The Split Has Got to Go

The furore over the post-split fixtures, once an annual farrago, has returned with a vengeance this year and many are blaming Sevco.

No I bow to no one in my distaste for that club, but it must be said, the issue over the fixtures is not their fault. The fault rather lies with the system itself, which is an affront to the very principle on which a league season should be based – that every club plays an identical set of fixtures.

The whole point of having a league competition is to establish which team is best over the course of the season. No one disputes that in a cup competition the winners may have benefited from a large slice of luck in winning it. A favourable draw, rivals being knocked out in earlier rounds, a fortuitous bounce of the ball; it’s all part of the drama of the cup. But that’s not how a league season should be decided. League winners should be indisputably the best team over the course of the season. Every placing should reflect that – second should have shown over the season that they were better than third, third better than fourth etc.

The gap between first and second has for most of this century been substantial and it has usually been Celtic. After the introduction of the split in 2000/01, the now defunct Rangers won the title four times and their biggest winning margin was 6 points, while Celtic’s winning margins most seasons was in double figures. In a season with a very tight margin of victory, it can reasonably be said that the Championship may have gone to another time were it not for the vagaries of the split giving the champions a third home match against particular opponents.

That won’t be the case this season, but with a three-way fight for second place, “Rangers” have undoubtedly been handed an advantage over Aberdeen and Hibernian with a third home match against two of the other top six sides.

I’ll reiterate, this is *not* Sevco’s fault. It’s the system. A system that sacrifices the principle that every team should play an identical set of fixtures for a money-driven one that every team should be guaranteed 19 home matches, even if that means their nearest rivals having to play them away from home three times over the course of the season.

The split as it stands makes it impossible for every team to play an identical set of fixtures. Even if the 19 home game guarantee was scrapped, some teams will still have played more difficult away matches than others.

Something very simple needs to happen. The split needs to go.

Simple enough to decide upon, but it would lead to some difficult decisions to be made regarding the size of the league. The clubs were determined that the top flight should be made up of more than 10 clubs, which used to give us a 36 match season.

The split was introduced because the clubs decided that a 44 match season was too much. It enables a 12 team top flight, but only a 38 match season.

My solution would be to expand the top flight to 16 clubs, giving a 30 match season. With everyone playing each other once home and away, that means 15 home matches for everyone. I would also reintroduce the group stages of the League Cup, giving everyone a guaranteed 36 games, with a guaranteed 18 home matches. The groups could be seeded to have as far as possible a team from each division in every group. This would mean six lucky teams outside the top flight having a home match v either Celtic or “Rangers,” spreading the wealth around.

The common objections to this would be that there are not enough “decent” teams in Scotland to support such a large top flight, and that there would be too many meaningless games. Meaningless in that there will be a sizeable group of clubs in the middle of the league under no threat of relegation and with no chance of troubling the business end, and too many matches that are foregone conclusions.

My answer to that is that that could actually be a *good* thing for the game in Scotland.

Since the creation of a top ten in 1975, the top-flight in Scotland has been a cut-throat league. Probably less than half the league is not in a fight for survival, and clubs in mid-table know that a couple of bad results could see them mired in a dog-fight to avoid relegation.

This is not good for the development of players. Clubs can’t afford to take chances on young players. They can’t afford to try out new formations or ideas. They have to fight for every point and that means playing it safe against each other and parking the bus when they play Celtic or one of the Rangers clubs.

At the top end of the table, before the liquidation of Rangers, the imperative for the top two was to win every game. One slip up could cost you the title. So the same thing applied to Celtic and the former Rangers – few opportunities to blood young players, every game an absolute pressure-cooker.

Maybe a bigger top-flight with more “meaningless” games would actually be a good thing. With an 18 team top flight until 1974, we had Celtic win the European Cup and the now defunct Rangers the now defunct European Cup Winners Cup. Scottish teams continued to do reasonably well in Europe till the late 80’s, with Aberdeen winning the ECWC in 1983 and Dundee Utd reaching the UEFA Cup final in 1987.

Looking at those Aberdeen and Dundee Utd sides, is it any coincidence that so many of their most influential players emerged as youngsters on the cusp of the introduction of the ten-team Premier Division? Willie Miller, Gordon Strachan, Doug Rougvie, Paul Hegarty, David Narey, Paul Sturrock, all made their debuts in the 2-3 years before the Premier Division began.

Is it any coincidence that just as that cohort reached the end of their playing days that Scotland suddenly stopped producing teams capable of progressing in Europe? Sure we’ve had the odd exception like Celtic’s UEFA Cup final appearance in 2003 and Rangers’ in 2008, but those were done through massive, unsustainable spending. Celtic went through years of self-imposed austerity even before Seville, while Rangers went bust.

A sixteen team top-flight with a League Cup group stages would guarantee every team 18 home matches per season and I would argue would facilitate better development of young players. Teams at the top of the league would have more matches where they would feel able to try out younger players against opposition who have little chance of beating them, while mid-table teams would not have the fear of relegation that prevents them from doing so too.

This won’t be to everyone’s liking, but the present system has late us down. There are many reasons why Scotland has stopped producing players in the numbers it once did, I don’t think for a minute the small top-flight is the only reason for it, but it must be a major contributing factor. We’ve all known the reserve team wunderkind who is touted as the next big thing, who gets at most a handful of opportunities then drifts down the divisions. They get so few opportunities to impress, usually against seasoned pros fighting for their survival in the top division, and if they don’t produce the goods right away they are written off.

But my main objection to the current set up is that it is not fair. It doesn’t give every team an identical set of fixtures and this year, that will have a huge impact on 2^nd-4^th place. That’s not Sevco’s fault. It’s not even a system set up to benefit “Rangers.” It’s just a stupid way to organise a league.

Whatever happens, the split has got to go.

The Myth of the O** F*** Duopoly

I don’t need to dig up the quotes from various Scottish football experts, blazers, ex-Rangers players and pundits. We’ve all seen them too often to need them. Scottish football needs a strong Rangers. Rangers has always been a giant of our game, part of the “O** F***” duopoly that has reigned over Scottish football since time immemorial. It’s often presented as “having one dominant club is bad for the game.”

Except it’s a myth. Apart from the last 30 years, the “O** F***” has never been a duopoly. Scottish football has always been dominated by one club.

I’m not arguing that Rangers were never a big club, or never the dominant force in Scottish football, because obviously they were both at different times, but when you look at the history of the game in Scotland, there never was a time when one club wasn’t in the ascendancy, and we haven’t had a legitimately strong Rangers for forty years.

Historians like to divide time into convenient chunks in order to make sense of history. It’s a narrative that is usually imposed with the benefit of hindsight and a study of the “switchover” period between eras usually reveals no seismic changes had taken place. The people living through it do not notice any difference.

In early 15^th Century Italy, no one was conscious that society was experiencing “the Renaissance.” Life went on exactly as before for the vast majority of the people. Similarly, no one woke up on 1^st January 1500 thinking, “well, that’s the Middle Ages over,” but nevertheless, the division of history into different eras does make sense. Society changed far less between 1200 and 1400 than it did between 1400 and 1600.

Organised association football in Scotland goes back to the 1860’s. There’s approximately 150 years of history there and neither Celtic nor Rangers were around for all of it. As historians, if we want to truly understand the story of Scottish football, it makes sense to divide it into eras. A problem is that different historians of Scottish football would identify different eras and there might be wide disagreements about the time frames of those eras and why they should be recognised as different eras. I’m going to have a stab at it here.

My first era of Scottish football runs from the formation of Queen’s Park in 1867 to the foundation of the Scottish Football League in 1890. This would encompass a period when Scottish clubs played in the FA Cup, through the beginnings of the Scottish Cup and the clandestine development of professionalism. This is the origin story of Scottish football, at the end of which it is recognisably the game we all know and love today. From a single club, we now have a national cup competition, a national league competition, and paid players. It has become a major business.

My second era of Scottish football runs from 1890 to 1920. In this 30 year period, the league grew in importance and a second tier was added. By this time, the League was now almost the equal of the Scottish Cup in prestige and we are now firmly into the 20^th Century. It’s a convenient finishing point for two reasons – the end of WWI, and a handing over of power. Celtic were unquestionably the dominant club. It was Celtic’s first Golden Age with Willie Maley’s team sweeping all before them, including a 62 game unbeaten run between 1915 and 1917. Legends like Kelly, Quinn and Gallacher were the bedrock of Celtic’s dominance. By the end of WWI, things were changing.

My third era of Scottish football runs from 1920 to 1939. Celtic still had some great players. Gallacher was around till 1925, then the torch was passed to the Jimmys McGrory and McStay, but it was a very unsuccessful period for Celtic, with only flashes of glory. Despite those intermittent League and Cup wins, the inter-war period was Rangers’ time in the sun. Hitching themselves to the Orange bandwagon in the aftermath of an influx of Ulster Protestant shipyard workers to the new Harland & Woolf shipyard in Govan, their new sectarian signing policy and a positioning of themselves as the Scottish response to the Irish Celtic, saw Rangers became the dominant force in Scottish football and Celtic lapsed into a long, long period of underachievement. Rangers would win 15 of the 20 League Titles in those years. They won three in a row between 1922-23 and 1924-25, five in a row from 1926-27 to 1930-31, and three in a row again from 1932-33 to 1934-35.

World War Two saw an end to official football competition in Scotland (only the Scottish Cup was suspended in WWI, which shows it was still regarded as the premier competition) and my fourth era of Scottish football runs from 1946 to 1965. My reasoning for this division is that Rangers continued to dominate the game, with Celtic winning just one league title and a handful of Scottish and League Cups in that 20 year period. It ends with the arrival at Celtic as manager of Jock Stein, after which all is changed, changed utterly.

In that post-war period, Rangers were not unchallenged, but their challenge came from various teams. Between their league titles (never more than two in a row), there were league title wins for Hibernian, Aberdeen, Hearts, Dundee and Kilmarnock. They won half of the league titles in that period, with none of the other winners taking more than two titles.

My fifth era of Scottish football runs from 1965 to 1986. This was Celtic’s second Golden Age and even though Jock Stein left the club in 1978, to me it was still the Stein era as his apprentices McNeill and Hay continued his work. It is easy to regard the 1978-86 period as a separate era as Aberdeen and Dundee Utd launched a serious challenge to Celtic’s hegemony, but despite that, Celtic still won more titles in that period than Aberdeen did (4 to 3). Celtic were still No1.

My sixth era of Scottish football is 1986 to 2000. This was the Murray era at Rangers (yes, he only took over in late 1988, but the massive spending began under Graeme Souness in 1986), with Advocaat coming in at the tail-end. Celtic were in a tailspin in this period, being saved in 1994 by Fergus McCann, but our on-field recovery by necessity took a little longer.

This was another period of Rangers dominance, fuelled by the unsustainable spending which sowed the seeds of their liquidation in 2012. The O** F*** didn’t dominate in this period. Celtic won the league only twice in 14 years. But for the Centenary Year double, the last hurrah of the Stein era Celtic, Rangers would have won the league eleven times in a row. Take away Wim Jansen’s title win and that would have been fourteen.

My seventh era of Scottish football is 2000-2012. It began with the arrival at Celtic of Martin O’Neill and ended with Rangers’ liquidation. This era also sees the beginning of Celtic’s third Golden Age. In that 12 year period, Rangers won five titles (2002-03, 2004-05, 2008-09, 2009-10, 2010-11), all of them EBT fuelled, and all of them in any other country would be expunged from the record. This era is the first time since the pre-WWI era when it could reasonably be argued that such a thing as an O** F*** duopoly exists, and it was all built on an illusion. There was no legitimately strong Rangers in that period.

If ever there was an O** F*** duopoly in Scottish football, it was the second era, which ran from 1890 to 1920 which saw Celtic take 15 league titles to Rangers’ 10.

That apart, we have had long periods of dominance by one club, not two.

The first era, before the beginnings of league competition, was dominated by Queen’s Park. Their hegemony was briefly threatened by Vale of Leven in the late 1870’s but had been re-established in the 1880’s. Although a few other clubs did manage to win the Scottish Cup, Queen’s Park won it as late as 1893, by which time they were playing clubs who were professional in all but name. Newspaper reports of the 1892 final in which Celtic defeated Queen’s Park refer to the Spiders as, “the premier club.”

Celtic and Rangers between them dominated the second era, with Celtic on top, then comes a long 40 year spell with Rangers as undisputed No1 up to 1965.

Since then, for 50 years Celtic has been No1, broken only by a brief period in the early 1980’s when Aberdeen emerged as serious contenders, and a ten year spell when Rangers spent their way to nine in a row and a further ten year spell when an EBT-fuelled Rangers just about managed to keep pace with Celtic before expiring.

So the idea of an O** F*** duopoly in Scottish football is really a myth. It belongs to a period which ended nearly a century ago. The norm in Scottish football has historically been dominance to a greater or lesser extent by one club.

Rangers* fans make a great deal of their “54 titles,” which is actually 53 and a half as the first was shared with Dumbarton and if goal average or goal difference had been used to split the teams, it would have been Dumbarton’s alone. The reality is that 33 of them were won before 1965, which is the AD of Scottish football. Most of their titles are BS as it were. 60% of them were won before Jock Stein became Celtic manager.

In the 52 years since, Rangers had one period of dominance, from 1986 – 2000, which ultimately killed them. They were finished off by the EBT’s it took to keep them anywhere near Celtic after the arrival of O’Neill.

So when you hear that “Scottish football needs a strong Rangers,” and that “One club dominating is bad for the game,” remember two things:

1)      Historically, one club has always dominated in Scottish football. It has merely alternated between Celtic and Rangers for most of that time. It has been more like a pendulum swinging back and forth than a duopoly.

2)      We haven’t had a legitimately strong Rangers since the mid 1970’s, and even then they did no more than interrupt a period of Celtic dominance.

 

Winning the odd title here and there does not equate to dominance. That comes from a sustained period of league title wins (eg more than half in a 10 year period) and only twice since the mid 1960’s has Rangers had a sustained period of league title wins – the nine in a row which was bought at a cost that brought them to their knees, and five more this century paid for by EBT’s which killed them.

A strong Rangers is history. The O** F*** is mythology.

 

The Champions League is Rigged

We all love hearing the Champions League anthem blaring at Celtic Park. There’s nothing quite like it. It’s a musical signal that this is the big time; that sets your heart racing. This is what it’s all about. The pinnacle of club football and Celtic are in it. Every Celtic manager this century has been judged in Europe and the Champions League is where we have to be to consider ourselves, “successful.”

Ronny Deila is the only Celtic manager (Brendan hasn’t finished yet) to have a 100% league win rate. He also won the League Cup and was cheated out of a Scottish Cup Final place in his first season. Yet he was replaced because he couldn’t get us to the Champions League and his European record wasn’t good enough. In the 90’s, winning the league would have assured him of a place in Celtic folklore, but now winning it twice in a row means nothing. All that matters, apart from ten in a row (such arrogance!) is getting to the Champions League.

But getting to the Champions League isn’t really good enough either. We have to be “competitive” once we get there. We are chasing rainbows.

When Celtic won the European Cup in 1967, one Inter player, Sandro Mazzola, cost more than the entire Celtic team. Fast forward to 2017, and we’re playing teams whose most expensive players (eg Neymar), cost maybe 10 times the entire Celtic team. Even Jock Stein couldn’t have overcome those odds and we’d be wasting money if we started buying even £10m players for the Champions League.

I’ve fallen out of love with the Champions League over the past few years. I watched the first ten minutes of our matches v PSG and Bayern before switching it off. Watching Celtic get hammered is not my idea of a good night’s entertainment. I’ve sat through countless defeats, but those matches were not simple defeats. It was like watching Floyd Mayweather get pounded by Anthony Joshua. There’s no point to it.

I did though thoroughly enjoy the 3-0 win over Anderlecht and I look forward to playing them at Celtic Park in a few weeks. That’s a proper European game to me – two national champions, evenly matched and a game that could go either way.

But apart from that Pot4 v Pot3 match, I’ve little interest in our section, let alone the competition. The Champions League is rigged and it has been for years.

It’s been rigged quite deliberately and openly, and we’ve all gone along with it in the chase for the filthy lucre that goes along with qualification. No one kept it a secret that it’s been rigged. It’s been rigged to ensure that the business end will always be dominated by the same select group of teams from the same select group of countries to ensure their TV companies get to show exactly the games the viewing public of those countries want.

We all know who those teams and countries are. England, Spain, Germany and Italy are the biggest TV markets for European football. Their teams generate the biggest TV audiences and attract the most sponsorship. The Champions League is designed so that every year teams from those countries will dominate the latter stages of the competition.

This is achieved partly by having a group stage. This ensures that even if one of those teams from the Big 4 countries has an off-night, they’ll still have another couple of chances to put things right again.

Let’s take a look at the semi-finalists in the ten years before a group stage format was adopted in 1991-92.

 

Year	Semi-finalists *eventual winners	No of semi-finalists from outside Big 4	Big 4 Final
1982	Aston Villa* v Anderlecht	2	yes
	CSKA Sofia v Bayern Munich
1983	Real Sociedad v Hamburg*	1	yes
	Juventus v Widzew Lodz
1984	Liverpool* v Dinamo Bucharest	2	yes
	Dundee Utd v Roma
1985	Juventus* v Bordeaux	2	yes
	Liverpool v Panathanaikos
1986	Anderlecht v Steaua Bucharest*	3	no
	Gothenburg v Barcelona
1987	Porto* v Dynamo Kiev	2	no
	Bayern Munich v Real Madrid
1988	Real Madrid v PSV Eindhoven*	3	no
	Steaua Bucharest v Benfica
1989	Real Madrid v AC Milan*	2	no
	Steaua Bucharest v Galatasary
1990	AC Milan* v Bayern Munich	2	no
	Marseilles v Benfica
1991	Bayern Munich v Red Star Belgrade*	3	no
	Spartak Moscow v Marseilles

 

Not once in that ten year period were all four semi-finalists from the Big 4 countries. On three occasions, only ONE of the semi-finalists came from one of the Big 4 countries. In the first four years, both finalists were Big 4 clubs, but in the next six years, at least one finalist came from countries outwith the Big 4. Winners in this period came from Italy (3), England (2), Germany Romania, Portugal, Netherlands, Yugoslavia

Things began to change with the introduction of the group stages in season 1991-92. The process began gradually, but has accelerated over the last 25 years. At first, the group stages replaced the quarter-final and semi-final stages. Clubs had to get past the knock-out rounds in order to reach the group stages and qualify for the finals. This was the case for three seasons and below are the group stages in each of those seasons

Year	Group A	Group B	No of Big 4 clubs	Finalists *winner
1992	Sampdoria Red Star Belgrade Anderlecht Panathanaikos	Barcelona Sparta Prague Benfica Dynamo Kiev	2	Sampdoria v Barcelona*
1993	Marseilles Rangers Brugge CSKA Moscow	AC Milan Porto Gothenburg PSV Eindhoven	1	Marseilles* v AC Milan
1994	Barcelona Monaco Spartak Moscow Galatasary	Milan Porto Werder Bremen Anderlecht	3	Milan* v Barcelona

 

The format was tweaked in 1994 so that there was a one-legged semi-final, with the winners of each group getting to play at home. In this three year period after the introduction of a group stage, there was a maximum of three Big 4 clubs in the last eight of the competition. Two of the three finals were contested by two Big 4 clubs, but one competition was won by a non-Big 4 club, albeit a heavily bankrolled one.

In season 1994-95, the Champions League format was moved to the first round of the tournament, with the top two from each group contesting the quarter-finals. This format was in place for three seasons and the semi-finalists in each year were as follows:

Year	Semi-finalists *eventual winners	No of semi-finalists from outside Big 4	Big 4 final
1995	Bayern Munich v Ajax*	2	No
	Paris St Germain v Milan
1996	Ajax v Panathanaikos	3	No
	Juventus* v Nantes
1997	Borussia Dortmund* v Man Utd	1	Yes
	Ajax v Juventus

 

This new format still did not guarantee Big 4 dominance, and indeed 3 of the semi-finalists were non-Big 4 in 1996. Altogether, half of the semi-finalists were non-Big 4 in these three seasons, as they had been in three seasons previously.

The format was changed again for season 1997-98, and this was the first season that teams other than national champions could qualify for the tournament. This is the second method by which the tournament is rigged in favour of the Big 4. You beat Real Madrid? Let’s see if you can beat Barcelona too. The semi-finalists from that point on are as follows:

 

Year	Semi-finalists *eventual winners	No of semi-finalists from outside Big 4	Big 4 final
1998	Real Madrid* v Borussia Dortmund	1	Yes
	Juventus v Monaco
1999	Man Utd* v Juventus	1	Yes
	Dynamo Kiev v Bayern Munich
2000	Valencia v Barcelona	0	Yes
	Real Madrid* v Bayern Munich
2001	Leeds Utd v Valencia	0	Yes
	Real Madrid v Bayern Munich*
2002	Barcelona v Real Madrid*	0	Yes
	Man Utd v Bayer Leverkusen
2003	Real Madrid v Juventus*	0	Yes
	AC Milan v Inter Milan
2004	Monaco v Chelsea	2	No
	Porto v Deportivo La Coruna
2005	Chelsea v Liverpool*	1	Yes
	Milan v PSV Eindhoven
2006	Arsenal v Villareal	0	Yes
	Milan v Barcelona*
2007	Chelsea v Liverpool	0	Yes
	Man Utd v AC Milan*
2008	Liverpool v Chelsea	0	Yes
	Barcelona v Man Utd*
2009	Man Utd v Arsenal	0	Yes
	Barcelona* v Chelsea
2010	Bayern Munich v Lyon	1	Yes
	Inter Milan* v Barcelona
2011	Schalke 04 v Man Utd	0	Yes
	Real Madrid v Barcelona*
2012	Bayern Munich v Real Madrid	0	Yes
	Chelsea* v Barcelona
2013	Bayern Munich* v Barcelona	0	Yes
	Borussia Dortmund v Real Madrid
2014	Real Madrid* v Bayern Munich	0	Yes
	Atletico Madrid v Chelsea
2015	Barcelona* v Bayern Munich	0	Yes
	Juventus v Real Madrid
2016	Man City v Real Madrid*	0	Yes
	Atletico Madrid v Bayern Munich
2017	Real Madrid* v Atletico Madrid	1	Yes
	Monaco v Juventus

 

It is now 13 years since a team from outwith the Big 4 has reached the final of the Champions League. On just seven occasions since non-Champions were allowed into the tournament have teams from outwith the Big 4 gotten so far as the semi-final stage. Since 1992, a non-Big 4 club has won the Champions League on only three occasions.

This season may see Paris St Germain win the Champions League, but it won’t be a victory for meritocracy. It won’t blaze a trail for other non-Big 4 clubs. It won’t point to the possibility that teams from outwith the Big 4 can build a team to win the Champions League. All it would prove is that throwing obscene amounts of money at a club can win you the Champions League regardless of what league you play in. It’s still a rich man’s playground.

Three things ensure that TV audiences in the Big 4 countries will get what they want from the Champions League every season – non-Champion participation for select leagues, seeding, and the group stages.

Once upon a time, if you beat the Champions of Spain, you still might have the Champions of Italy, England or Germany to contend with, but with no seeding, there was a strong possibility they’d eliminate each other at some stage. This opened up the way for clubs from smaller nations. It’s not out of the question even now that they could beat Big 4 clubs in a knock-out tie. In 2006, Celtic beat Man Utd 1-0 at Celtic Park and lost 2-3 at Old Trafford. Had that been a two-legged tie, Celtic would have gone through on away goals. But because it was the group stages, Man Utd qualified along with us for the knock-out stages, and in first place, meaning they got a more favourable draw in the Last 16. We got to play Milan.

Let’s say we had knocked out Milan (and we only lost after extra-time), who would we have got in the next round? Well Milan got Bayern Munich. Others in that quarter-final draw were Man Utd, Liverpool, Chelsea, Valencia, Roma and PSV Eindhoven. Three English clubs, two Italians, one Spanish, one German and one Dutch club. So that year, just one non-Big 4 club reached even the quarter-finals. Also that year, Bayern Munich were paired with Real Madrid in the Last 16 draw, an anomaly as they were both expected to win their groups so shouldn’t have had to play each other at that stage.

So to sum up the three ways it is ensured Big 4 countries dominate the business end of the Champions League:

1)      Beat a team from one of the Big 4 countries and there are still plenty more of them in your way due to there being 3 to 4 clubs from each of them in the tournament

2)      Due to seeding, these clubs don’t often meet each other in the earlier rounds, so don’t knock each other out before the knock-out stages

3)      If one of these clubs loses matches in the group stages, they’ll still have plenty of chances to turn the situation round again.

 

In the last TEN Champions League competitions, only 15 clubs from across Europe have reached the semi-finals. Real Madrid and Barcelona lead the way with seven appearances each, while Bayern Munich have six appearances. It is now eleven years since there was a semi-final round that did not contain either Barcelona or Real Madrid.

The Champions League is rigged to ensure Big 4 clubs dominate and clubs with great historical traditions such as Celtic, Ajax, Feyenoord, Benfica, Porto,  etc get nowhere near the business end.

That’s why I have fallen out of love with the Champions League but what can we do about it?

It’s not going to happen sadly, but for me, the associations outwith the Big 4 need to stand up for themselves. They need to demand change so that their own clubs have a least a fighting chance of getting somewhere in the competition.

The first thing that needs to happen is the competition be open to Champions only. How can you call a competition, “The Champions League,” when half the teams in it are not even champions?

With only national champions involved, clubs from smaller nations will have a greater chance of reaching the latter stages. They’ll still have to beat a big gun at some point, but having done so, they won’t inevitably find themselves with another impossible task in the next round.

As the semi-final tables above show, the Big 4 countries will still win a fair proportion of titles, but the same handful of clubs won’t be able to dominate the whole competition season after season.

The next question is can we do anything about it? The answer, I think, is “yes.”

By acting collectively, the smaller associations can force change. The Big 4 want to carve the competition up between themselves, but it only has any prestige because it is a Europe wide competition.

They don’t want the tiresome task of playing the champions of Croatia in the quarter-finals, but they do need these smaller teams to be in it. They won’t be Champions of Europe if the competition only consists of clubs from four countries.

They don’t want us getting above ourselves. They don’t want to see their viewing figures drop because smaller teams are reaching the latter stages, but they do need us.

Not only would a Champions League of teams from only England, Italy, Germany and Spain not be a truly European competition and therefore far less prestigious, they’d soon get bored of playing each other all the time as well. Real Madrid v Bayern Munich is only an exciting event when they don’t play each other every season.

How much bigger a deal would a Barcelona-Chelsea Champions League Final be, if they hadn’t played each other half a dozen times in the past ten years already?

The smaller associations have more collective bargaining power than they seem to realise. If they set up a competition minus the Big 4 it would be a whole lot more interesting than a Big 4 only competition. There’d be a whole lot of huge clubs with proud histories and massive followings suddenly finding themselves with a chance of winning big deal international club competitions again. And it would be a whole lot bigger than a four nation competition.

We should demand changes be made to the Champions League to stop the Big 4 rigging the competition and not be afraid to walk away and leave them to it if they refuse.