In recent weeks UEFA has announced reforms to the Champions League from 2024.
These changes include an increase in the number of teams participating from 32 to 36.
One of those places will be given to the third-ranking team in the association in fifth place in UEFA’s national association ranking.
The second spot will be awarded to another domestic champion through the ‘champion’s path’.
Finally, the two clubs with the highest coefficients but who have not automatically qualified for the Champions League but have qualified for the Europa League or the Europa Conference League will receive the last two places.
The plans have been met with disbelief and outrage.
Many fans claim that this is UEFA’s attempt to appease the European elite after the collapse of the European Super League. They argue that the reforms will dilute the Champions League to create more opportunities for the traditional European superpowers of football to gain access to Europe’s biggest competition.
Adding more teams into the competition will increase its revenue, and the reforms will seek to refrain Europe’s biggest football teams from renewing their attempt to create their own league.
To a certain degree, these criticism are valid. When UEFA initially drew up the reforms, there were plans to award clubs with places in the competition based solely on past performance. But these were scrapped for being too transparently power-hungry.
From the moment the European Cup became defunct and, with the creation of the Champions League, the focus was to allow the “bigger” teams more opportunities to compete for football’s biggest prize each year.
The rule that champions of Europe’s “lesser” leagues do not automatically qualify for the competition indicates a bias towards big teams.
As much as UEFA, and many fans and journalists, would like to pretend otherwise, the Champions League is elitist and predictable. The clubs that usually make it to the latter stages are the big clubs.
When was the last time a winner came from outside of Europe’s elite clubs? Porto in 2004?
These reforms seem to reaffirm the existing framework that has underlined the Champions League since its infancy. If people want to watch an exciting, unpredictable and meritocratic European competition, they should watch the Europa League instead.
