If it ain’t broke..
WHO NEEDS EXPANDED CL AFTER WEEK OF DRAMA?
SOME blokes in blazers will meet in Switzerland this week in a bid to achieve mission impossible.
UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin and his colleagues on the executive committee have a grand plan to reform their jewel in the crown – the Champions League.
The problem is, this is one jewel that doesn’t need polishing because it sparkles enough just as it is.
Perhaps all those on the committee could sit down and watch re-runs of both of this week’s semi-finals.
Then it might dawn on them that plans to reform the competition, which include making semis one-legged affairs on neutral grounds, is the equivalent of taking a paint brush to a Rembrandt and giving it a touch up.
Ceferin emerged with huge credit from the European Super League shambles.
But his determination to now fix something that isn’t broken is in danger of seeing him spend a lot of the credit he has in the bank.
The two legs of Manchester City’s semi-final with Real
Madrid will be remembered as two of the greatest games in European history.
Those who watched them were privileged to be there.
The quality, excitement, drama, atmosphere and jeopardy involved felt unrivalled and intoxicating.
And 24 hours before all the madness of Madrid, we witnessed one of the biggest underdogs of the competition push one of the greatest teams of recent times to the limit.
Half the population of Villarreal were crammed into their club’s modest stadium, pushing their side towards what would have been one of the greatest upsets of all time.
In the end it didn’t happen, but that’s not the point.
The point is those people of Villarreal had the chance to dream it could – and on their own doorstep as well. The whole occasion enchanted an entire town where excitement on this sort of scale can be hard to find.
But if Ceferin has his way it will no longer happen, because should Villarreal make it to the last four ever again, it won’t be able to even host one of the biggest games it will ever be involved in.
Ceferin’s plans include the same city staging the semis and final in a week he reckons would be like the Super Bowl.
“Even if you lose two matches, you can get more revenue to compensate,” he said. Here we go again.
There’s just no escaping the brutal truth that, despite all that has happened in recent times, cash remains king.
Not least because Ceferin’s biggest ally just happens to be Paris Saint-Germain chairman Nasser Al-Khelaifi, who just happens to be chairman of beIN Sports, who also just happen to hold the broadcasting rights for, you guessed it, the Champions League.
If Ceferin and Al-Khelaifi were genuine football fans, they would leave it alone.