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Wednesday, August 13, 2008

A match that should not be played


Tonight Standard Liege of Belgium play Liverpool in a Champions League Qualifying Tie. It's a match that should not be played. Standard defender Oguchi Onyewu explains why:

"I'm sure a lot of Belgians feel it is unfair that the Champions of a country have to play a qualifying round to get into the Champions League".


I'm sure a lot of people outside Belgium, and in Britain too, agree with him. Liverpool finished fourth in last season's Premier League. They should be playing in the UEFA Cup, not the Champions League. I'm not anti-Liverpool- I've long admired the club- but I am totally against the current Champions League format which is ridiculously biased towards the teams of Europe's richest leagues. I'm old enough to remember when teams from smaller European countries like Belgium got to European Cup finals. But that won't happen again until we scrap the current Champions League format.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Absolutely.
FC Bate of Belarus have reached the third round of qualifying for the champions league having beaten the team who came 2nd in Belgium RSC Anderlecht.
Whay are Belgium rated so low? and why does a Belarusian champion team have to go throught rounds to get to the group stage? I thought the champions league was just that, not a lucrative league. The old cup winners cup was at least more honest.