Beware: a sly plan to make Champions League dull

FOR Andrea Agnelli, Serie A is not working. And if it is not working for the man whose team have won Italy’s title for an unprecedented seven seasons straight, imagine what it must be like for the rest of them.

Agnelli is the fourth member of his family to serve as chairman of Juventus. In his first season, 201011, the club finished seventh, after which he appointed Antonio Conte and hasn’t looked back. Yet it still isn’t enough. To dominate domestically doesn’t make Juventus — revenues last year £491.5million — enough money.

‘The Serie A product has come to one of its lowest moments,’ Agnelli complained. Aston Villa have a bigger ground than Juventus these days, while 50 per cent of a new television deal worth £ 916.7m will be split equally among the Serie A clubs, in the hope of promoting competition. At the moment, only 10 per cent is subject to an equal share. You can imagine what Agnelli thinks of that.

Actually, you don’t have to, because he’s done the imagining for all. Last week, Agnelli launched his plan to screw even more money out of football — sorry, reshape the European game for the greater good. He wants to change the Champions League format so the group stage alone will last 14 games. He wants more matches for elite clubs, and less commitment to domestic football — and he wants a closed shop. Except he didn’t mention a closed shop. You had to read between the lines on that one.

Agnelli’s plan — and, do not forget, this is the chairman of the European Clubs’ Association talking — is for eight groups of four to become four groups of eight in the Champions League. ‘We want more European games and less domestic,’ he said. ‘Whoever participates has to play in the national league with six under 21 or under 23 players.’

We’ll get to the unexamined ramifications of that in a moment. First, let’s see how an eight-team league could shape up. It’s easy enough. We can take the 2017-18 Champions League groups and amalgamate: A and B, C and D, and so on.

So Group 1: Manchester united, Basle, CSKA Moscow, Benfica, Paris Saint- Germain, Bayern Munich, Celtic, Anderlecht. We can see the beginnings of the flaws already. Two clubs, at least, look certain to qualify and could be playing dead rubbers, or fielding weakened teams, long before the conclusion. Manchester united will be fairly hopeful, too.

So 56 matches to pretty much locate a fourth-placed team. Then there is the travel. Do Manchester united’s supporters have the finances for trips to Switzerland, Russia, Portugal, France, Germany, Scotland and Belgium — and this before the business end of the tournament gets under way?

Meanwhile, Group 2: Roma, Chelsea, Atletico Madrid, Qarabag, Barcelona, Juventus, Sporting Lisbon, Olympiacos. A strong field but with three clubs from eight having no chance whatsoever. One of the problems of the Champions League first stage is the 2 v 2 split: a group that has two strong clubs and two alsorans. Barcelona and Juventus, against Sporting and Olympiacos, for instance. Quite often, after the fourth game, what remains is meaningless.

Now think of that in a 4 v 4 split. Groups could be as good as over after eight games, leaving dead fixtures for some. Who wants to watch that? Who will tune in for Qarabag v Olympiacos with nothing on it — or even Barcelona versus Sporting, one already through, the other already out. This is a dismal plan.

BuT the devil, as ever, is in the detail — or in this case, in the lack of it. Wind back to Agnelli’s suggestion that elite clubs field age-group teams in domestic league matches to compensate for increased European engagements. He doesn’t say it but right there are the seeds of a Champions League closed shop.

There is no way the elite could play their youth teams for a third of the season and be guaranteed top-four finishes. Have a look at what happens in FA Cup ties when the Premier League clubs go weak. Jurgen Klopp played the kids plus Daniel Sturridge at Exeter in 2016 and almost got knocked out. Arsenal dialled down at Nottingham Forest this season and conceded four to a club with no manager.

If Manchester united played their under 21 team against midranking Premier League clubs they would lose — and probably lose enough not to finish in the top four. So Agnelli’s four-group, 32-team Champions League would have to come with certain guaran-

tees to its members. Devaluing domestic competition would mean league positions could not be used to decide entry.

So what would? The only criteria men like Agnelli understand: wealth. The survival of the richest. He, and like-minded saboteurs of fair sport, would cherrypick the entrants and there they would remain. Do not imagine a club such as Juventus could get relegated from Agnelli’s world. There would be no Leicester-like fairy tales, either, no surprises, no romance, nothing that is new — just a procession of the same old names, playing the same old fixtures, the majority of which will mean even less than they do now.

Agnelli would make the Champions League as dull as Serie A, as dull as the Bundesliga, as dull as the Scottish Premier League, or any of these competitions in which one club are so politically and economically powerful their success is guaranteed.

And when that boredom multiplies, as the world switches off, Agnelli will seek the solution in his next revolution. And he will decide that what the people want, once again, is for Juventus to become even richer than they already are: because his sort always do. EvEry time there is a debate around revamping the FA Cup, some genius comes up with the idea of giving the winner a Champions League place. They think it would lead to more clubs playing a strong XI and also introduce some new names to European competition. Martin Glenn, the FA chief executive more recently seen flogging the family silver, was an advocate of this two years ago.

So what would have happened had that rule been in place this season? Bye bye Liverpool. The team that reached the Champions League final as tournament top goalscorers, that played some of the most exciting and cavalier football seen in Europe this season, would not be in the competition in 2018-19.

In their place would be Chelsea, who have followed up a title-winning season by coming fifth. Indeed, Liverpool wouldn’t have been in the final at all, given that their fourth place to qualify for the 2017-18 Champions League would have been taken by Arsenal, winners of the 2017 FA Cup final. Far from giving the opportunity to fresh names or smaller clubs, winning the FA Cup would be an undeserved easy route to Europe’s biggest competition for mediocre, under-achieving elite clubs. Some revamp.