So perhaps a broad brush title for this rant but it’s actually focused on football (Soccer - to clarify to the USA/Canada that I’m not talking about the shoulder pads version - more on them later), and specifically the current size of marquee tournaments both on the club and international front.
This rant was actually the first rant request received from a mate who usually challenges my every opinion on the game but with this one we sort of agree…well to clarify, his rant was based on the amount of teams allowed to qualify from the CONCACAF, which for you half-baked-fans is the international teams from Central and North America and the Caribbean. Currently 3 teams have qualified (Canada, USA and Mexico) with ‘Team USA’ thinking they’d qualified a game sooner than they actually had - they are now officially in Qatar though (Qatar World Cup will have its own rant space…believe me!!)
It’s at this point where my rant came into play and it’s not necessarily the amount of teams who have qualified from CONCACAF, but the fact this prestige tournament will increase to 48 teams for the 2026 World Cup - a further 16 teams…that’s 4 more groups of 4 if they retain the same number of teams in each group. They may also choose to skew who qualifies from each group, as they now do in the European Championships where a best placed 3rd place finish means the top 3 teams can qualify from a group of 4…think Portugal in Euro 2016 who qualified from 3rd place and actually went on to win the damn thing!
My point here is, the more teams allowed to both initially qualify for a major tournament and potentially further qualify for the knockout stages of that tournament with a 3rd place group finish, is feeding this culture of ‘reward for failure’ within the sport. I feel the same about all major competitions, like how finishing in 4th place in the English Premier League (EPL) means you can still qualify for Europe’s most prestigious club completion - the UEFA Champions League (UCL). Now don’t get me wrong, my team finished the EPL in 2nd place in 1998 (at a time when only the top 2 qualified for the UCL and furthermore was the first time a runner-up was allowed to qualify) and went on to win the UCL and domestic double aka “The Treble” in 1999 (yes…other fans never hear the end of it, as it’s never been done before or since - F*** em!!), so it is hypocritical of me to then protest regarding ‘reward for failure’. However, it has now got to the point where qualifying for major tournaments will become a thing of the past and they’ll just let everyone in.
The whole purpose of the Champions League is surely that only ‘Champions’ participate…it’s not called the ‘runners-up’ league is it. Like with the World Cup, this is a space for the worlds finest international teams to enter into an elite competition during the domestic season break made more exclusive by the fact it only takes place every 4-years (or soon to be 2 if Arsene Wenger has his own way, which will further downgrade this prestigious event). This is what makes major tournaments so coveted, the fact that you’ve qualified and beaten the teams around you to get to this point. The greatest feeling about victory is the slog it’s taken to get there…the harder the effort the greater the reward. Let’s face it, if the World Cup is one match played every weeks between the 2 highest ranked teams then it’d have zero appeal. However, if it’s a tournament which takes 2-years to qualify for, then has an initial group stage and straight knockout leading up to the final, then that feeling of achievement will be much greater. If more teams are allowed in, with increased qualifying places, then the appeal will reduce.
There is also the issue that in the initial group stages of a major tournament, the ‘bigger teams’ will likely qualify from their group over 3 games to reach the knockout stages, which is more notable in the UCL where in its original format (simply named ‘the European Cup’) went straight into a knockout stage with home and away ties with the overall aggregate winner succeeding to the next round. Group stages were introduced to the UCL in 1994, which meant there was an increased probability that the ‘big teams’ would progress to the knockout stages over the 3 group games, cleansing the tournament of the initial ‘wild card’ entries…hello Barcelona, Milan, Bayern…so long AEK, Eindhoven and Seville. It’s arguably about elitism and making the rich richer and keeping the poor in their place…this concept did eventually lead to a quickly reneged European Super League idea in 2021, which if you’ve been living on the Moon or in North Korea recently, was a bid to protect the so-called ‘big teams’ from failure (and current financial ruin due to their extreme over-spending).
A supplementary cynical argument to this would also be the increased amount of games on TV, which is likely the real reason behind tournament bloating. Make everyday like the Christmas period in England where games are played everyday at more and more ridiculous times…they’ll be playing at 3am soon. This particular argument perhaps requires its own rant space along with my pending rant about multiple tv subscriptions, which all feeds into the greed machine that is modern day football.
If I look at the flip side of tournament bloating, it does allow ‘lesser teams’ to qualify and gives players from those Countries the exposure to ‘big clubs’ who otherwise would never have heard of them - think Karel Poborsky to Manchester United in 1996 or Hidetoshi Nakata to Perugia in 1998, who after successful tournaments in Euro ‘96 and World Cup ‘98 respectively, got moves to bigger clubs or Europe in Nakata’ case - He later went on to play for Parma and Roma. It also allows us to see a broader range of teams on show at a tournament, think Jamaica in France ‘98 or Bulgaria in USA ‘94 who don’t always qualify for the major tournaments. Believe me, I’m all for an underdog getting places and making a go of it…Greece in Euro 2004, Porto in the UCL 2004 and Leicester City in the EPL 2016 to name a few but those victories for those teams were made even more impressive and greater because they got to those places on merit, with much fewer resources than bigger, richer teams and still went all the way. I mean is there a better individual story than Jamie Vardy’s rise from non-league player to EPL winner in 2016 and golden boot in 2020.
Also, as great as any victories are for all teams (they all want it), Greece’s win in Euro 2004 is surely a much more satisfying achievement than say Spain’s in Euro 2012 who were coming off their 3rd consecutive major tournament victory.
To summarise and I guess reconcile this rant, if I could have my own way, I would suggest the World Cup remains in its current format; 32 teams with an initial group stage consisting of 8 groups of 4 teams.
As for the European Championships, this should revert to its previous format of 16 teams across 4 groups and then knock-out - no place (or reward) for finishing 3rd in your group Ronaldo!
As for the Champions League…well I’d like to see this revert to ‘Champions’ entry only and also straight knockout games when you get there. I’ve seen my team Manchester United knocked out by Galatasaray in 1993 via this format. By allowing only Champions in to the competition, this would also improve the competitive aspect of the EPL competition, which as competitive as it is, does mean some teams (notably Arsenal in recent years and now my own team Man United) only push for finishing in the ‘top 4’ of the EPL. Arsenals past Manager Arsene Wenger once labelled this achievement a ‘trophy’ in itself, which was perhaps the start the ‘reward for failure’ culture, which pollutes the modern game.
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