The new Champions League format is already a disaster; there is no sport without dangers

With the return of the Champions League, there were, as usual, numerous complaints about the accumulation of appointments and the workload.

Rodri has triggered the Telegraph’s spider senses by refusing to rule out strikesAlisson has succeeded Jürgen Klopp at Liverpool and all reasonable observers agree that it is physically impossible to keep adding more football to a fixture list that stubbornly refuses to get longer and at the same time expect the standard to remain the same.

And this year, a discussion that has been going on for years is getting louder because it is the first year of UEFA’s new and impressive… new Champions League format.

We’re going to talk about the many reasons why this format absolutely sucks, but it’s important to remember right at the start that every single one of these reasons is a feature, not a bug.

The new group stage or league stage of the Champions League or whatever we call it now is not a long, bloated, tension-free pudding tournament because UEFA messed it up, but because that is exactly what they wanted. A secret Super League, a tournament in which a few more games take place between the biggest teams, but with the consequence that none of these games are really dangerous and a lot more games have to take place between all the other teams.

You are sure to be up to date the special features of the new formatbut in short: the old group stage is abolished and replaced by a huge league table with 36 teams. Each team in this league plays eight games against eight different opponents and everything is sorted out from there.

First the positive. Well, positive – there is only one. There are definitely more games between big teams now. In the old group stage, a team from pot one would not face anyone from pot one in the group stage and that probably wouldn’t happen in the round of 16 either. Of course, there were still big teams in pot two and occasionally you would accidentally end up with a group with two of the big clubs competing directly against each other, but generally they were kept apart.

Now each team will play two games against teams from each pot of the draw, including their own. But that’s the problem: most of those games will mean next to nothing.

Rodri is absolutely right when he says we should play fewer games, but surely he could not have expected City to be immediately involved in a game that no one would miss. A boring goalless draw against Inter in a game without any danger, context or riskThe fact that it was a repeat of the 2022 final only made it clear how little significance the whole thing has.

And again, the lack of danger is entirely intentional and baked in. It looks that way because that’s exactly how it’s supposed to look.

There is a compelling argument that the Champions League group stage has become quite stale, often boring and very often quite predictable. The reasons for change were clear. But we haven’t even finished the first matchday of the revamped tournament and it is already obvious – if it wasn’t clear before – that they have taken something that was a little bit mediocre and made it much, much worse.

First of all, there is the sheer number of games. In the old Champions League group stage with 32 teams, 96 games over six match days were needed to determine the last 16 teams, with eight more teams slipping into the Europa League.

The new format will see 144 games over eight match days to reduce the 36 teams to 24. There is simply a woeful lack of competitive spirit.

The right decision to remove the Europa League safety net has been completely undermined by simply putting in a Champions League safety net instead. These eight teams are no longer going to the Europa League – instead they are getting another chance in the big competition. We have to minimise any risk of big teams and their delicious revenue streams being eliminated early, don’t we?

While this is not the end result of what happens when you design a sports tournament based primarily on financial rather than sporting considerations, it is a significant step in that direction.

A lot of attention has obviously been paid to the fact that nowadays everyone doesn’t play everyone else in a single group, but that in itself is not a big problem. Everyone has eight games against a wide range of teams; there is sporting fairness there. Sure, some teams’ schedules will be easier than others, but the luck of the draw was part of the old Champions League and every other example of tournament football, or indeed sport, that has ever been invented. That is not a problem.

The problem is that these games have become meaningless when viewed individually. In a huge table, there is no immediate context for the individual results. This is made even worse by the fact that, unlike in a traditional league, ranking no longer has much meaning, except in a few very specific places where it suddenly becomes hugely important.

Which teams will find themselves in the bubbles for 8th place (for direct entry into the round of 16) and 24th place (for qualification for the play-off round) will only become clear in a few rounds. And by then we will also have a pretty clear idea of ​​which handful of teams have already almost secured a place in the top eight, which huge number of teams will almost certainly end up in the top 24 and which mass of relegation candidates will probably not make it.

The semi-valid sporting argument against direct qualification of the top 16 is that it would lead to too many meaningless games in the second half of the group stage. To that, you could argue that this is really just proof that the format was designed poorly from the start, but also that a few meaningless games are actually infinitely better than removing almost all danger from all but a tiny handful of the remaining games.

If the top 16 went straight into the seeded last 16 based on their rankings, there would at least be a significant incentive to finish as high up the table as possible and sneak into the top 16 at the bottom as well. It gives more teams more opportunities to actually compete for and for longer, while removing the artificial importance that currently exists around eighth place.

If 24 teams advance – eight directly, 16 in a play-off round – you end up with a bizarre scenario in which the difference between first and eighth place, or between ninth and 24th place, is much smaller than the difference between eighth and ninth place, or between 24th and 25th place. That is completely illogical.

The 0-0 draw between City and Inter will probably mean nothing at all when the brackets are broken down. The old group stage was completely imperfect, but we could at least point to that result and see how it hurt City’s chances of finishing top and boosted Inter’s. We would know something.

Celtic’s stunning 5-1 win over Slovan Bratislava would be a potentially group-deciding result in a regular group stage. It would give Celtic – at least – a comfortable third place. It would mean something. Maybe still. But it could also very well be an opening night clash between two teams destined to finish in the last 12. Of course, we never know how anything will turn out after one game of a tournament, but it’s reasonable to expect it to provide clues.

Of course Celtic will still be delighted with the win, but it is not right – or fair – that it means so little in the wider context. Aston Villa’s return to Europe’s biggest competition and 3-0 away win in their first game should be a great feelingin all likelihood not entirely meaningless for a team that has probably done nothing other than consolidate its already very good chances of finishing somewhere between ninth and 24th.

But the lack of context and meaning is just one consequence of the really big problem: danger. Or, more precisely, its near absence. It is an absolutely essential part of any sport. Perhaps the essential part. Without danger, without context, any sporting event becomes pure entertainment.

And it’s not just that the suits don’t understand the importance of it, they actively want to abolish it.

Teams probably need about nine points to get into the top 24. It could be a point more or less, but it will probably be something like that. That means a team could lose its first five Champions League games without being eliminated. Sure, you reduce those meaningless games, but you lose all the sporting edge along the way.

On the other hand, those who win their opening matches may now only need six or seven points from their remaining seven games to qualify for the knockout phase.

The old group stage of the Champions League had become too long and boring and lacked drama. UEFA has – intentionally – abolished it and developed a new one that is even longer, more boring and with even less emotion and excitement.

And these obvious deficiencies are already apparent on the first day of play. On the opening night, the bookies’ favourites won five out of five games. On the second night, one favourite had to settle for a draw, but that hardly mattered to the team’s ambitions for the season as a whole. None of that matters at this stage and will hardly matter in the final reckoning either.