Trips to Barca must be earned
THE strongest argument against the proposed changes to the Champions League was right there on your television screens on Sunday. Manchester United and Arsenal. Useless. Why would you want them in an elite tournament? We can add AC Milan to that, or any other underachieving super club from across Europe with a heightened sense of entitlement. Josep Maria Bartomeu (right), president of Barcelona, is the latest to throw his weight behind the idea of a Champions League closed shop. A sealed-off league for an elite cabal, with entry coming from the Europa League. The same tired old names and faces, engaged in endless repetitive fixtures, overblown and frequently meaningless. That is the vision, however they dress it up. ‘When we played Manchester United it was the first time they’d been here in 11 years,’ said Bartomeu. ‘Liverpool was the first since 2006. It can’t be that we play many games, but not against teams like Liverpool and United.’ Why, if they’re not good enough? And it’s not right to talk as if Barcelona and United never meet because, across those 11 years (10 seasons), they played twice in Champions League finals, in 2009 and 2011. In 2014-15, United did not qualify for Europe at all. In 2016-17 they only made the Europa League. In 2011-12 and 2015-16 they did not progress beyond the group stage. So in six of the 10 seasons the teams either played, or United were palpably inferior. In the four when United got out of their group but avoided Barcelona, they were eliminated in the last 16 twice and the quarter-finals twice. They haven’t gone beyond the last eight in eight seasons. So why should they get to play Barcelona? The same with Liverpool, whose 10 years between visits to the Nou Camp included two seasons without European football, two more in the Europa League, two when they did not progress from the group stage and another when they exited in the last 16. The rest? Well, that’s the luck of the draw. The idea that Barcelona are entitled to host the Premier League’s biggest clubs, worthy or not, is the opposite of the competitive ideal. It doesn’t matter whether you’re good. It just matters that you’re rich. But across Europe right now, there are a lot of wealthy, useless clubs, looking to get a free pass from this carve-up. Going into last night’s match with Bologna, AC Milan were six points behind fourth-placed Atalanta. In Spain, Sevilla and Valencia trail fourth-placed Getafe. So why should these new clubs be denied their place in the Champions League because of wealth or past achievement? Atalanta are top scorers in Serie A, a bold, attacking team, with more touches in the opposition penalty area than any club in the league. Right now, they deserve the chance to play Barcelona next season, not moribund, entitled AC Milan. Imagine if Leicester had pulled off the greatest title win in history, only to be told they could not take their place in the Champions League, because an inadequate Manchester United team had to play their yearly mismatch with Barcelona. It is the scarcity of European pairings that make them special and memorable. If each season United were soundly beaten at the Nou Camp where is the appeal? Audiences would dwindle, as they do for the group stage now UEFA’s money has created two distinct tiers. We have already seen what the repetition of a supposedly elite fixture looks like, if the teams are ill-matched. Between February 19, 2013 and March 7, 2017, Arsenal and Bayern Munich met eight times. The games were competitive at first — in 2013, Arsenal won 2-0 in Munich but went out on away goals, having lost the first leg 3-1 — but quickly grew stale as the direction of the teams diverged. Their last three meetings had the same scoreline: 5-1 to Bayern Munich. After the most recent one, Munich tweeted: ‘Can we play you every week?’ Yes, if the super elite get their way — but don’t expect anybody to care.