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Friday 2 April 2021

The Champions League Alternative

Before the pandemic, on midweek evenings up and down the land, an alternative universe existed where supporters would seek out tea, pies, friendship (or solitude) and football at their local club while the Champions League would play out, glimpsed on televisions in clubhouses or scores scrolled through on phones.

For the past year, of course, the choice of escaping the ever-increasing reach of the Champions League has been denied to those supporters, unable to get out to a game and reduced to a diet of group stage matches with an increasingly familiar ring to them.

I'm not a fan of the competition, as you can tell, but at least at the moment, increasingly a closed shop it may be, but at least at present it still retains the recognisable features of a tournament with group and knockout stages.

That looks all set to change with the proposed changes announced this week that will see two spaces reserved for clubs who haven't qualified through the usual routes (through a formula inevitably designed to feature the bigger clubs) and a convoluted group stage.

A superb piece by Jonathan Wilson in Sports Illustrated lays bare the greed that lies behind these changes.

But an alternative does exist and, hopefully, it is one that we can all get back to soon as clubs finalise their preparations for the return of fans.


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