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European Cup yearning Europe will have no true champion this year
Posted: Thursday May 18, 2000 05:56 PM
Valencia's dream run to the Champions League final has been a marvel to behold. But I can't help feeling strangely nostalgic for those days when the European Cup would end up in the hands of true champions, not plucky runners-up. Do you remember how the competition used to be? Just 16 league winners from across Europe playing a knockout format. A team winning on aggregate would progress, the loser would be knocked out. The last two standing would contest a one-off final. But that didn't suit the continent's elite clubs. They wanted the European Cup glamour, prestige and wealth to be more evenly distributed.
So the Champions League was born, eventually including not only domestic champions from the biggest leagues in Europe, but runners-up as well. A further increase in qualifiers followed. Suddenly teams finishing third and even fourth in their own leagues could find themselves contesting Europe's most prestigious club football tournament. One such team is Valencia. Fourth in last season's Spanish Primera division, it was a championship after-thought. Now it is one win away from being crowned king of Europe. To add insult to an all-Spanish final, the other contender, Real Madrid, also missed out on the domestic title last year to Barcelona. Manchester United and Bayern Munich were last season's finalists. Both had failed to win their domestic league titles the season before as well. But at least neither was as low as fourth. That used to be a position attached to clubs with no more than the UEFA Cup to look forward to. Now this.
Call me old fashioned, but I liked my European champions to be the king of kings, not a curious pretender to the throne. Valencia didn't make the rules, of course, and will gladly take their fourth place qualification, maybe their European title and gleefully run with them. Indeed, in years to come, people flipping through the football record books will care little that Valencia made the final (perhaps even won the trophy), having been good -- but not that good -- the season before. But right here and now it most definitely bothers me and reminds me just how out-of-control the Champions League has become. Qualifying rounds, a first league phase (from which the losers get to try again in the UEFA Cup), a second league phase, quarterfinals, semifinals and a final, which runs for almost 10 months of the year. It's all too much. Nothing against Valencia. It has enhanced the tournament in many ways with its Cinderella-like tale. But such clubs shouldn't be allowed to go to the Champions League ball, unless they first waltzed away with their own national title.
UEFA has decided otherwise and there is clearly no going back. Europe's biggest and richest clubs are too powerful to allow that to happen. But it doesn't stop me yearning for the good ol' European Cup days, when the word "champions" actually had meaning. Phil Jones is a co-host of "World Sport," the international sports show that airs live on CNN/Sports Illustrated and CNN International.
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