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The next few years could prove pivotal to the long term future of the club with the move to Middle Earth and such, but there is also the looming Europa League 2 which is the stunningly obvious attempt to sweep all the dog**** under the carpet and let the other teams get back to the business of crushing the lesser teams out of existence.
Scottish teams are in a dangerous middle ground where if we kick on we may skip out of the death zone for UEL2 and actually be looking at two Champions League spots again. Should we head in the other direction (****ing cheers Kilmarnock) we will be cemented in the European equivalent of the Irn Bru Cup. Getting to the group stages is rapidly becoming a ‘now or never’ effort. Read on below...
https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/49082976
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I'm holding out for the Atlantic League. Can't wait to run up against the likes of Sporting Braga, Sparta Rotterdam and Cork City on the regular. Who wouldn't be enthused by that prospect.Originally Posted by NewOrleansRed
Haven't heard anything about it for a wee while mind you. Maybe it won't happen after all.
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I'm the first to say fcuk UEFA and all who sail in her BUT let's not get too precious about this new competition as the reality is that is the level we are at. Whilst there is all the usual Europa League dregs that will be in this competition it's not that there won't be any pretty decent and attractive teams to be drawn against or avoid depending on your outlook. If the competition had been this year then the entrants would include the following
Sevilla
Man Utd
Roma
Wolfsburg
Marseille
CSKA Moscow
Spartak Moscow
Sporting Lisbon
Braga
Standard Liege
Besiktas
Feyernood
Austria Vienna
Sparta Prague
AEK Athens
and not forgetting Rijeka
plus various lucky losers from the new Europa League competition
It really depends what you want from European competition. The new tournament will still give us the chance of being knocked out by Spartak No-name from the arse end of Europe but will arguably be a bit easier to reach the Group stages given there will be a lesser number of teams from the top countries whilst still leaving a chance of a real doing from a big name club before the Group stages. Reaching the Group stages should still give one or two "glamour games" and some decent away trips. How much money can be made from this competition remains to be seen.
I still maintain that the sooner the bigger clubs fcuk off and create their own moneybags super duper league the better, but in the meantime, I don't think Europa 2 will be as bad as you think.
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Yeah doubt we would get invited to that, it will be the arse cheeks only
Edit : re the Atlantic league
Last edited by AiberdonianAce; 24-07-2019 at 06:59 PM.
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Surely some tweaking to the current format is the way to go. Stopping the champions league losers entering for a start.
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Stop not happening twice at the very least
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Bring back the old format of three cups
European Cup-League winners only
UEFA Cup - 2nds,3rds,League Cup winners etc
Cup Winners Cup - Cup winners only
Get rid of seeding
That would be excellent and really simple
In reality though European football is not designed for diddy teams like Aberdeen. So i dont care about it. I would take winning the league cup every season over Europe. Its a waste of time and gives the players a shorter pre season break. (so does the new league cup format, that needs to start later)
The only good thing about Europe is the fans get a couple of trips away and a good skite
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Play the three finals in reverse order of stature (Champions League, Europa, Europa 2).
Then the losing CL finalist can be given an automatic bye to the Europa League Final and the losing Europa League Finalist can be given an automatic bye to the Europa 2 Final, and the Europa 2 Final is replayed until either the Europa League Finalist wins OR the team which qualified for the final via the Europa League 2 competition wins by 3 clear goals.
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European football used to have a something of a balancing effect given that each country had the same number of spots regardless of whether it had a population of 50M or 5M.
You could argue that a country like Scotland is overrepresented compared to a country like England; a club the size of AFC in England has next to no chance of ever playing in Europe. But with the benefit of hindsight, this is a reasonable trade off given that the bigger leagues tend to attract the better players and are more profitable as a result.
Since the early 90s this balancing effect has been abandoned and the whole thing has been carved up by the top clubs. I don't blame them for doing this; UEFA should have stood up to them 20 years ago and called their bluff. Now clubs from smaller countries are effectively filtered out using qualifying rounds.
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brilliant
A similar is comment coulda been made 30-40 years ago.. How many woulda thought that 2nd, 3rd and 4th placed teams would be in the European cup, and that if you were put out, you’d just drop into the UEFA cup. You’d be laughed oot the pub.
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