by Owzat » Mon Mar 01, 2010 8:03 am
I think the problem is everyone is wrapped up in bigger = better, while the champions of Romania, Bulgaria, Latvia and Iceland might not be fashionable or produce top rate football, they do produce CHAMPIONS and that is the competition, a contest between CHAMPIONS. s*y wanted something to televise on Tuesdays and Wednesdays to fill the gap, decided that people would rather watch the Champions of Italy against the third placed English side and that's what we get. The fact that non-Champions are winning the CHAMPIONS LEAGUE does make the competition less credible, unless you change its name to the UEFA Super League or something like that then the Champions League will be devalued when teams in it aren't champions. Like the English Premiership would be devalued if the old infirm joined, or if Lyon asked to join as their league is weak. The weaker teams get filtered out quickly enough, but tv wanted more televisable games and the league format was born and for that the standard was raised.
And I find it ironic people might question the value of Champions being in the Champions League in a discussion where the teams finishing 4-7 in England would play-off and thereby put in a team that isn't much better than said Champions of Romania. They do have their place, they just get filtered out in the qualifiers or sometimes crushed in the group stages. But considering their leagues are less fashionable and have a lot less cash they do themselves proud, Debrecen may not have gone through but the teams that did (and didn't in our case from their group) spent many many times more than they did. If it had been two-legged all the way through then I reckon these teams would give much better accounts of themselves, as the pikeys from Romania did - we sure as hell were only ever comfortable because of the away goals rule.
Never buy from PC World, product quality is poor and their 'customer service' is even poorer