It was such a neat concept, why did they have to do away with it?
Cup Winners' Cup
- Thread starter cafecillos
- Start date
Money.
When they expanded the European Cup into the "Champions" League, all the advertising and prize money went into that.
When they expanded the European Cup into the "Champions" League, all the advertising and prize money went into that.
Would be brilliant if they brought the Uefa Cup and CWC back and had it as straight knockouts from the start.
Like most things in football, been ruined by money.
Like most things in football, been ruined by money.
They'd never do it as they'd have to limit the Champions League to just champions of their respective leagues again, and there's no way they'll go for that.
Always seemed much more glamourous than the UEFA Cup to me when I was a kid.
Partly because the FA Cup was such a huge thing, and that's what got you into it. Like a lot of people my age scoring an FA Cup final winner was the ultimate dream over anything else in football.
Take that concept of the cup being so important, and then gather together all the cup winners from the other countries who were surely good at winning cups/cup specialists in my mind and it made it seem exciting. UEFA Cup was for losers who couldn't win anything, even if in reality it was a higher standard of competition, especially as you had multiple teams going in from each country.
Edit: As an afterthought, it was the winners of CWC who got to play the winners of the European Cup in the European Super Cup. Guess that gave it prestige too. UEFA Cup winners didn't get a look in, the losers that they are! Still, the 2nd/3rd/4th teams in England, Spain Italy etc. would often be stronger than the Cup Winners who could have finished anywhere domestically.
Partly because the FA Cup was such a huge thing, and that's what got you into it. Like a lot of people my age scoring an FA Cup final winner was the ultimate dream over anything else in football.
Take that concept of the cup being so important, and then gather together all the cup winners from the other countries who were surely good at winning cups/cup specialists in my mind and it made it seem exciting. UEFA Cup was for losers who couldn't win anything, even if in reality it was a higher standard of competition, especially as you had multiple teams going in from each country.
Edit: As an afterthought, it was the winners of CWC who got to play the winners of the European Cup in the European Super Cup. Guess that gave it prestige too. UEFA Cup winners didn't get a look in, the losers that they are! Still, the 2nd/3rd/4th teams in England, Spain Italy etc. would often be stronger than the Cup Winners who could have finished anywhere domestically.
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Great memories of the CWC. Mark Hughes double vs Barcelona in the final in 1991.
Still have the VHS tape of that final somewhere, got it in the MUFC gift shop at Old Trafford during the 91/92 season
Still have the VHS tape of that final somewhere, got it in the MUFC gift shop at Old Trafford during the 91/92 season
With the expanded CL and the middling cup winners in some countries that didn't value their principle domestic cup much, meant it got diluated too much. It essentially ended up like th Conference where 1-3 teams would be way too good for the rest. It's heyday was the 60's-mid-80's where it was perceived as better than the UEFA Cup
Money, there's now a league stage to all the competitions, as much bloat as possible to ring as much money from TV as possible. For me the entertainment is worse than 20 years ago though. So much bloat and so few games actually worth watching. My guess is TV ratings will start to show similar not before long.
Great game that but my abiding memory of the CWC was St. Etienne away in 1977. Not much entente cordiale that night.
Was the last one at Villa Park? A Pavel Nedved winner. Unfortunately the champions league is only getting bigger. Before we finally end up with a European super league. Money talks unfortunately
Not the CWC but I've just found out the mighty Videoton made the UEFA final in 85. We really should have been there instead of them.
Total embarrassment that was.
That would be fun right enough but yeah its a money grab now. I'm not sure about the new format Europa / CL yet though, this relentless push by FIFA and UEFA for more and more games is a bit annoying and dilutes the whole thing. For example i have lost all interest in International football outside the latter stages of WCups and Euros.
Ah the Cup Winners Cup, good memories of Utd winning it and also that Nayim goal against Arsenal
, that even still winds them up.I do think the Conference League is a good idea though as it gets significant money to smaller grassroots clubs that are usually out of Europe by July. I know for example that both Larne and Shamrock Rovers have made millions from their cup runs this season that they would never otherwise have got . Its small beer for the likes of EPL clubs but its good for Leagues in smaller countries.
This again remindes me how stupid the name "Champions" League is.
The Cup Winners' Cup (CWC, annoyingly now the Club Word Cup is also CWC) ended because it was sacrificed to the altar of money. It didn't make enough money so it had to go, UEFA and big clubs' logic. Let me explain.
As you know before 1998 the CL had only the champions of each country.
The CWC had the winners or runners up (in case the champion had also won the cup) of the national cups.
The UEFA Cup was for teams placed 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc in the their league (unless they won the cup in which case they would go to the CWC), depending on how many spots each country had.
The problem in the 90s was that football started to bring a lot of money and UEFA and the big clubs wanted to hoard the most of it as possible.
In order to maximise income UEFA had started to shun at the idea of champions of non-rich countries to go far in the competition and at the idea of big clubs not playing each other often.
So they decided to change the format and create the group stages (at first only 2 groups). With only 8 clubs in the group stage finally big clubs could play each other often and everyone was happy, right?
Wrong, what happened (and remember the Bosman law was just implemented and it would take some years to go full force in effect) was that often the champions of big leagues were knocked out before the group stages, like it happened to Barcelona, Stuttgart, Man Utd, Arsenal and Kaiserslautern. This was fair from a sporting merit, those teams were knocked out in the field, but for UEFA this was a disaster - where was all their money?
So they increased the group stage to 4 groups. Now finally all the big leagues had teams there, but now they were also spread out so big clashes often didn't happen until the knockouts. How could this be solved to make even more money?
They knew what they had to do. They had to deturp the competition to allow several entries of the big leagues at once. And they did it. Now the big leagues could put 2 teams in the competition, being a champion was not a requirement anymore - basically making the name wrong - but of course only the big leagues by ranking could have 2 teams in the competition. The smaller, poorer leagues could still only have 1 team there.
Eventually this worked well for money and these leagues started to snowball, getting richer, poorer leagues getting poorer, and bigger leagues got more and more spots for the CL at the expense of smaller leagues that had their champions have multiple qualifying stages to even get to the enlarged group stages. This is where we're at today. It is not a coincidence that since the CL was extended to non-champions only once (Porto 2004) it was won by someone outside the big 4 leagues, and in total only 3 finalists were not from the big 4 (Porto, Monaco and PSG - this last one sort of not representing the french reality at the time with their external financial muscles).
BTW this financial snowballing of the big leagues is also very easily shown in the Europa League: since it was rebranded in 2010 only once (Porto 2011) it was won by a club outside the top 4 leagues. It is more "balanced", as several finalists from other countries existed, but in the end the top 4 leagues' countries are dominating with the wins.
Even in the Conference League, where big leagues generally only have 1 team, was won by teams from those leagues in 2 out of 3 years, with Olympiacos last year since finally breaking the cycle (which is still going in the CL and EL).
So, what has this to due with the CWC? Everything.
Cup competitions are more volatile than leagues, that's why national cups generally have a larger rooster of winning teams than leagues and upsets are way more likely.
So in the CWC sometimes you had odd clubs from an european perspective, mid table teams that managed to win it or reach the final and getting a spot in the CWC.
And it was only 1 club per country, so if a relegation fodder in a big league won it it would be that countries' representative.
This was less than ideal in financial matters and with few big teams in there (deservingly, they should have won their participation by winning in the field) the competition was not generating as much money as UEFA wanted.
In the UEFA Cup this was less problematic because since the beginning it allowed multiple entries per country and since they were 2nd, 3rd, etc in the league it often went to big clubs in those leagues (remember, leagues are generally harder for smaller clubs to get near top than to win a cup competition). So from a financial perspective the UEFA Cup was fine, there were often clashes between money-bringing teams.
The death blow to the CWC was the CL expansion to non-champion teams.
It was already struggling (financially, in sporting merit everything was fine) with "odd" teams, but now the cup winner or runner up often didn't even go here but to the CL as the runner up spot. So it was even more likely that a "big club" that could have brought eyes to the competition skipped it entirely because they qualified to the CL now. See the example in 1998: for the CL the qualifying teams fron the Netherlands were Ajax (Champion) and PSV (2nd place, and it was also Cup Winner). As the cup final was Ajax vs PSV it means that the CWC spot went to a semi-finalist, in this case Heerenveen.
The CWC was thus completely empty of meaning. The Cup Winner did not go there anymore if they did a good league campaign and if the other finalist was the champion / runner up then neither of the finalists went anyway. The CWC literally was scrapping to barrel to find participants.
With even less big teams in the competition and with the supposed participants leeched off to another competition it was from a sporting and financial perspective pretty much dead and UEFA quickly killed it.
The UEFA Cup was affected of course too since it lost the 2nd places and later 3rd, 4th places, etc. But since it had multiple clubs per country there were generally enough big teams to keep it bringing cash. At some point even CL 3rd places in groups started falling in it to make sure at least some big teams kept it alive from a financial perspective (merit alone it not it). It was a failsafe as more and more clubs in the big leagues got spots for european competitions (see how they often get 7 or 8 european spots, almost half a league table) - the big country money has to keep rolling.
TL,DR: The CL expansion made the CWC empty from a sporting and financial perspective. And the CL expansion was made exclusively from a financial perspective. Thus the CWC was killed by UEFA and the big clubs' relentless drive for more money, no matter the sporting consequences.
I liked this competition but in the modern day and age I don't see how it could work with the current model and financial reward of the CL.
Any cup winner or finalist would absolutely ditch the CWC spot as fast as possible if it meant CL money, in the end the competition would be a zombie competition with only flimsy hints of merit (semi-finalists, quart-finalists in cup competitions maybe in some cases) and very little financial backing to it.
As you know before 1998 the CL had only the champions of each country.
The CWC had the winners or runners up (in case the champion had also won the cup) of the national cups.
The UEFA Cup was for teams placed 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc in the their league (unless they won the cup in which case they would go to the CWC), depending on how many spots each country had.
The problem in the 90s was that football started to bring a lot of money and UEFA and the big clubs wanted to hoard the most of it as possible.
In order to maximise income UEFA had started to shun at the idea of champions of non-rich countries to go far in the competition and at the idea of big clubs not playing each other often.
So they decided to change the format and create the group stages (at first only 2 groups). With only 8 clubs in the group stage finally big clubs could play each other often and everyone was happy, right?
Wrong, what happened (and remember the Bosman law was just implemented and it would take some years to go full force in effect) was that often the champions of big leagues were knocked out before the group stages, like it happened to Barcelona, Stuttgart, Man Utd, Arsenal and Kaiserslautern. This was fair from a sporting merit, those teams were knocked out in the field, but for UEFA this was a disaster - where was all their money?
So they increased the group stage to 4 groups. Now finally all the big leagues had teams there, but now they were also spread out so big clashes often didn't happen until the knockouts. How could this be solved to make even more money?
They knew what they had to do. They had to deturp the competition to allow several entries of the big leagues at once. And they did it. Now the big leagues could put 2 teams in the competition, being a champion was not a requirement anymore - basically making the name wrong - but of course only the big leagues by ranking could have 2 teams in the competition. The smaller, poorer leagues could still only have 1 team there.
Eventually this worked well for money and these leagues started to snowball, getting richer, poorer leagues getting poorer, and bigger leagues got more and more spots for the CL at the expense of smaller leagues that had their champions have multiple qualifying stages to even get to the enlarged group stages. This is where we're at today. It is not a coincidence that since the CL was extended to non-champions only once (Porto 2004) it was won by someone outside the big 4 leagues, and in total only 3 finalists were not from the big 4 (Porto, Monaco and PSG - this last one sort of not representing the french reality at the time with their external financial muscles).
BTW this financial snowballing of the big leagues is also very easily shown in the Europa League: since it was rebranded in 2010 only once (Porto 2011) it was won by a club outside the top 4 leagues. It is more "balanced", as several finalists from other countries existed, but in the end the top 4 leagues' countries are dominating with the wins.
Even in the Conference League, where big leagues generally only have 1 team, was won by teams from those leagues in 2 out of 3 years, with Olympiacos last year since finally breaking the cycle (which is still going in the CL and EL).
So, what has this to due with the CWC? Everything.
Cup competitions are more volatile than leagues, that's why national cups generally have a larger rooster of winning teams than leagues and upsets are way more likely.
So in the CWC sometimes you had odd clubs from an european perspective, mid table teams that managed to win it or reach the final and getting a spot in the CWC.
And it was only 1 club per country, so if a relegation fodder in a big league won it it would be that countries' representative.
This was less than ideal in financial matters and with few big teams in there (deservingly, they should have won their participation by winning in the field) the competition was not generating as much money as UEFA wanted.
In the UEFA Cup this was less problematic because since the beginning it allowed multiple entries per country and since they were 2nd, 3rd, etc in the league it often went to big clubs in those leagues (remember, leagues are generally harder for smaller clubs to get near top than to win a cup competition). So from a financial perspective the UEFA Cup was fine, there were often clashes between money-bringing teams.
The death blow to the CWC was the CL expansion to non-champion teams.
It was already struggling (financially, in sporting merit everything was fine) with "odd" teams, but now the cup winner or runner up often didn't even go here but to the CL as the runner up spot. So it was even more likely that a "big club" that could have brought eyes to the competition skipped it entirely because they qualified to the CL now. See the example in 1998: for the CL the qualifying teams fron the Netherlands were Ajax (Champion) and PSV (2nd place, and it was also Cup Winner). As the cup final was Ajax vs PSV it means that the CWC spot went to a semi-finalist, in this case Heerenveen.
The CWC was thus completely empty of meaning. The Cup Winner did not go there anymore if they did a good league campaign and if the other finalist was the champion / runner up then neither of the finalists went anyway. The CWC literally was scrapping to barrel to find participants.
With even less big teams in the competition and with the supposed participants leeched off to another competition it was from a sporting and financial perspective pretty much dead and UEFA quickly killed it.
The UEFA Cup was affected of course too since it lost the 2nd places and later 3rd, 4th places, etc. But since it had multiple clubs per country there were generally enough big teams to keep it bringing cash. At some point even CL 3rd places in groups started falling in it to make sure at least some big teams kept it alive from a financial perspective (merit alone it not it). It was a failsafe as more and more clubs in the big leagues got spots for european competitions (see how they often get 7 or 8 european spots, almost half a league table) - the big country money has to keep rolling.
TL,DR: The CL expansion made the CWC empty from a sporting and financial perspective. And the CL expansion was made exclusively from a financial perspective. Thus the CWC was killed by UEFA and the big clubs' relentless drive for more money, no matter the sporting consequences.
I liked this competition but in the modern day and age I don't see how it could work with the current model and financial reward of the CL.
Any cup winner or finalist would absolutely ditch the CWC spot as fast as possible if it meant CL money, in the end the competition would be a zombie competition with only flimsy hints of merit (semi-finalists, quart-finalists in cup competitions maybe in some cases) and very little financial backing to it.
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Not necessarily as the Champions League 1997/98 and 1998/99 season had 2/3 clubs in the same league.
Because the top 4 usually win the cup. Or would you rather go back to having just the league winner qualify for the CL?