This, good god that was horrible.

gg

So Rapid are available to us in the next round?

BTW, how is Yaya Sanogo a professional footballer?

Yep, also:

Monaco
Fener/Shakhtar
Brugge/Panathinaikos
CSKA Moscow/Sparta Prague

Sigthorsson'esque ability to estimate long ball paths

cant wait to see him live

Correction: replace Shakhtar with Lazio (if Shakhtar advances they are in our pot and we could play Lazio, if Fener wins we could play them as Lazio goes in our pot)

So as of now we definitely can't play Leverkusen, Valencia, Sporting Lisbon or Shakhtar

As much as I generally root for Italian teams I'm not sure even I would enjoy England losing their 4th CL spot. Or in such an (even less likely) event the Bundesliga for that matter.

But looking at the standings and the wide gap from the top 4 leagues to the rest (Spain obv have a great gap even to the top 4) I don't really see any good reason why ranked 7 to 15 should all have two spots. I definitely wouldn't mind the 15th ranked losing one of theirs and giving 1 extra to whoever will be the 4th ranked nation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UEFA_c...ry_coefficient

Jfc, no the top 4 leagues should not get awarded a place that should belong to the 15th placed league or any other league for that matter.

They already get near 40% of the group stage places straight away, no need to have even more in their favour.

--

Celtic in Baku (that historic European city) tonight, I've got the fear.

This. Top four leagues already get way more TV money. Being able to get a CL spot can make up for that a tiny bit for teams from the smaller leagues. Otherwise we might as well just start a new tournament for the top four from England, Spain, Germany and Italy.

Meh, first and foremost I want to see the best players and teams and so do most people based on those same teams in those same leagues being almost exclusively the ones on tv week after week internationally and domestically.

Do I want a second Romanian, Austrian or Czech team trying/failing to qualify for the CL over two of Chelsea, Manchester City, Arsenal, Manchester United or Liverpool (or their Italian or German "counterparts") not being there? Nope.

I think this many lower ranked leagues getting a second qualifier is too generous and could easily be rooted in something like Platini, Blatter-style, securing as many votes as possible for elections.

You have different priorities then. Of course I am biased because I support a team from a lower ranked league that used to be a force in Europe, but I'd like to see more diversity and competitiveness in the CL, rather than just the big boys slugging it out.

Football is being killed in general by this concentration of power and money, also if you look at the domestic leagues, where Germany is dominated by one team, Spain by two and Juve seem to have taken over Italy as well. Only the PL is still somewhat unpredictable.

This is also a football-junkie speaking of course. One who has overdosed several times already. But deep down this junkie is corrupted enough that some sick part of me would very much enjoy a real European Super League, U.S sports style, OVERHAUL where all the best teams play each other every week in a league format. 30 teams or so consisting of most of the 900 best players in the world - all the top domestic leagues now turned into cup competitions (and yes swiping all the great history here is almost too painful) running on the side all in favor of the colossal super league producing the best football ever seen week in and week out. Hmm I guess we could have more divisions/tiers so no one is completely left out and even relegation and promotion in play. ALL OF EUROPE turned into giant cross border leagues I guess is what I'd want. I also suppose we could have some conferences or divisions favoring certain traditional local matchups.

Of course there aren't any real prospects of this anymore and maybe if it was more realistic it would be more scary, to me also, but as it is now on tv across the leagues it is the very same biggest market or just rich teams being shown every week all the time. Mostly playing various underdogs (just play each other instead!) and the CL while generally on a higher level than the domestic leagues, including in the group phases, still has a lot of unfulfilled potential when it comes to my dominating priority that's the highest possible level of football as often as possible.

Cliffs:

There are plenty of tough things to swallow but having the 30 best teams in the world playing each other every week in the sport with the richest talent pool would be too good to resist and potentially an amazing product compared to the current.

I think I don't disagree with your idea. The problem right now is that if you play in the PL you have a massive advantage due to the BTVDITW so now clubs like Stoke or whatever have more spending power than former big clubs like Ajax, Celtic, etc. There is just no way to overcome this because the PL and La Liga have worldwide appeal. If the biggest clubs in Europe just all played in one massive European League that would be equalized so it's not just the clubs from the big competitions that get all the TV money.

If you give the 5th team in the league (a top nation) over a second team in the 15th tier league you're just going to increase the gap between the nations clubs.

I personally think we should decrease the CL number to get rid of the mostly pointless group stage.

You could even increase it and get rid of the EL and have a straight knock out unseeded until after new year. Imagine the potential for a cup run if you get big teams knocked out early doors or big teams playing against each other.

2h30mins until Astana - HJK. Several betting sites have free streams for the game.

And the rest of us should just suck it up and enjoy the spectacle while our clubs/leagues wither and die.

No ****ing thanks.

I'm pretty sure we're going to see such a European Super League in our lifetimes (well, maybe not marty's and mine. We're too old). I'm not saying I'm in favour of it (as I'm a dirty reactionary when it comes to football), but if the trend of the big clubs increasing the gap to their national competition keeps going, I think it's inevitable to, sooner or later, have them play against each other more regularly than in the current UCL format.

Oh, and yeah, Celtic, Ajax, Porto, Sporting, Steaua and other now "smaller" but prestigious clubs should definitely be part of it.

It would have to be complete restructure of the football system where every country is involved and the richest clubs would not like it. It's very likely the idea of a super league appeals to the elite clubs but only in a scenario that maintains the status quo and doesn't allow many newcomers. And that's not good enough so you might as well keep it as it is.
Any future european super league would actually have to be pretty underwhelming at first to allow for 'lesser' countries and teams to improve. I don't know how you start on such a system that makes such a thing possible and fair but while Bjorn points out that there aren't any real prospects of it in the near future, there must be people seriously thinking about how it could work.

Not that I'm in favour of Björn's league, but isn't what you described happening already? With local revenue becoming a smaller and smaller part of the pie for the biggest clubs, their financial stranglehold has exploded already. A super league being created would be the killshot when national league's are already on life support and club owners need new renevue that they can't get from the CL only.

Get every league down to 16 clubs ---> more CL matches

this is as far as it'll get imo.

Of course it's happening already but a 30 team Euro super league would be the final nail in the coffin IMO. Every penny in TV revenue would be sent in their direction, leaving the CL to look like the Europa league's poor relation and **** knows how badly lower ranked leagues would do. I'd bet it wouldn't be nice.

And speak for yourself SN, I'm expecting this http://www.v3.co.uk/v3-uk/the-frontl...live-foreverin to be a thing long before I'm ready to go.

HJK DREAM START **** YES

Expand (and rename) the Champions League, get rid of the Europa League. You can promote to the new CL from your national league or be relegated back to it.