There's a fascinating piece on ESPNFC today about some rule changes to the UEFA Champions League process that will likely take place in the coming years. Most of it is coming about as UEFA seeks to strengthen the Europa League by offering a new incentive to win it.
According to ESPN's Dale Johnson, on Friday UEFA will announce that the winners of the Europa League will qualify for the next season's Champion's League. This comes as a result of the fact that many of the bigger UEFA countries don't seem to lake the Europa League seriously. Michael Platini has openly criticized France's attitude, and as Johnson points out, Italy hasn't placed a Europa League finalist since 1999. So the reasoning is, give these clubs the carrot on a stick of Champion's League qualification and they'll push harder to win the tournament. Will it work? I guess we'll find out.
UEFA is also considering allowing 5 teams from the same FA into the Champions League instead of the current max of four, currently awarded to England, Spain, and Germany. Italy used to get four, but lost their fourth slot to Germany a couple of years ago as Germany's success in European competitions has soared. Obviously a lot of the minnows will be pretty unhappy about this, and if it happens, it remains to be seen if they will add more teams or just rework the current allocation.
This leaves a lot of permutations to discuss about league positioning, who finishes in the top four or five versus who won what competition and such. I'll refer the interested reader to Johnson's article as he does a great job discussing scenarios and various loopholes in UCL history.
Personally I would welcome the addition of the Europa League winner to the Champions League. I'm very glad that Chelsea took the competition seriously this year. Sometimes the promise of more hardware isn't quite enough for a big club to play for when they're chasing the huge payday of a Champion's League spot in the league table. This could offer more roads for the clubs that might feel stuck in the middle.
The Champions League rules and qualification procedures run in a three year cycle, which means the first Europa League winner that would qualify for the Champions League would be whoever wins the 2015 Final in Warsaw.
No comments:
Post a Comment