Champions League groups ranked by corporate fever dreaminess
Here is the only Champions League power ranking you will ever need, based on how much money the corporate fat cats think they can make from each group.
There has been much ado lately about the well-being of the Champions League. Depending on who you listen to, the most popular club competition in the world is either set to go down in flames or is totally fine.
There have always been arguments that there is too much money in club soccer, and that parity has suffered (read: doesn’t exist) as a result. Big clubs are rich, which allows them to buy the best players, which allows them to win, which allows them to make more money, which allows them to buy … you get the picture.
The latest round of teeth-gnashing has been brought on by UEFA’s recent change to the Champions League qualification process: starting in 2018, the top four teams from the four highest-ranked domestic leagues will now automatically qualify for the Champions League group stage. For reference, the Premier League currently receives three spots in the group stages along with one spot in the final play-off round.
UEFA uses a coefficient system that no one understands to determine the top leagues, which are currently Spain’s La Liga, Germany’s Bundesliga, England’s Premier League and Italy’s Serie A. France is the odd man out here, coming in fifth place, and will certainly be very pissed.
The argument against this new development is that the Champions League has become predictable and unromantic — the same few super rich teams from the same few super rich leagues contest the knockout rounds of the tournament every year; the new rules will only make it worse.
There will be even less chance of a “smaller” team from a lower-ranked country making a deep run with the new rules in place, thereby turning this competition from the Champions League into the Third-Place-but-still-Superclub-League.
The argument in favor goes something like this: WHO CARES? The superclubs that continually make the latter rounds are the clubs fans want to see, and they are certainly the clubs the sponsors want vying for the trophy.
Regardless, the Champions League, and this debate, will keep chugging along until the competition has been transformed into a round-robin tournament contested by Barcelona, Real Madrid, Bayern Munich and Manchester United. Sponsored by Heineken.
In this spirit, we’ve decided to rank this season’s Champions League groups according to good old fashioned corporate greed. Club name recognition and global reach, history, and recent domestic and European club competition performance will be used as criteria for these rankings. Also, whatever other highly subjective benchmarks that occur to me are permissible.
The groups will be placed into, ahem, groups, whose headings have been borrowed from corporate sponsorship jargon: Platinum, Gold, Silver and Trash. That last one probably isn’t official business lingo, but it has been deemed the most appropriate term for the dismally-branded, community-focused garbage clubs that reside in the bottom two groups.
Onward!
Next: Trash Level