It’s Halloween 2022. The final round of the Champions League group stage is ahead of us, the perfect amuse-bouche for the feast of football that will be the World Cup. Europe’s premier club competition has delivered thrills aplenty so far. Barcelona are out. Juventus lost in Haifa. Napoli have set the continent alight. I can’t wait to see what’s in store for the final round of games!
Aaah. Well. Yes, I suppose it will be fun to see if Tottenham can hold on to top spot in Group D. Bayer Leverkusen or Atletico Madrid, who will get that Europa League berth? See, that was the thing with the old Champions League group stage. The road to the last chapter tended to be full of twists and turns but by the time you got there you already knew what ending you were getting. Heading into the final match day of the season, 11 out of 16 spots had already been decided. More than that, because of the group stage setup, five of the eight groups had nothing left to play for, meaning that ten out of 16 games were dead rubbers with nothing at stake.
This time around you’re probably going to need to go back over the closing events a fair few times before it becomes apparent what exactly has happened. There are only two rounds left to go in the elongated league phase. There is so little we know for certain about how it is going to shape out.
Big teams struggling in league phase
A recap then, for those who have had a lot going on these last six weeks. Of the 36 teams in the league phase two are through to the knockouts: six wins from six Liverpool — who will not need to play in the play off — and Barcelona in second. Three are eliminated with Leipzig, Slovan Bratislava and Young Boys still awaiting their first point. Aside from that, everything is up for grabs. The cadre of teams on 13 points almost certainly aren’t going to get eliminated from Europe altogether but they all have work to do to guarantee a top eight spot and the bye weeks that come with it. Crvena zvezda might need a lot of breaks in their attempts to overturn a five point deficit on Dinamo Zagreb in 24th but, mathematically, it could happen.
Then there is the totemic clash of matchday seven. Paris Saint-Germain sit just behind the two dozen teams whose involvement in the Champions League will extend beyond January. Manchester City are just inside. Whichever team loses at the Parc des Princes will have an almighty test ahead of them in the final round of games, a draw serves the interests of neither.
Meanwhile, Real Madrid have work to do. They will probably be fine, not least because they have soon to be eliminated Salzburg up next, but the perennial champions of Europe are going to need every possible break to go their way if they are to avoid a potentially tricky play off. Three-quarters of the competition played and three of the continent’s biggest hitters are in jeopardy, Pot One teams at that. You could not often say that under the old format.
New schedule favors lower ranked sides
Why such difficulties for the big teams? It might just be because the little guys have nothing to fear. Take Madrid’s opponents on the final matchday, a Brest side whose professional status was only restored in 2004. In the old format the lowest ranked team in the competition in coefficient terms would have been paired with the big hitters of Pots One and Two, a little misfortune with who came in the third group and the journey of a lifetime could have been a slog. Instead a little fortune from the draw and they turned games against opposition from Pots Three and Four into six points from six. Momentum has been on their side ever since. As Leipzig can attest, when and where you get your games might well matter more in the league phase but the little guys have a chance now.
In the final 10 years of the group stage the most common number of Pot Four qualifiers for the knockout stages was one. This year there are eight more spots but as many as four, perhaps even five could make it. One is even likely to be in the top eight and while Aston Villa were a particularly dangerous unseeded side so were Newcastle when they were cast into, and crashed out the group of death last season.
The problem with repetitive group stages is they resulted in repetitive knockout rounds. Erling Haaland drubs Germany’s third best team. Inter really convince you they’ve got something for a while. Arsenal get sent home as soon as they run into Barcelona or Bayern Munich. Maybe the same will happen this year, but Celtic, Feyenoord and Brest are going to get to have their say. The earlier in the competition the randomness of knockout football is injected, the greater the opportunity for surprises.
The league phase is not an unqualified success mind. There are no guarantees that next time around three of Europe’s very biggest teams will be fighting just to prolong their involvement in the competition. Further up the field, how much will a spot in the top eight really matter, particularly for sides outside England who can get away with more rotation in their domestic league fixtures?
Certainly in the earlier rounds of a new competition it was a struggle to get a sense of just what was at stake in any game. No wonder that in the era of fixture congestion Vincent Kompany felt the best place to rest Jamal Musiala was at Villa Park or Simone Inzaghi opted to roll out his B team for Arsenal’s visit. As Pep Guardiola put it in October, “This new format, I don’t know how you handle it or how many points you need. Maybe you can finish in 13th, 14th or 15th – and not qualify for the top eight – and then win the Champions League.”
There will be plenty of coaches scratching their head over the next 10 days. Even when the group stages did deliver their most dramatic moments — think last year and Manchester United’s one team act of reverse escapology from the easiest group they could have hoped for — it was isolated. Come next Wednesday, a goal at the Bay Arena will reverberate around Villa Park and the San Siro. Goal difference alone might take Monaco from home advantage against Sporting to a meeting with Madrid. The possibilities are endless. Will any coach be tempted to gamble their position to manufacture a path to the final that keeps his side away from the likely top two of Barcelona and Liverpool? Will that even be possible with 17 other matches going on at the same time?
It is almost impossible to predict. That’s why this new format works. Come the final round of fixtures almost every game will matter. It has been a long time since that was the case.
