Once upon a time, smaller European clubs in smaller European cities not only had a chance to win what was then the European Cup, but actually won the thing. The list is surprisingly long.
Nottingham Forest won the cup twice (in 1978/1979 and 1979/1980) and Hamburg SV — with Kevin Keegan in their midst — won it in 1982/1983. Other winners during the period, you might be surprised to be reminded of, were Steaua Bucharest (1985/1986), Porto (1986/1987) and Birmingham’s Aston Villa, hardly anyone’s idea of a swaggering Euro superclub.
Villa have all but disappeared as a force in European football but now find themselves in eighth spot in the new European Champions League format of 36 teams, with all 36 assured of eight matches in the tournament’s preliminary phase.
The format will be explained soon, but suffice to say that under the new format, if Villa remain eighth, they will be assured of the final automatic qualification place for the competition’s round of 16 next year.
The Champions League (what was the European Cup) used to be a straightforward tournament where 32 teams were divided into eight groups (A-H) of four; the top two teams from each group, after the teams had played each other home and away, progressed into a knockout round of 16.
The eight winners of this round became the four semi-finalists, with those two winners contesting the final. Last season’s winners were Real Madrid, who beat Borussia Dortmund 2-0 in the final at Wembley.
For this year’s tournament, the format has been finessed, so giving, says the Union of European Football Associations, greater opportunity to the Villas of this world. In the new competition your eight opponents are generated at random by a supercomputer. You will play four games at home and four away, never playing the same opponent twice. You cannot, say the new rules, play matches against either clubs from your country, or more than two clubs from another association.
In practice, this has meant home wins for Villa against Bayern Munich (1-0) and Bologna (2-0), an away win against Switzerland’s Young Boys (0-3) and an away defeat by Belgium’s Club Brugge (1-0).
On match day five, November 27, Villa entertain Juventus. On match day six, they travel to Leipzig to play Red Bull Leipzig. Their final two matches of the competition’s preliminary phase are against Monaco (A) and Celtic (H) at the end of January.
At this point more will be known about Villa’s standing in the league of 36. Should they, say, slip into places 9-24, they will play in the competition’s first knockout phase in the new year, with the eight winners of those 16 games joining the top eight (of which they are now a part) in the last 16 of the competition.
If they fall outside the 9-24 bracket, so occupying places 25-36, they fall out of the competition entirely.
It is too early to say whether the new Champions League format has been successful. And it will probably need at least a season or two for fans to become familiar with the rhythm and meaning of the competition.
This said, the round of 36 now has a whiff of unpredictability about it, and that’s refreshing. In this phase we’ve had some cracking ties, such as Juventus’s foxy away win against a very handy Red Bull Leipzig. In that same round, Borussia Dortmund travelled to Glasgow and forensically dismembered the Scots limb by limb for a 7-1 win.
All this could have happened in the old format, true. But in the old format — with its accent on home and away between teams — Celtic would at least theoretically have had an opportunity to avenge their defeat in a second match against the same opposition. Was this a good or a bad thing? You could argue it both ways.
In the new format, with the emphasis on one-off matches, there is arguably more excitement. The formatting is more dynamic and, importantly, one-off matches can favour smaller clubs. This has to be a good thing in the age of runaway European giants who win everything all the time.
Look at it this way: a Manchester City, with their infinite riches, are always likely to prevail over two legs against opposition who don’t have the same bench strength. Now, with home-ground advantage in a one-off match, the little guys (like Villa) can theoretically win a one-off match.
This is what happened for Villa against Bayern Munich, but that’s not the only example. On match day two, Lille, in northern France, were visited by Real Madrid, the aristocrats of the European game. Lille won a famous 1-0 home victory on the day.
Over two legs, with a trip to the Santiago Bernabéu in the offing, the likelihood for Lille was an aggregate defeat over two ties. In the new format, they have a big scalp to hang around their necks. They also have the takings that come from their biggest home payday of the season.
Now that the format has been explained, what can we say about the front-runners’ early form?
In order, the top eight teams (so guaranteeing automatic qualification into the next round) are: Liverpool, Sporting Lisbon, Monaco, Brest, Inter Milan, Barcelona, Borussia Dortmund and Villa.
Notable absentees from the list include Real Madrid, Manchester City, Juventus, Atletico Madrid and Paris Saint-Germain (PSG). Of the big five, only one of them, PSG, falls out of the 9-24 bracket. PSG are in 25th position. As for the other four, they are too good and well resourced not to make up for lost ground as winter starts to bite in Europe.
Liverpool, under new Dutch coach Arne Slot, started their campaign with a bang. They travelled to the San Siro to play against AC Milan and handed out a lesson after going an early goal down.
Both Ibrahima Konate and Virgil van Dijk scored muscular headers from set pieces, with Dominik Szoboszlai rounding things off after a sweeping counterattack. It was vintage Liverpool in the best cut-and-thrust tradition.
Szoboszlai is a box-to-box midfielder you’ll soon be hearing more about. He’s Hungarian, had a football-playing dad and spent some of his formative years playing in Austria before going to Red Bull Leipzig. Appropriately for a player now at Liverpool, he has a Steven Gerrard tattoo.
Liverpool’s Milan win was followed by home victories over Bologna (2-0) and Bayer Leverkusen (4-0) and a fighting 1-0 away win against Red Bull Leipzig. They have scored 10, conceded only one and are the only club in Europe not to have lost yet in the competition.
All eyes are on Liverpool’s home tie against Real Madrid (currently 18th) on match day five on November 27, which promises to be one of the most exciting tussles in this phase of the competition.
Another spicy tie on match day five features Sporting Lisbon’s home match against Arsenal. Sporting are second on the log behind Liverpool, ahead of Monaco, Brest and Inter Milan on goal difference, while Arsenal are 12th.
Sporting have already beaten Lille and Austria’s Sturm Graz in the competition but their sit-up-and-take-notice victory happened at the beginning of the month.
For match day four, Manchester City travelled to Lisbon, confident that their English Premiership status would hold them in good stead. Such confidence didn’t seem misplaced when Phil Foden put them ahead in the fourth minute, but Sporting equalised through a cheeky goal from Viktor Gyökeres, their Swedish striker of Hungarian descent, to make it 1-1 at the break.
It was to be the Gyökeres Show after halftime. He scored twice from the penalty spot for his hat-trick and a fourth Sporting goal fell to Uruguay’s Maxi Araújo. There was a big party on Lisbon’s cobbled streets that night. Understandably, City’s skipper, Bernardo Silva, saw it differently. “We’re in a bit of a dark place,” he said after the defeat.
Mikel Arteta, Arsenal’s boss, will have watched this with mounting alarm. Arsenal began the season with a spring in their step, one that is now a walk that lacks for jauntiness. The Arsenal of today look just like the Arsenal of old, to adapt from Macbeth’s soliloquy: “Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
The tie against Sporting gives them an opportunity to get a really big win under their belt and prove the naysayers badly wrong.
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