Fixing the European Cup

 

In August 1964, Liverpool, as English Champions, travelled to a stadium called the Laugardalsvöllur in Reykjavik to place their first ever game in European competition. The opponents were Knattspyrnufélag, and Liverpool won the game 5-0.

In all respects it was a voyage of discovery in a time when international travel was rare for most people. The Beatles were opening up the horizons for people on Merseyside and had jetted into JFK the Februarybefore to start their own campaign of world domination.

The press reports suggest that it was a time of excitement and wonder, broadening people’s outlook and showing everyone the possibilities of international competition. English teams were rather late to the party, and the honour of being the first British team to play in Europe fell to Hibernian. It was only the great Matt Busby’s insistence and disregard for the Suits at the FA that forced Manchester United’s path to follow. The tragedy of the Munich Air Disaster was still fresh in the memory in 1964, and English teams had an uneasy relationship with European competition. Only when the victories came (from Spurs, first of all, don’t forget) did managers and chairmen really start to sit up and take notice.

What remains from the photos and grainy footage of Spurs and Liverpool is the delight of the new. English teams had started to realise that playing Burnley and Preston was one thing, but trips abroad to Bratislava and Belgrade were different and exciting.

For most British teams that qualify for the Champions’ League in the 2020s, playing a foreign team for the first time is now a rare event. Only newcomers Manchester City trouble the club statistician with the fact that they have never played a team before, and that’s because when Manchester United and Liverpool were making hay, City were skulking in the old Third Division. (In December 1998, when United were smashing their way to the Treble, City lost to York City in a league game).

For Manchester United (current troubles put aside), Chelsea, Juventus, Barcelona and many others, the Champions’ League money tree throws up year after year of fixtures against the same teams in the same super stadiums with the same theme tune and associated computer game products. In a way, the European Super League attempted land grab is not really needed, because with a few exceptions, the competition is a closed shop. The chance of the Maltese, Luxembourgish or Latvian champions ever playing at the group stage of the competition is almost zero. They have so many hoops to leap through that they know that they will never look forward to a group stage home and away moneymaker at the Camp Nou.

It wasn’t always like this. Until perhaps the ban after the Heysel disaster and the resulting domination of Italian club sides, there was a very real possibility of being drawn against a minnow and being bundled out. It happened to Liverpool, once in Tbilisi and once in Lodz. They were given equal weighting in the knockout draw, and there was no group stage safety net. To win the European Cup, you had to be wise to the possibility of an awkward trip behind the iron curtain to an unknown team. It is not hard to imagine how the preened show ponies of today would have coped with a visit to Bucharest, a stay in a hotel controlled by the military, and little communication with the outside world. Nottingham Forest took their own food, only to have it confiscated.

They were harder days, but fairer for the teams from smaller countries. They had a chance.

 

Is it possible to fix the European Cup in order to give all the true league champions a fairer shot at the competition? Of course it is. Money is the single factor that prevents any radical change. It does not mean it is against the law to imagine, though.

 

If I had the choice, I would scrap all three of the current formats of European competition. I would return the European Cup to a knock-out competition, competed for only by the holders and the national champions, and I would run it from January to May. It wouldn’t need to start any earlier than that because there would be far fewer games.

I would have a secondary competition, and would make it regional. It would run from September to February, and be open to the second placed team from each national league and the cup winners. Instead of a competition across the whole of Europe, I would hold four to six smaller regional ones to find local European champions. An Atlantic League could include teams from Scotland, Scandinavia and the Low Countries. A Mediterranean League could invite teams from Spain, France and Italy. A Saxon league could include Germany and all its neighbours. The winners of each league would be prestigious in their own right, and could play off against each other if money really was doing the talking and TV audiences wanted more.

 

A revised, purer Champions’ Cup could begin to redistribute players and wealth around Europe. Why choose Juventus, if there was an equal chance of competing by playing for a team like Feyenoord or Anderlecht? Perhaps players, pampered as they are, would choose teams not on the certainty of appearing on the biggest stage like today, but instead on the desirability of the city. Maybe in this utopian place, FC Copenhagen and Bologna would attract the talent. It is good to dream.

What of the regional competitions? It would do two things. Firstly, teams like Rangers, Celtic and Ajax would have a great shot at winning silverware. Secondly, it would restore some sense of purpose to Europe’s second competition, which for so long has been a token effort that no team really wants to be involved in.  

 

We can, and will, go on just as it is at the moment. In the next ten years, Barcelona, Real Madrid and Bayern will appear in three finals each, Man City four, and Chelsea five. How exciting. I can hardly wait.