The UEFA Champions League

Its the highest level of football anyone can or will ever achieve, the UEFA Champions League, but I have a problem with it.

There are 3 English teams out of 4 in the semi finals. This isn’t a simple Scottish minded ‘Ah pure hate the English’ point of view, its simply an opinion on the way that UEFA runs the competition. The clubs that are in the semi-finals all deserve to be there, they’ve worked their way through the group stages and the previous knock out rounds to get to where they are, so there is no argument there, but I feel the way that UEFA keeps teams from a similar country separated until the knock out stages has to change.

With only 8 groups in the Champions League, there are countries that have up to 4 teams included in the competition, England included, so if you happen to be a club from another country you have a 50% chance of landing in a group with an English club because none of the English clubs can be drawn against each other at this stage – but why?! What difference does it really make if a Pot 1 English club is drawn in the same group as a Pot 2 English club? The answer is, probably none, both the English clubs will still probably get to the knock out stages unless they happen to have a strong Pot 3 or 4 team in their group.

This season there is a strong possibility of last season’s all English final repeated *yawn* and we’ve already had Liverpool vs Chelsea in the knock out stages for the umpteenth time in so many years *yawn* (although this season’s tie was a damn sight better than the previous meetings) and we’ve also obviously got Arsenal vs Man Utd too. I don’t want to tune in and watch ‘European’ football when its just like watching Sky Sports any other given weekend, I already hate the way that UEFA deliberately keep the ‘big’ teams from playing each other in the group stages via the ‘Pot’ system and now on top of that they exclude teams from the same country playing each other.

Someone at UEFA has to say fuck it, lets take all 32 teams taking part, throw them all into the same Pot, pull 4 out at a time and make a proper competition of it all, put a bit of romance back into the Champions League. It has become all too predictable in the past few years with who is going to get to the knock out phases and further. Imagine a year where 4 ‘Pot 1′ teams are drawn in the knock out stages, that’d throw up for some tremendous games of football, or even a year when 4 ‘Pot 4′ teams are drawn together, you would have 2 less fancied teams getting to progress in a way they would not have thought possible under current rules.

Get the seeding systems to fuck. Get the country exclusions to fuck. 32 teams, all in. Winner takes all. Thats how it should be, UEFA should stop protecting the bigger clubs and more to the point, their bank balance.