]

3 minutes ago, ahemps said:

I actually admire a lot of things about American sports. If transfers involved more trading and less spending I would see that as good thing. 

The draft system is designed so the weakest team gets the best up and coming player which is to maintain competition and doesn't allow for the huge disparity we have in our game. Every year the lowest ranked teams are only a good draft pick and few trades away from being able to genuinely compete.

There's a lot of good things about the way US sports are ran.

I think this says a lot about the way football has changed over the past 10-20 years, maybe even longer. In my experience at least, the American model was a bit of a joke system and always seen as the wrong way to go about things. Now I actually agree with you, the way the cash is distributed through tv deals, kit and commercial deals to keep everything a level playing field feels the a much better route than the way things seem to be heading.

The draft system will be a complete no go as I don’t think there is a feasible way to do that.

[Bairnardo]

I think this says a lot about the way football has changed over the past 10-20 years, maybe even longer. In my experience at least, the American model was a bit of a joke system and always seen as the wrong way to go about things. Now I actually agree with you, the way the cash is distributed through tv deals, kit and commercial deals to keep everything a level playing field feels the a much better route than the way things seem to be heading.
The draft system will be a complete no go as I don’t think there is a feasible way to do that.

The draft system is aimed at being fairer to diddies. Football clubs dont want that. What the elite clubs will come up with is a way to share out the top players, money, advertising etc. Top players will go in for it because wages will go through the roof. Its win win for them, shite for the rest of us.

When the Champions League in it's new format moves to a pay for that alone basis, theres no way Il be paying for it.

[PB1994]

2 minutes ago, Bairnardo said:

The draft system is aimed at being fairer to diddies. Football clubs dont want that. What the elite clubs will come up with is a way to share out the top players, money, advertising etc. Top players will go in for it because wages will go through the roof. Its win win for them, shite for the rest of us.

When the Champions League in it's new format moves to a pay for that alone basis, theres no way Il be paying for it.

Absolutely. It’s shocking what they want to do to the sport. I’ve already found myself watching less and less of the EPL/Champions League. I’ll keep the sky sports subscription as I watch quite a lot of other sports but the BT one can get in the sea, especially after the loss of the Scottish games.

[Guest TheJTS98]

I'd never heard of this body before, but here's something from a fan's group.

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2021/mar/11/fans-across-europe-speak-out-against-champions-league-expansion

It's one of these issues that I'm starting to become really irked about. Why is nobody covering this story just asking someone like Agnelli straightforward questions like 'Have you done any market research into this? What did it tell you?'

Maybe there is some huge mass of people really keen for this to happen and I just don't know or speak to any of them. But nobody seems to be talking. This leads me to believe these people aren't really there.

Edited March 12, 2021 by TheJTS98

[ahemps]

14 hours ago, PB1994 said:

Absolutely. It’s shocking what they want to do to the sport. I’ve already found myself watching less and less of the EPL/Champions League. I’ll keep the sky sports subscription as I watch quite a lot of other sports but the BT one can get in the sea, especially after the loss of the Scottish games.

But you can't see what it has done to the Scottish game? We are an example of what greed can become, we are the poster boy of what the sport can become when you pander to the most powerful clubs.

Scottish football is the outcome of what this will become. We have a league that only 2 teams can ever win. We have a TV deal that only wants to show those same 2 teams. We have a voting system of an 11-1 majority that means these teams can veto any changes that don't suit them.

We are in absolutely no way a fairer purer version of the sport.

[Jambomo]

4 hours ago, TheJTS98 said:

I'd never heard of this body before, but here's something from a fan's group.

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2021/mar/11/fans-across-europe-speak-out-against-champions-league-expansion

It's one of these issues that I'm starting to become really irked about. Why is nobody covering this story just asking someone like Agnelli straightforward questions like 'Have you done any market research into this? What did it tell you?'

Maybe there is some huge mass of people really keen for this to happen and I just don't know or speak to any of them. But nobody seems to be talking. This leads me to believe these people aren't really there.

I think fans don’t feel they really have any power in changing these types of decisions.  It’s clearly about the money and I think fans always have the idea that any action such as not watching/subscribing will ultimately be useless as there’s a huge overseas market that will watch and not care.

[Guest TheJTS98]

18 minutes ago, Jambomo said:

I think fans don’t feel they really have any power in changing these types of decisions.  It’s clearly about the money and I think fans always have the idea that any action such as not watching/subscribing will ultimately be useless as there’s a huge overseas market that will watch and not care.

The implied truth is the overseas appeal, leading to the desire for weekend kick-off times etc. But there's real doubt about the value of the overseas rights. Even for the Premier League. John Nicolson has written extensively about how leagues and tv companies massively inflate the audience figures they give out for global reach of games. They basically pick the biggest number they can add together and say that's how many people watched Liverpool v Newcastle.

Is there a global audience for watching 7th v 11th in this kind of enterprise? OR for the mammoth number of games in the new proposals for the group stage? I'd be very surprised if so. And nobody has presented any evidence that there is.

 

Edited March 12, 2021 by TheJTS98

[Jambomo]

1 hour ago, TheJTS98 said:

The implied truth is the overseas appeal, leading to the desire for weekend kick-off times etc. But there's real doubt about the value of the overseas rights. Even for the Premier League. John Nicolson has written extensively about how leagues and tv companies massively inflate the audience figures they give out for global reach of games. They basically pick the biggest number they can add together and say that's how many people watched Liverpool v Newcastle.

Is there a global audience for watching 7th v 11th in this kind of enterprise? OR for the mammoth number of games in the new proposals for the group stage? I'd be very surprised if so. And nobody has presented any evidence that there is.

 

Well yeah, that’s what I was thinking to be honest, whether the overseas market actually exists to the extent they believe it does. In addition, that they care about seeing this kind of tournament as well as just more generally watching the teams they support - and this would presumable exclude some fair sized teams. 

[charger29]

I'd never heard of this body before, but here's something from a fan's group.
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2021/mar/11/fans-across-europe-speak-out-against-champions-league-expansion
It's one of these issues that I'm starting to become really irked about. Why is nobody covering this story just asking someone like Agnelli straightforward questions like 'Have you done any market research into this? What did it tell you?'
Maybe there is some huge mass of people really keen for this to happen and I just don't know or speak to any of them. But nobody seems to be talking. This leads me to believe these people aren't really there.

I had a look through the fans group proposals. They're basically asking for a complete u-turn from the direction UEFA are heading.
The stats on solidarity payments for clubs who don't qualify for Europe or go out in the quali rounds is interesting. There was a decrease in revenue in the last cycle for both. It was previously 8.5% (2015-18) of UEFA's revenue distribution but down to 7.3 currently (2018-2021). These figures were obviously set pre-covid. Presumably that number will not be going up for the non participating teams any time soon.
The fairly new coefficient ranking is also an absolute piss take when combined with the new proposals. Of the money Man Utd earned in the CL this season, £24.5m was simply because of success in the previous 10 years. It's self perpetuating pish.

[ahemps]

1 minute ago, charger29 said:

The stats on solidarity payments for clubs who don't qualify for Europe or go out in the quali rounds is interesting. There was a decrease in revenue in the last cycle for both. It was previously 8.5% (2015-18) of UEFA's revenue distribution but down to 7.3 currently (2018-2021). These figures were obviously set pre-covid. Presumably that number will not be going up for the non participating teams any time soon.

I was listening to a reporter who said there was a meeting to get the solidarity payments increased but they left the meeting having brought it down as you say.

Did the solidarity payments used to be around 25% a few years ago?

UEFA are absolutely killing the smaller leagues with this percentage but they have to give in to the elite teams or they may just simply up sticks and go and create a new footballing body and cut UEFA out.

[Guest TheJTS98]

7 minutes ago, charger29 said:

I had a look through the fans group proposals. They're basically asking for a complete u-turn from the direction UEFA are heading.
The stats on solidarity payments for clubs who don't qualify for Europe or go out in the quali rounds is interesting. There was a decrease in revenue in the last cycle for both. It was previously 8.5% (2015-18) of UEFA's revenue distribution but down to 7.3 currently (2018-2021). These figures were obviously set pre-covid. Presumably that number will not be going up for the non participating teams any time soon.
The fairly new coefficient ranking is also an absolute piss take when combined with the new proposals. Of the money Man Utd earned in the CL this season, £24.5m was simply because of success in the previous 10 years. It's self perpetuating pish.
 

It's ridiculous. Even more so when you remember that the format was changed to let English teams play in the group stage automatically because they failed to qualify every time they had to.

[PB1994]

2 hours ago, ahemps said:

But you can't see what it has done to the Scottish game? We are an example of what greed can become, we are the poster boy of what the sport can become when you pander to the most powerful clubs.

Scottish football is the outcome of what this will become. We have a league that only 2 teams can ever win. We have a TV deal that only wants to show those same 2 teams. We have a voting system of an 11-1 majority that means these teams can veto any changes that don't suit them.

We are in absolutely no way a fairer purer version of the sport.

Yeah of course I can. I agree with everything you have said. Things in Scotland need to be changed too.

Its not a purer version of the sport but I’d much rather be watching say Raith v Dunfermline on a Friday night over Newcastle v West Brom. At least the players in Scotland are still a bit more relatable to the general fan compared to the bang average English Prem players earning £100k plus per week who think they are superstars.

With the TV deal, since I support a diddy team, it doesn’t bother me so much that it’s only Celtic and Rangers that are on pretty much every week, purely because it means that the club I support are going to be kicking off at 3pm on a Saturday.

[charger29]

 

1 hour ago, ahemps said:

I was listening to a reporter who said there was a meeting to get the solidarity payments increased but they left the meeting having brought it down as you say.

Did the solidarity payments used to be around 25% a few years ago?

UEFA are absolutely killing the smaller leagues with this percentage but they have to give in to the elite teams or they may just simply up sticks and go and create a new footballing body and cut UEFA out.

I don't know much about them other than the financial information referenced to in the fans report. Only goes back to 2009.

It's not particularly relevant to the top of Scottish football but the only way to stop a bunch of clubs running away with other European domestic leagues in perpetuity is a significant increase in the solidarity payments. I don't think an extra 16 teams in the group stages from next season will help enough.

Edited March 12, 2021 by charger29