UEFA CL/EL/ECL & Carabao Cup Football Thread ** spoilers ** [1st - 3rd October 2024]

[Kenai]

It'll feel like a slower start but the excitement will ramp up towards the later games when you start to see who could progress etc. which will be very different to the old format where half the groups were virtually decided after 3 games. You also get the interest of seeing many more varied matchups, rather than three fixtures played twice for each team.

I don't think the format has much to do with some of the sillier scorelines that have happened, the teams on the receiving ends aren't exactly all newcomers - Young Boys, Zagreb, Celtic.... Slovan Bratislava being the only particular exception so far as they've only reached qualifying rounds the last 4 or 5 seasons. You could just have easily seen Dortmund and Celtic in a group together with a silly scoreline, like when Celtic lost 6-0 to Atletico last year. You could probably put forward an argument that the approach from teams is a bit different now they're not in 4 team group, so they're a bit less cagey and some of the teams see some value in having a decent goal difference but i'm not sure it's really having that significant an effect.

 

[CliffyG]

I'm unsure what the new format has to do with one sided games? With the old format you still had pot 1 (or 2) teams playing pot 4 teams. We're not seeing higher quality sides playing lower quality sides - the same sides are still playing each other.

There are more teams in it now so the standard will be lower in some games. Much like the expanded Euros.

 

[Moothead2]

I refuse to be gaslamped into thinking the old format was so much more exciting and not the same teams ******* their way through every year.

 

[C Kent]

the same teams ******* their way through every year.

That's not going to change

 

[BaZ87]

There are more teams in it now so the standard will be lower in some games.

There's 2 extra sides from smaller Leagues - it's not making a meaningful difference and it's not the reason for one sided games.

The matchups, in terms of respective strength of any two sides is the same as before. You've got pot 1, 2, 3 and 4 sides. The only difference is we're playing more games so instead of playing 1 side from pot 2, 3 and 4, we're now playing 2 from each pot so we're getting double the amount of pot 1 vs pot 4 but equally we're getting pot 1 vs pot 1 (x2) and double the pot 1 vs pot 2 matches etc.

The format change isn't the reason why we're seeing mismatches, they've always been there, we're just getting more games so we're getting (far) more big games but also more mismatches.

Now you might not want to see these minnows in the CL (remember we had almost as many before) but that's another argument and we only have to look back at the Super League thread or even the thread discussing the first draft of this set-up (when there wouldn't have been an extra 2 smaller sides but instead coefficient placings (for example Utd would have qualified despite finishing 8th*)) to see the outrage at those plans. You can't have everything unfortunately.

*Image the one sided games had Utd ended up in the CL this season

 

[Moothead2]

That's not going to change

Exactly that's my point . The only time the groups were somewhat exciting were when the fate of a couple of teams was decided on the last day. With the new format 16 teams will have that moment in the playoff game.

 

[CliffyG]

There's 2 extra sides from smaller Leagues - it's not making a meaningful difference and it's not the reason for one sided games.

The matchups, in terms of respective strength of any two sides is the same as before. You've got pot 1, 2, 3 and 4 sides. The only difference is we're playing more games so instead of playing 1 side from pot 2, 3 and 4, we're now playing 2 from each pot so we're getting double the amount of pot 1 vs pot 4 but equally we're getting pot 1 vs pot 1 (x2) and double the pot 1 vs pot 2 matches etc.

The format change isn't the reason why we're seeing mismatches, they've always been there, we're just getting more games so we're getting (far) more big games but also more mismatches.

Now you might not want to see these minnows in the CL (remember we had almost as many before) but that's another argument and we only have to look back at the Super League thread or even the thread discussing the first draft of this set-up (when there wouldn't have been an extra 2 smaller sides but instead coefficient placings (for example Utd would have qualified despite finishing 8th*)) to see the outrage at those plans. You can't have everything unfortunately.

*Image the one sided games had Utd ended up in the CL this season

I thought there were 4 extra teams.

 

[BaZ87]

I thought there were 4 extra teams.

There are but 2 have come from the highest ranked Leagues in last year's competitions.

The additional 2 extra sides from bigger Leagues aren't better than the best sides in the competition from before and the extra 2 smaller sides aren't any worse than the smallest before. As @Kenai says, we always had your Celtics, Young Boys and the like playing City, Bayern, Real etc. It's not like the new format has resulted in better sides than Bayern playing worse sides than Celtic. The quality difference is the same. We just have more matches.

As I said, you might not want to see these minnows in the competition but they've always been there and part of the compromise that allows us to get more big matches (pot 1 vs pot 1, an extra pot 1 vs pot 2 and pot 2 vs pot 2) is that there will also be extra pot 1/2 vs pot 4 matches. The alternative is a Super League with just the top x sides.

edit: ignore the last couple of sentences, we're not getting more pot 1 vs pot 4 matches. A pot 1 side is playing 2 matches vs pot 4 sides, just like they did before (just now it's vs 2 different teams). We're actually only getting more pot 1 vs pot 1 matches, pot 2 vs pot 2 matches 3 vs 3 and 4 vs 4. Even having more games isn't the reason for more one-sided games. There is no tangible difference in terms of quality of teams and the number of mismatches as there was before.