Is The Champions League Fixed?

[Shadydan]

It's not just the seeding system though.
They have to keep teams from the same country apart then they have to factor in TV dates for those countries and even the winter weather. You end up in a situation when the draw is almost pointless as teams could never face each other anyway.

I.e the seeding system.

 

[mickdale]

I've always thought that the draw (as i think it was done when it was the European Cup), should be a straigth draw form the off, forget the Group Stage and just have a plain old dog, eat dog.

Doesn’t guarantee the mega clubs huge revenue if they go out in the first round.....

 

[Sir Henry]

Of course its bent and fixed, ffs there is way too much money in the game for it not to be. You'd have to have a few special needs to think anything otherwise.

 

[nailsy]

I've always thought that the draw (as i think it was done when it was the European Cup), should be a straigth draw form the off, forget the Group Stage and just have a plain old dog, eat dog.

I'd like to see the group stages without the seeding. You'd end up with some groups full of big clubs, but so what if two of the bigger teams went out early? You'd probably end up with some of the smaller teams making it through to the knockout stages as well which would at least add a bit of variety rather than seeing the same old clubs in the quarter finals most years. Never going to happen though.

 

[markiespurs]

It’s fixed to a degree because of the seeding. Any draw in any sport where the big boys are seeded to ensure they don’t meet each other too early is fixed to a certain extent.

Personally, i’d prefer an FA cup kind of draw with no seeding, not just in football but in other sports like tennis as well.

 

[TottenhamMattSpur]

I.e the seeding system.

Not really.
Seeding is just a points based system. That makes sense to some degree (I don't think it's good for competition to keep all the big guns apart personally)
The rest is a mystery. It's not explained how it works or why it is what it is. People can only watch one match at a time so why worry about conflicting matches, there will always be overlaps.
As for winter weather issues - surely that gives the home team an advantage sometimes and that's good for competition. Barcelona having 95k fans is an advantage to them, so why shouldn't playing at 0 degrees be an advantage to an eastern European team?
I think that's where, if there is a fix, it'll be. Making that crap up to make sure x can't be put in y group.

 

[Shadydan]

Not really.
Seeding is just a points based system. That makes sense to some degree (I don't think it's good for competition to keep all the big guns apart personally)
The rest is a mystery. It's not explained how it works or why it is what it is. People can only watch one match at a time so why worry about conflicting matches, there will always be overlaps.
As for winter weather issues - surely that gives the home team an advantage sometimes and that's good for competition. Barcelona having 95k fans is an advantage to them, so why shouldn't playing at 0 degrees be an advantage to an eastern European team?
I think that's where, if there is a fix, it'll be. Making that crap up to make sure x can't be put in y group.

Ok but you're having a different conversation to the point I was responding to.

 

[spursfan77]

It’s not fixed but I don’t think it’s a good competition. Give me the FA Cup any day, it’s got more of anything that makes a good cup competition.

 

[sebo_sek]

I'd like to see the group stages without the seeding. You'd end up with some groups full of big clubs, but so what if two of the bigger teams went out early? You'd probably end up with some of the smaller teams making it through to the knockout stages as well which would at least add a bit of variety rather than seeing the same old clubs in the quarter finals most years. Never going to happen though.

Just do away with the group stage all together. Easy. If you can have Tottenham vs Utd in the third round of the FA Cup, why can't you have a Barca Real opening round?

Oh yeah, I forgot. Money.