The idea came from the late Mino Raiola, the super agent hated by clubs, adored by his clients and forever dividing opinion. And, like a lot of his public pronouncements, his idea was seen as part-provocation, part self-interest, part-showmanship. But it also cut through the BS and laid bare the game's many inconsistencies.
"You want competitive balance?" Raiola said. "No problem. Have tournaments with categories, like in boxing. One for clubs with budgets of more than 200 million, one for clubs between 50 and 200 million, one for the rest. That's fair. That's simple."
Raiola's words stuck with me and I was thinking about them as the Champions League group stage ended this week. Most years, it's pretty straight-forward: the super clubs qualify early and, usually, the two teams with the highest revenue in each group advance. You'll have one or two exceptions, but no more than that. This year it was considered a banner season because it did not happen as often as it usually does: Juventus, Barcelona and Atletico Madrid were all eliminated.
We think this is normal. Unlike American sports there are no mechanisms to ensure parity, like the draft, salary cap or free agency. It embraces inequality because it's sort of always been like that. Teams from bigger, wealthier cities drew larger crowds and paid higher wages so they won more. And then, over the past twenty years, we've had the Bosman ruling (which gives European soccer players their free agency), globalization, commercialisation and these differences became more entrenched and extreme, with the gap in resources growing to unprecedented levels.
Maybe not enough of us care. After all, Formula One is hugely popular, yet it's pretty obvious that the guys in the best cars are going to win just about every single time. Mercedes, Red Bull or Ferrari have won 179 of the last 181 Grand Prix Races -- that's 98.9% -- yet somehow many people (not me) love it.
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But surely the rest of us have some intrinsic sense that competition has to be, to some degree, fair. We don't accept unfair advantages, like playing football with 12 men, or taking performance-enhancing drugs or bribing referees. And, to go back to Raiola's point, most of us wouldn't watch boxing or MMA if some 6'5", 250 pound behemoth was in the ring with some 110 pound flyweight, unless you're into that kind of thing.
(Note here that I'm talking about neutrals, not die-hard fans of a particular team who will watch paint dry if it's in their team's colors.)
In fact, the opposite happens. Fans are educated. Featherweight Alexander Volkanovski is the UFC's top-ranked pound-for-pound fighter. He's 5' 6" tall and weighs 145 pounds (66 kg) which means just about any heavyweight in MMA would probably crush him in a minute or two, because, yeah, big people beat up little people. But that doesn't change the fact he's the best. Yet when Real Madrid trounce somebody with one twentieth of their resources, all we do is laugh at the opposition's manifest inferiority (farmer's league, etc.) and mark out at the club's "winning mentality" and "brilliance."
So, as a tribute to Raiola, I ran a little simulation/thought experiment. What if we did split the Champions League into three categories, based on budgets? What might it look like, and is it even worth considering?
I took the 32 Champions League clubs, added the six clubs that were knocked out in the playoff round and the 10 who were eliminated in the third qualifying round, giving me a total of 48. And I split them into three tiers of 16, based on revenue: you can use budget or wage bill or whatever you like, the point is to divide them up based on available resources.
From there, within each tier, it's like the current formula: groups of four, top two in group advance to knockout rounds, Europa League for third place, followed by home and away knockout rounds until the final. You then take the two finalists from the top tier and the winners of the other two tiers and end up with a Final Four. The winner of that Final Four becomes European champion.
Would it most likely be a club from the top tier? Sure, but that's no different to now. Most likely you'd still have two heavyweights in a hyped up Champions League final. And in the unlikely event you don't, you'd have a wonderful underdog story to tell. Most importantly, you'd at least give the clubs from the two lower tiers a fighting chance at an upset, because it's easier to win a home-and-away semifinal and final than it is to work your way through a 13-game slog against teams with 10x or 20x your budget.
Would it be good for competitive balance and entertainment? I think so. Clubs with similar resources would be competing against each other, rather than being road-graded by a Bayern Munich or a Manchester City.
Would it work financially? Well, supposedly everybody from UEFA to FIFPro to the Super League rebel clubs is crying out for more meaningful and competitive games. Every single top tier group game would be just that: meaningful. More so than in the current system where we often see two heavyweight stomping over smaller clubs and then taking it easy on each other in Matchday 6. Or, worse, qualifying by the end of Matchday 4.
Won't the second tier and third tier be less attractive financially? The third tier, sure -- Pyunik versus Sheriff Tiraspol is a tough sell -- but the alternative is the Europa League, where clubs will make even less. As for the second tier, I'm not sure to what degree it matters. Revenue would be shared across the tiers (not equally, obviously, but along similar lines to what it is now), and it should not make too much of a difference. And, hopefully, the greater interest in the top tier will grow the pie for everyone.
Qualifying would be the same as it is now, meaning the fifth, sixth and seventh best clubs in the biggest leagues would still be in the Europa League and Europa Conference. And, in fact, they'd become more attractive because, as is the case now, you'd have third-place teams from the top tier parachuting down to the Europa League (and there would be more big teams). Critics might say this system further entrenches the differences and inequalities. But maybe it just strips away the BS and hypocrisy around what the game has become, while still ensuring competitive matches.
The trick to making it work? As ever, it's money or, more accurately, how you distribute it.
Eight top tier teams would be bowing out early and half of them wouldn't even have the Europa League to cheer them up. Sucks for them. But if Raiola is right and the top tier group stage is so exciting and balanced that it generates even more revenue, the cash will soften the blow.
I don't know if Raiola's proposal was just a throw-away comment meant to provoke or if he had really thought it through. (And, obviously, I never will.) But the more I bat it around, the more I'm intrigued by it. It won't happen -- UEFA have committed to the "Swiss Model, as outlined here" -- but as this column nears its end, I think it was worth the thought experiment if only to remind ourselves, again, of the ever-increasing inequality and polarisation in football. And how so few seem to care that 99% of Europe's clubs are mere feeders for the other one percent.
Soon football may be the only sport -- other than Formula One, of course -- where such an imbalance of resources is so freely accepted.