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Unread 12 Jan 2007, 18:45   #55
furball
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Re: [Football] Paul Tomkins Article on Liverpool

I could start quoting everyone, but for the last few hours it looks like everyone went on a posting spree - so my post would just end up incoherent and full of babble. So instead I'm going to attempt to explain my thoughts in a little more detail and hopefully by doing that answer some of what pig, etc, say.


There are two main reasons why the Champions League no londer holds for me the reverence that it once did. The 1997 introduction of domestic runners-up, and then the 1999 allowance of 3rd/4th placed teams into the tournament completely devalued it, while the addition of extra group stages meant that it turned into a survival of the fittest rather than a process to find out who the true Champions of Europe are.

There aren't many teams who have been able to win the bigger Champions League and their own title in the same season without being true champions of Europe. Barcelona did it last year, Porto did it two years before that (although the Portuguese league isn't especially strong, much like the Dutch league). Milan finished 3rd in Serie A in 2002/3 and of course Liverpool finished 5th in the year they lifted the trophy.

The European Cup was the great trophy to win because it confirmed a team as the true European Champion. The English successes of Liverpool and Notts Forest are great demonstrations of this, as are the consecutive wins of Ajax (1971-3) and Bayern Munich (1974-6). This just doesn't happen anymore - the favourites get knocked out far too often. I put a lot of this down to the stresses of a European Cup run combined with a full domestic schedule.

Liverpool's victory in 2004/5 is testament to this. Poor (by their own standards) in the league all season and never in the title race, they were free to concentrate on cup silverware. Dumped out of the FA Cup at the first stage by Burnley, Liverpool were left with the Carling Cup and Champions League as the only two sources of a trophy. They lost the Carling Cup final to Chelsea in March 2005, leaving them free to put all of their resources towards Champions League success whereas other teams could not (all the other semi-finalists were in the domestic title hunt, finishing either 1st or 2nd in their respective title races).


So what now confirms a team as being a great team? The European Cup no longer exists; the Champions League is just not the same anymore. Teams like Barcelona, AC Milan and Man United repeatedly won their leagues and then proved that they deserved to be on a higher pedestal by winning the Champions League as well. But if you can't win your own league in the first place, then there is no greatness to be confirmed - you clearly can't beat your domestic rivals on a regular basis let alone dominate Europe.
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