UEFA Champions League Matchday 1 fixtures (18th - 19th Sep 2018) | Kick off @ 17:55 and 20:00 BST

IrishRedDevil said:
Champions League just can't compare to Scottish football.
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very predictable.
FWIW I watch more Scottish football than any other. Watch some EPL and pretty much no other club football.
I am not into fantasy football, and am a big believer in supporting your local team however shite they may be.
I enjoy supporting my team and feel i have a real connection with them, they are my club.
Makes me laugh when people trash the Scottish game for quality etc when it should be obvious to all given the financial gap.
 
Sarni said:
It would, there would be 4-5 teams from top leagues who could realistically win it and a lot of teams that would get spanked week in week out. The gap in quality has become absolutely massive over the last 10-15 years,

This year it'd basically be Barcelona, Real Madrid, Man City, Bayern, Juventus, PSG and a bunch of teams that stand absolutely zero chance of winning against any of them over two legs.
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and the reason for the gap is?
 
No11 said:
and the reason for the gap is?
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Well of course it is but you cannot reverse it now. The influx of money into football was never going to be equal but Champions League in its current format has basically killed the smaller leagues altogether. Ajax, Porto etc. used to be competitive even 15 years ago, they aren't anymore and will never be again, let alone teams from countries like Poland, Czech Republic or Norway.
 
Sarni said:
Well of course it is but you cannot reverse it now. The influx of money into football was never going to be equal but Champions League in its current format has basically killed the smaller leagues altogether. Ajax, Porto etc. used to be competitive even 15 years ago, they aren't anymore and will never be again, let alone teams from countries like Poland, Czech Republic or Norway.
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Not with that attitude.
 
adexkola said:
Not with that attitude.
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Not with any attitude. Changing the format of competition is not going to suddenly remove millions that English and other top European clubs already have and it won't influx nowhere near enough into smaller leagues because their teams will not make it far enough in the competition and if they do, their players will just get picked by teams from Premier League, La Liga, Bundesliga and Serie A anyway. It's done.

It's not possible to close this gap anymore.
 
Sarni said:
Well of course it is but you cannot reverse it now. The influx of money into football was never going to be equal but Champions League in its current format has basically killed the smaller leagues altogether. Ajax, Porto etc. used to be competitive even 15 years ago, they aren't anymore and will never be again, let alone teams from countries like Poland, Czech Republic or Norway.
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and this is better for the game?
better for the bigger clubs, yes
better for the glory hunting armchair fans, yes
better for the TV companies, yes
better for THE game, absolutely not.
 
No11 said:
and this is better for the game?
better for the bigger clubs, yes
better for the glory hunting armchair fans, yes
better for the TV companies, yes
better for THE game, absolutely not.
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Of course I cannot disagree with that. 15 years ago team from the city I live in was excellent, they used to bet Schalke and Parma (with Adriano and Mutu up front)in UEFA Cup and go toe to toe with a strong Lazio team. They still couldn't make it to CL because of the formula that preferred multiple big league clubs so they had to play Real Madrid and Barcelona in qualifiers multiple times. Now they almost went out of business last year because of a debt of 2 or 3 million euro, the sort of money big clubs spend on 15-year olds for their academy.
 
Sarni said:
Of course I cannot disagree with that. 15 years ago team from the city I live in was excellent, they used to bet Schalke and Parma (with Adriano and Mutu up front)in UEFA Cup and go toe to toe with a strong Lazio team. They still couldn't make it to CL because of the formula that preferred multiple big league clubs so they had to play Real Madrid and Barcelona in qualifiers multiple times. Now they almost went out of business last year because of a debt of 2 or 3 million euro, the sort of money big clubs spend on 15-year olds for their academy.
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that's the problem for me.

Surely football is more than Bacelona, Bayern Munich etc etc
People can piss take all they want about poor quality leagues but its football.
To support football you have to go to games , not sit in your armchair watching Manchester United play Liverpool in a friendly over in the United States, that's not football.
 
We are going to give the Young Boys a good thrashing :D
Man Utd style
 
How far do you think we will get to in Europe? I'm hoping Jose will know his stuff against the European teams.
 
No11 said:
that's the problem for me.

Surely football is more than Bacelona, Bayern Munich etc etc
People can piss take all they want about poor quality leagues but its football.
To support football you have to go to games , not sit in your armchair watching Manchester United play Liverpool in a friendly over in the United States, that's not football.
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Fully agree, I always try to defend smaller leagues when people on here start throwing abuse at every team that isn't Bayern or Barcelona and laugh at "comical defending", "shit terrible quality". It's not really their fault that they can't be as good as those $500M+ teams on the field but some of those "comical laughable teams" get twice the support of any of the big clubs and have great novelty about them. It's not just teams from smaller leagues, it's also everyone that isn't top 4/5/6/ in top European leagues. The football has basically become all about select 20-25 clubs.
 
Inter v Tottenham, Liverpool v PSG and Real v Roma look like the best ties this round. Even without signing Modric Inter still have a very strong team on paper, although seem to have had a slow start to the season. Wouldn't mind PSG putting 6 past the Scousers.
 
No11 said:
that's the problem for me.

Surely football is more than Bacelona, Bayern Munich etc etc
People can piss take all they want about poor quality leagues but its football.
To support football you have to go to games , not sit in your armchair watching Manchester United play Liverpool in a friendly over in the United States, that's not football.
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Top post, pal
 
Sarni said:
Fully agree, I always try to defend smaller leagues when people on here start throwing abuse at every team that isn't Bayern or Barcelona and laugh at "comical defending", "shit terrible quality". It's not really their fault that they can't be as good as those $500M+ teams on the field but some of those "comical laughable teams" get twice the support of any of the big clubs and have great novelty about them. It's not just teams from smaller leagues, it's also everyone that isn't top 4/5/6/ in top European leagues. The football has basically become all about select 20-25 clubs.
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And that's the problem with UEFA. It's an absolutely useless organization if there is no one in Basel (or wherever they are situated) that can think of measures that will benefit the game on the continent in the long run. feck the neutrals and the glory trippers in Shanghai/San Jose, it's not about them and it shouldn't be.
 
Liverpool v PSG will be a very interesting game. Neither side has really been tested much this season, (no offence Spurs..). It will be interesting to see how Liverpool's midfield and defence cope with the quality that PSG have. Also I'm wondering if PSG will sit deep and play on the break to try and negate the pace Liverpool have, or push up the pitch as they normally play.

Hopefully PSG will find some weaknesses that we can then also exploit when we play them twice next week.
 
How does everyone think our game with PSG will go?

I think we'll beat them 3-1.
 
Sarni said:
It would, there would be 4-5 teams from top leagues who could realistically win it and a lot of teams that would get spanked week in week out. The gap in quality has become absolutely massive over the last 10-15 years,

This year it'd basically be Barcelona, Real Madrid, Man City, Bayern, Juventus, PSG and a bunch of teams that stand absolutely zero chance of winning against any of them over two legs.
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That's the way it is now though?

football is about money, I think everyone can accept that. Thing is, there are ways to make the playing field more equal. The problem is, the top brass don't want to, because it means less profit. The people governing UEFA and FIFA don't give a feck about the fans or about a level playing field, they want money, they want a successful career. It's the same in politics. That's why we're in such a fecked up state.

The idea @adexkola proposed would at least be worth looking at, but it would generate less income so no one will. It sucks.
 
Yes we finally get staggered kickoff times so we can watch more games.
 
No11 said:
European Football is farcical now, how can you call a competition the Champions League when most of the teams are not even champions?
As for the Europa League, absolute joke of a tournament.
Some teams that actually qualify for the Europa League have to play 4 qualifiers just to reach the league stages yet teams can get eliminated from the CL qualifiers and go straight into the Europa League group stages :wenger: and 3rd place finishers in CL group stages go straight into the knock out rounds :wenger:.
It must be embarrassing for these BIG teams getting knocked out of Europe twice :lol::lol:
The bottom line is these tournaments are feeding the rich, basically a big feck off to the smaller clubs with less income who actually deserve a place in tournaments but UEFA make it as difficult as they can for the minnows.
UEFA have a duty like all other football organisations to look after the game and ensure ALL clubs are treated the same.
TV is great for the glory hunting armchair fans, but in reality it has fecked the game for the majority.
Believe it or not there is much more to the game than Real Madrid, Barcelona, Man Utd, Messi, Ronaldo, Neymar and the like...… Fantasy Football.
I enjoy watching junior or semi professional football more than I do watching overpaid arseholes with massive egos diving around the Neu Camp.



Correct.
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:lol: lighten up, hun.
 
KirkDuyt said:
Wait what the feck, why are some of the games so early. I can't watch either of the Dutch teams live now.

Obviously it's to get more people to watch and make more money, but feck off :mad:
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Surely games kicking off at different times is good for us football lovers though? 4 hours of football and I can watch the Barca and PSG/Pool match. Bit unlucky that both Dutch teams are playing the early games though.
 
No11 said:
European Football is farcical now, how can you call a competition the Champions League when most of the teams are not even champions?
As for the Europa League, absolute joke of a tournament.
Some teams that actually qualify for the Europa League have to play 4 qualifiers just to reach the league stages yet teams can get eliminated from the CL qualifiers and go straight into the Europa League group stages :wenger: and 3rd place finishers in CL group stages go straight into the knock out rounds :wenger:.
It must be embarrassing for these BIG teams getting knocked out of Europe twice :lol::lol:
The bottom line is these tournaments are feeding the rich, basically a big feck off to the smaller clubs with less income who actually deserve a place in tournaments but UEFA make it as difficult as they can for the minnows.
UEFA have a duty like all other football organisations to look after the game and ensure ALL clubs are treated the same.
TV is great for the glory hunting armchair fans, but in reality it has fecked the game for the majority.
Believe it or not there is much more to the game than Real Madrid, Barcelona, Man Utd, Messi, Ronaldo, Neymar and the like...… Fantasy Football.
I enjoy watching junior or semi professional football more than I do watching overpaid arseholes with massive egos diving around the Neu Camp.



Correct.
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This is a bunch on nonsense.

TV is great for the fans who enjoy watching these teams play but live thousands of miles away. TV is great to the family who can't afford to purchase tickets. It's fecked up the game for the condescending, selfish football purists who foolishly believe their outspoken minority equates to the majority of football fans.

The bottom line is the popular teams are the ones feeding these tournaments. You honestly believe most fans would rather watch Dinamo Zagreb instead of Manchester United? Good luck with those huge TV contracts after eliminating most of the teams from the most popular leagues

You football purists really annoy the feck out of me. I'm glad you get to enjoy your local team, but please sit down and let the rest of us who don't have that same luxury enjoy the European football from the comfort of our living rooms without you climbing on your soap box every mid-week.
 
No11 said:
European Football is farcical now, how can you call a competition the Champions League when most of the teams are not even champions?
As for the Europa League, absolute joke of a tournament.
Some teams that actually qualify for the Europa League have to play 4 qualifiers just to reach the league stages yet teams can get eliminated from the CL qualifiers and go straight into the Europa League group stages :wenger: and 3rd place finishers in CL group stages go straight into the knock out rounds :wenger:.
It must be embarrassing for these BIG teams getting knocked out of Europe twice :lol::lol:
The bottom line is these tournaments are feeding the rich, basically a big feck off to the smaller clubs with less income who actually deserve a place in tournaments but UEFA make it as difficult as they can for the minnows.
UEFA have a duty like all other football organisations to look after the game and ensure ALL clubs are treated the same.
TV is great for the glory hunting armchair fans, but in reality it has fecked the game for the majority.
Believe it or not there is much more to the game than Real Madrid, Barcelona, Man Utd, Messi, Ronaldo, Neymar and the like...… Fantasy Football.
I enjoy watching junior or semi professional football more than I do watching overpaid arseholes with massive egos diving around the Neu Camp.



Correct.
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They don't deserve a thing just because they won their 4th rate leagues. They need to prove that they aren't just good when they're up against championship (or probably less) quality teams. Very often they don't, so they don't qualify .. obviously teams that finish top four in Europe's top leagues are better than whatever team won Denmark's top tier league.

Also, the majority ARE 'glory hunting armchair fans'. Most football fans aren't hardcore local match goers, not everybody treats the game as seriously as you do. Most people are perfectly content with the current format and are very happy just watching a CL game on the TV after work or at the pub, and they would have zero interest in watching APOEL vs Krakow or whatever. People want to watch elite talents in competitive fixtures.

The teams that drop out of the CL very often actually win the Europa League (Chelsea, Atletico, Sevilla) because surprise surprise, the CL is a hell of a lot harder than the 4 qualifiers you play to get in the EL.
 
SquishyMcSquish said:
They don't deserve a thing just because they won their 4th rate leagues. They need to prove that they aren't just good when they're up against championship (or probably less) quality teams. Very often they don't, so they don't qualify .. obviously teams that finish top four in Europe's top leagues are better than whatever team won Denmark's top tier league.

Also, the majority ARE 'glory hunting armchair fans'. Most football fans aren't hardcore local match goers, not everybody treats the game as seriously as you do. Most people are perfectly content with the current format and are very happy just watching a CL game on the TV after work or at the pub, and they would have zero interest in watching APOEL vs Krakow or whatever. People want to watch elite talents in competitive fixtures.

The teams that drop out of the CL very often actually win the Europa League (Chelsea, Atletico, Sevilla) because surprise surprise, the CL is a hell of a lot harder than the 4 qualifiers you play to get in the EL.
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Their leagues might not be fourth rate leagues if their champions were getting CL money each year.

Remember that the Dutch league and the Baltic leagues were much better in the early 90's and during the European Cup years because they had more parity with the rest. You had variety every year.

All the expansion of the CL has done is narrowed down the winners pool to the same teams every year and that's for the worst.

It should be the champions and at a push, the runners up although they should have to go through qualifiers.

Everyone else in the Europa League with the winners of that still going into the CL the next year to make it actually worthwhile.
 
matherto said:
Their leagues might not be fourth rate leagues if their champions were getting CL money each year.

Remember that the Dutch league and the Baltic leagues were much better in the early 90's and during the European Cup years because they had more parity with the rest.

All the expansion of the CL has done is narrowed down the winners pool to the same teams every year and that's for the worst.

It should be the champions and at a push, the runners up although they should have to go through qualifiers.

Everyone else in the Europa League with the winners of that still going into the CL the next year to make it actually worthwhile.
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As has already been said, the process is now irreversible. The top teams have far too much of an advantage now, if you changed the system so suddenly the likes of Liverpool starting missing out on the CL but Krakow made it instead, all that would happen for the foreseeable future is a ton of hammerings. The top European leagues are just far too watched, have all the top sponsors, have a huge advantage now in terms of squad quality etc .. that is not going to change. Switching back to the old system now would be a disaster

I have no issue whatsoever with the top four from Europe's top leagues qualifying. They're generally the best teams in Europe, and I want to see the best teams in Europe competing. Liverpool finished fourth and reached the CL final, Madrid were third in their league and won the entire thing. Most people would be totally disinterested in watching most of Europe's league winners get hammered 5-0 by Barca or Bayern every week, the viewing figures would be dreadful.

I'm not pretending it's an entirely fair system, or that mistakes haven't been made in the past, but it's pointless moaning about it now. It happened, there's a colossal gap which is not going to be closed, and sponsors etc would simply not allow it to ever happen. It would also suck horribly in the short term because only maybe four teams would be competitive.
 
Liverpool vs psg will be interesting imo. I think both are capable of humiliating eachother. Wouldn't be surprised to see either win 3-0.
 
Klopp's right, I wouldn't swap the PSG front 3 for Liverpool's.
 
Nothing compares to the Champions League. Not even the World Cup. I don't get the criticism that it's the same teams playing each other every year. Well, good. I want to see Juventus play Real. Man Utd vs Chelsea also happens every year and we look forward to it every time.
 
Needham said:
Klopp's right, I wouldn't swap the PSG front 3 for Liverpool's.
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How?

Neymar is better than Salah, Cavani is better than Firmino and Mbappe is better than Mane.

I don't think it's even that close, the only really arguable one is Cavani/Firmino, the other two are pretty clear cut. Salah has had one top level season whereas Neymar has proven himself one of the world's best, and Mane is great but Mbappe is a class above.

Maybe you can argue Liverpool's front 3 'clicks' better, but individually PSG clearly have the better options.
 
PoTMS said:
For matchgoers, it's a ballache but for armchair fans, it's perfect. Two consecutive CL games although Inter v Spurs is the only good game in the entire group stage early kick offs.
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I don't think it is, at least when it comes to which teams they've put on. Lots of Spurs fans, the people most likely to want to watch this on telly are going to miss the start traveling home from work. After Spurs and Inter fans, I'd say the people most likely to want to watch are Italians and English people who support neither but know the teams because they're in the leagues of their home country. So again lots of neutral English people are going to miss much of this because of the kick off time.

If they're going to have it then English and Portuguese teams should be exempt from these early games imo. 5:55pm kick off is just crap. At least in the other timezones it would be 6:55 or 7:55 and give people more of a chance to get home from work/school etc.
 
SquishyMcSquish said:
As has already been said, the process is now irreversible. The top teams have far too much of an advantage now, if you changed the system so suddenly the likes of Liverpool starting missing out on the CL but Krakow made it instead, all that would happen for the foreseeable future is a ton of hammerings. The top European leagues are just far too watched, have all the top sponsors, have a huge advantage now in terms of squad quality etc .. that is not going to change. Switching back to the old system now would be a disaster

I have no issue whatsoever with the top four from Europe's top leagues qualifying. They're generally the best teams in Europe, and I want to see the best teams in Europe competing. Liverpool finished fourth and reached the CL final, Madrid were third in their league and won the entire thing. Most people would be totally disinterested in watching most of Europe's league winners get hammered 5-0 by Barca or Bayern every week, the viewing figures would be dreadful.

I'm not pretending it's an entirely fair system, or that mistakes haven't been made in the past, but it's pointless moaning about it now. It happened, there's a colossal gap which is not going to be closed, and sponsors etc would simply not allow it to ever happen. It would also suck horribly in the short term because only maybe four teams would be competitive.
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Oh yeah I completely agree with the fact that it's now irreversible given how everything has changed over the last 25 years or so, it's just regrettable that it did. I still harbour hopes that the likes of Ajax or Red Star Belgrade might do really well for a season just because they're historically big clubs. If nothing else they'd break up the monotony of seeing the same teams and same games every year in the knockout rounds.
 
SquishyMcSquish said:
How?

Neymar is better than Salah, Cavani is better than Firmino and Mbappe is better than Mane.

I don't think it's even that close, the only really arguable one is Cavani/Firmino, the other two are pretty clear cut. Salah has had one top level season whereas Neymar has proven himself one of the world's best, and Mane is great but Mbappe is a class above.
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Yeah but they just wouldn't work that well for Klopp in Klopp's system at Klopp Liverpool. That's where I agree with Klopp.
 
matherto said:
Their leagues might not be fourth rate leagues if their champions were getting CL money each year.

Remember that the Dutch league and the Baltic leagues were much better in the early 90's and during the European Cup years because they had more parity with the rest. You had variety every year.

All the expansion of the CL has done is narrowed down the winners pool to the same teams every year and that's for the worst.

It should be the champions and at a push, the runners up although they should have to go through qualifiers.

Everyone else in the Europa League with the winners of that still going into the CL the next year to make it actually worthwhile.
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The CL money is just a fraction of what top clubs earn and it's not like the economical difference would just disappear without that CL money.
What really changed the club landscape in the 90s wasn't the champions league, it was Bosman. The reason clubs from minor leagues were more often able to compete with the big ones was simply due to the fact that foreign players that could be fielded were limited and that was super important for the smaller leagues. They obviously still lost their best players before Bosman but it happened later in a player's career and not every above average player had the opportunity to go to one of the big leagues and thus a team with a great generation of local talent could achieve quite a lot (see Red Star Belgrade oder Ajax for obvious examples).
So it was the Bosman ruling that really doomed clubs from smaller leagues and ironically enough it was caused by a player from such a league and not by a conspiracy of UEFA/big clubs.
 
matherto said:
Oh yeah I completely agree with the fact that it's now irreversible given how everything has changed over the last 25 years or so, it's just regrettable that it did. I still harbour hopes that the likes of Ajax or Red Star Belgrade might do really well for a season just because they're historically big clubs. If nothing else they'd break up the monotony of seeing the same teams and same games every year in the knockout rounds.
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That's fair, I totally get looking back on the change as a regrettable decision, just don't understand people who would revert back to the old system now. It just wouldn't work, for so many reasons .. football has completely changed.
 
SquishyMcSquish said:
How?

Neymar is better than Salah, Cavani is better than Firmino and Mbappe is better than Mane.

I don't think it's even that close, the only really arguable one is Cavani/Firmino, the other two are pretty clear cut. Salah has had one top level season whereas Neymar has proven himself one of the world's best, and Mane is great but Mbappe is a class above.

Maybe you can argue Liverpool's front 3 'clicks' better, but individually PSG clearly have the better options.
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Individually yeah but as a whole Liverpool's front three work so well together and work perfectly in the system. All three PSG players are in it for themselves.

I think Liverpool will absolutely dick them home and away tbh. PSG are perennial underachievers in big games, probably because they're a team of individuals.
 
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