Ties to be played 13/14 and 20/21 February, with second legs: 5/6 and 12/13 March
Real Madrid
Man City
Bayern
Dortmund
Inter
PSG
Napoli
Arsenal
https://twitter.com/MiguelDelaney/status/1765690056897962180?t=s970mQqM6udW0U16yeccdA&s=19
A lot of chat like this around about the CL being boring etc. This seems to be just a bit of an anti man city thing to me. The competition obviously doesn’t gain as much interest here when the two Irish teams, Liverpool and united aren’t in the knock out stages but is it any more predictable than 5, 10, 15 years ago? Surely only a handful of teams could ever win and it always only got going at quarter final stage.
Ah it’s a lot worse now.
There are very few surprising results. Real Madrid have been the plucky underdogs in the last few seasons.
I think the changes next year might improve it (hard to be sure but worth a go). But the financial gaps now are just enormous and it’s killing competitiveness.
Would be interesting to see stats on underdogs winning or surprise results? Man utd and PSG surely show if you’re not well managed money doesn’t really matter as much as is made out. If ten hag was over man city they wouldn’t be dominating like they are.
Was Paul lamberts dortmund winning it a major shock at the time ?
The power of the premier league has destroyed the champions league.
That’s the wrong way around. Look at the teams that are winning it or making it to the final. Money doesn’t guarantee anything but it’s almost impossible for a smaller club or a club from a smaller nation to make a breakthrough now.
We had Inter last year as an exception. And they’re not exactly a small underfunded club.
We had European giants Ajax making a fairytale run to a semi final. It’s easier now for a mediocre Spurs team to make the final than Ajax in their best form.
It’s back to Porto and Dortmund days for any sort of upsets and those days don’t look like repeating any time soon.
The power and money is so skewed now. Teams like Inter can barely hold on to players if a mid table premier league team comes calling.
Looking at them 2 lists, it’s hard to argue against the idea that it’s time to bring back a bit of refereeing bribery to shake the whole thing up again.
English football really bad in the late 80s
Variety is the spice of life. For a sports competition to be interesting you need shocks and upsets.
The champions league just feels so boring. All the teams sort of play in a similar style too.
Remember 2010 when inter went all out defence and drove pep insane and same with Real Madrid when Messi scored that wonderful goal.
The San siro was some daunting trip always too.
Who cares about red bull in the Allianz arena.
It was definitely a great competition but it’s fairly boring now.
Like there was fellas trying to claim Man City and Liverpool is the biggest game in world football and you’d hardly know it’s on this weekend.
I do wonder is there a lack of top players around nowadays? Concentration is an issue but the money is so huge I wonder do players eek out that last few percent like before.
In fairness it was very shortsighted scheduling to put it up directly against Waterford vs Wexford in the crunch NHL clash of the south east titans.
For the biggest game in world football there’s no talk about it.
Agreed, it’s utterly sickening to see the likes of Wolves raid some of the great Portuguese clubs and take their best talents, but in some respects it’s hard to feel sorry for the Italian, Dutch, Portuguese, even German clubs, who have essentially whored themselves out to the big-money clubs of the Premier League, PSG, Real Madrid, Barcelona, etc.
Its not really their fault, they don’t have the money to compete
I know, it’s not a level playing field, UEFA have allowed these Super Elite clubs to thrive at the expense of all others.
Poor oul bridgy between pep and klopp is like a dog with two other dog’s willys.
