Now, in the middle of a Champions League day, watching Szoboszlai score in the Wanda Metropolitano and the almighty Bayern suffer with Lokomotiv, European football seems closer than ever to a Super League. Unfortunately it doesn't sound like a joke that Bartomeu says goodbye having signed the inclusion of Barcelona in this competition because after years (twenty-two, specifically) speaking of it is expected as an inevitable consequence.
This extrapolation from the NBA o the Euroleague, which looks like the mirror in which they want to look, to football attempts against many of the values attached to football that we know today. It would allow a few to protect themselves from a bad season in the league and ensure each year to collect from international football. But this hypothetical competition is nothing more than the final result of some adjustments that European football has been making in the last thirty years and that have been getting closer and closer to this experiment so that the rich are even richer and the poor even poorer. This has been the chronology:
1992 – Creation of the Champions League: The European Cup disappeared to make room for the Champions League. A name change that was slow to be implemented in its most important format effect until 1997. In that edition, the one that ended with Real Madrid winning the final with Mijatovic's goal, for the first time in history a team that had not been a league champion was allowed to play in the Champions League, something that, considering the name of the competition, is already paradoxical in itself.
It began in the aforementioned edition allowing runners-up and two years later, up to fourth place in the major leagues was admitted, as we know it today. In 2009 there was another modification by which the previous phase was separated into the champion route and the non-champion route. This also meant another privilege for the big federations, of which even the third-placed team entered the group stage directly. In 2018, the granting of four direct seats to the four major leagues.
1995 – Bosman Law: This measure was not forced by the clubs, but it did end up benefiting them in a very direct way. Basically, because of Jean-Marc Bosman's complaint the limitation of three foreigners per team was lifted for players from member countries of the European Union. It meant that the big stars did not have to divide themselves into many teams to search for minutes and they could focus on a few that were very powerful.
This revolution even hurt South American football, which was difficult to bet on before considering that they were fighting for those three places with all of Europe. With good reason, the record of the Intercontinental Cup ended very evenly, 22 to 21 in favor of South America, and that of the Club World Cup is 12 to 4 for Europe.
Chelsea, in 2012, was the last new Champions League champion.
AFP
2000 – G-14 and ECA: To find the first time that the term Superliga could be read in the newspapers, you have to go back to 1998. Media Partners group proposed it to UEFA without any success, but the idea was already beginning to haunt the same powerful circles today. In 2000, the G-14 was created, which years later would be called ECA.
Like the Big Project proposed in England a few weeks agoThese groups are led by the most powerful clubs with the aim of continuing to be so with even more margin. All the remodeling of the Champions League described in the previous paragraphs would not have arrived, or at least not in such a way, without the existence of this organization. The constant threat of the creation of the Super League leaving UEFA without the participation of the best clubs in the world has made the Champions League have to adapt and give in to more and more pressure.
Consequences we already suffer
In 21 years, Spain, England, Italy and Germany went from having one team in the group stage to having four. Obviously, increasingly difficult for small federations, which have ceased to exist in the final phase. And it is not an exaggeration: in this last 2019/20, and for the first time in history, all the members of the round of 16 belonged to the five major leagues. If we compare it with the European Cup format, we find that in finals there were teams from up to thirteen different countries (Sweden, Belgium, Greece and Serbia) while in the current Champions League there have only been seven finalists.
Madrid, Barcelona and Bayern have been the most benefited in this regard. They are the most dominant in their leagues and have seen how the 1992 change has served them well. With the exception of 2019, one of the three has always been present in the finals for the last eleven years. Perhaps the most bloody data is that in these last twenty-eight years only three teams they have known what it is like to be a champion for the first time in their history.