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New UEFA Cup 'ridiculous'

Expanded entry weakens tournament

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Posted: Friday September 17, 1999 03:35 PM

Juventus, Benfica, Parma and Ajax feel they belong in the Champions League, while Tottenham coach George Graham is among those who reckons the newly revamped UEFA Cup is a devalued competition

In Graham's view, it rewards failure. The decision to admit those teams who failed to make it through the Champions League qualifying rounds, along with the eventual third-place teams in the Champions League group stage, is branded as "ridiculous" by both Graham and his counterpart at Chelsea, Gianluca Vialli. Does this unrest surprise anybody? It certainly doesn't surprise me .

When UEFA created this new format for the European club competitions, the reasoning appeared to be two-fold. The first aim focussed on the Champions League, which was expanded from a 24 team entry to 32 teams in an effort to combat the threat of the big clubs breaking away from UEFA control to form a new European Super League.

Many coaches, including Chelsea's Gianluca Vialli, disagree with the UEFA Cup's new format. Stu Forster/Allsport

What the increased entry ignored, however, is that the proposed Super League was never about which are the best clubs. It was about money, and the rich meeting the rich to get richer. And since we know that money doesn't always equate with a winning team, basing entry into the Champions League on results alone has inevitably left the suits at some of the glamour clubs with every reason to cry foul when their teams don't make the cut.

One of the aims of revamping the UEFA Cup, which now embraces the old UEFA Cup and the now-defunct Cup Winners Cup, was to create a secondary competition with some credibility. To a large extent, the previous cup competitions had suffered a major loss of prestige. Largely, in my view, due to the fact that the entry qualifications were so loose.

However far from tightening the entry criteria, what UEFA has done with its new UEFA Cup competition is to open it up even more. Entrants to the inaugural trophy hunt this year will include an assortment of Champions League losers; teams finishing as low as fifth in their domestic leagues; domestic Cup winners, runners-up, and semi-finallists; league-cup winners and runners-up; the three winners of an otherwise pointless contrivance known as the Intertoto Cup; plus -- and this is the most bizarre of all -- a club selected from Europe's top six nations in the Fair Play league. No wonder some are saying the new UEFA Cup is "ridiculous." What's next? UEFA Cup entry free in every box of Wheaties?

So when clubs and coaches bleat about the current situation, I say: UEFA, what did you expect? What European football needed was realism and clarity. What it got was idealism and still more teams to muddy the waters. UEFA, you missed a trick.

 

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