Staggered that kick-offs aren’t staggered
It really is about time UEFA got their act together and sorted out the timing of the Champions League quarter-finals.
It entirely defies logic that, with games of this calibre, you are forced to pick and choose which one to watch. Last Tuesday, football fans had to decide between Arsenal vs Bayern Munich or Real Madrid vs Manchester City, and on Wednesday it was either Atletico Madrid vs Borussia Dortmund or Barcelona vs Paris Saint-Germain.
The truth is that, as a neutral on these occasions, I would have quite liked to watch all four games. And I suspect there are tens if not hundreds of millions of like-minded individuals out there.
I mean, is there some logistical reason behind the kick-offs being at the same time that I am missing because, quite frankly, this situation sucks. It feels like being back in the televisual dark ages of the 1980s when whatever you were watching was a case of like it or lump it.
I understand that because of fixture congestion and the sheer number of games being played these days, it isn’t possible to hold one quarter-final per day. But surely staggering the kick-off times so viewers can watch both games is not beyond the realms of possibility.
All it takes is a little bit of schedule tinkering. Play one at 7pm and the other at 9pm and Bob’s your auntie’s live-in lover. Then reverse the process for the return legs so everyone has a crack at prime time.
But let’s say that that was impossible for some bizarre reason, then surely a half-hour difference wouldn’t be too much to ask? At least then we could watch a good chunk of each match in relative tranquillity.
Instead, men, women and children across the continent are forced to play remote Russian roulette, hopping from one game to the other in a desperate attempt to catch all the goals. And, last week, with 18 games over the two days, that was an utterly impossible task.
In fact, you always know channel switching is a plan that is doomed to failure from your first “Oh, I’ll just see what’s happening in the other game” decision, which is inevitably the cue for the football gods to give birth to a bouncing baby goal in the game you had previously been watching.
In a day and age when just about everything outside the marital bedroom is “on-demand”, how can we have some of the most important games in the football calendar clashing with each other?
Normally at this point I would blame UEFA’s greed for a stupid situation like this, primarily because UEFA’s greed is normally to blame for stupid situations like these.
But I would imagine that, if the games didn’t overlap, that would mean more viewers for each individual match. And more viewers should mean more advertising money rolling in. So maybe it isn’t UEFA’s desperation to maximise revenue that’s at fault. For once.
Of course, there is always the chance that I am barking up the wrong tree and there actually is some real and compelling reason for the simultaneous kickoff times. But I suspect there isn’t. I suspect that it is just a case of things always having been that way so why bother changing them.
“Stagger the kick-off times so everyone will be able to watch? What? And deal with all that extra paperwork? Don’t be daft. Just tell everyone to buy a second TV,” someone at UEFA HQ probably didn’t say.
All this leaves us looking forward to another 48 hours of remote roulette this Tuesday and Wednesday. Hopefully I will do slightly better than last week when I think I missed roughly 14 of the 18 goals...
Super Lig goeS coLd Turkey
For the past year or so, maybe even longer, the Super Lig has been stumbling from one crisis to another as elite Turkish football continues its descent into chaos.
In recent months – and this is just off the top of my head – we’ve had everything from players being injured by missiles thrown from the stands to a referee being assaulted by an unhinged club president.
There have also been players fighting with fans on the pitch, teams walking off in the middle of games, and the whole league being suspended when the match officials decided it wasn’t safe for them to do their jobs anymore.
It’s like a constant whirlwind of self-inflicted, self-indulgent madness.
Last week, another wave of controversy washed over the Super Lig when one of the country’s big two, 28-time champions Fenerbahce, came within a whisker of walking away from the league altogether.
The club’s president was utterly fed up with everything seemingly going against his team, including being made to play the Turkish Super Cup against Galatasaray just days before their Europa League quarter-final.
He decided it was time to go nuclear and put a decision on withdrawing from the league to the club’s members. Ultimately they voted to stick around, but the club continued their protest by fielding an Under-19 team in the aforementioned Super Cup. That team then walked off the pitch after just a couple of minutes, handing victory to their opponents. So Galatasaray, having got all dressed up for the occasion, decided not to waste the opportunity for a kick about and played a match against their own substitutes.
You can’t make this sort of stuff up! It’s almost like the sport is being run by the producers of the Benny Hill Show.
I don’t know what can be done to fix Turkish football but, as the Fenerbahce president suggested last weekend, it is in desperate need of a reset before it descends into a spiral of chaos that will end up destroying it.
“I suspect that it is just a case of things always having been that way so why bother changing them
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