An impending rule change in the European Champions League is set to make fans happy and also many of the successful clubs who are not necessarily one of the big name clubs in their national leagues.
Top seed status will only be given to the winners of the highest ranked leagues and titleholders. Currently UEFA ranks clubs based on five years of results which meant that national Champions such as Manchester City in the EPL Juventus in Serie A and Paris St Germain in France were placed among the teams seeded Number two.
Whereas clubs like Arsenal and Porto who finished fourth and third in their respective leagues in the season just past were seeded in the pot as number one ranked teams. This in turn meant that they avoided other top ranked teams such as Barcelona and Real Madrid. It was a case of the successful teams being protected and ensuring continued success and revenue.
The leagues that saw their teams given top seed status were Spain, England, Germany, Italy, Portugal, France and Russia.
The rule change that is due to be ratified by UEFA’s executive Committee in December has come about as fans failed to understand how the Champions of one of these top nations was in a lower seeded pot than the teams that came third or fourth.
Some would say UEFA could easily have resolved this problem by once more making the competition open only to those teams who are in fact crowned Champions of their respective leagues. However that is never likely to happen with the Champions League now generating more income than the World Cup. This is however a step in the right direction and may prevent a lop-sided and almost predictable outcome.
