The Daily, 8th August 2023

It's back to pre-season previews this morning, with Europe condensed down to 1,200 words.

It is some way beyond a cliche to say this, but European club football reaches the start of the 2023/24 season at a junction. Competing forces with different agendas are set to play out their psychodramas in public for the benefit of all of us, and even though UEFA have already remodelled their primary competition into something that will mean even more Champions League group matches, there remains a pervading sense that a European Super League is inevitable, and that even if it isn’t, the future powerbase of the world game lies in the Middle East rather than Europe. 

Good job I don’t really care where the ‘future powerbase of the world game’ lies really, then, isn’t it? Because if there’s one thing that has failed to inspire the levels of pearl-clutching in me that it has in a lot of other people, it’s been all the talk of the Saudi Pro League. That an ultra-conservative theocracy should be seeking to launder its reputation on an international stage despite multiple allegations of human rights abuses and the highly oppressive treatment of women and minorities is, of course, a disgrace in any respect, and it is particularly sickening to see it happening in football.

But this is a broader question that this silly game can ever answer, and those who roll their eyes at those who’ve done the trampling worrying about what might happen if someone else is doing it are surely justified. The truth is that the vast majority of us are hypocrites, to some extent or another. Javier Tebas may complain about the inequality of resources at the disposal of those at the hands of La Liga in comparison with those in the Premier League, but he seems less concerned at inequality in his own league, which has been won by precisely three clubs in the last twenty years.

Similar complaints have come from Italy, but these complaints were not to be heard when Serie A was European’s most financially dominant league. The issue of inequality is far broader and more important than the issue of power, and it’s a test that most of the major European leagues essentially fail. The Bundesliga remains dominated by Bayern Munich, although they were at least made to work for it last season. The same could be said for PSG and Ligue Un. Manchester City have won the Premier League five times in the last six years and may become the first to win it four years in a row, this season. It’s a Europe-wide problem which even leaks into the Champions League. It’s getting boring.

The answer to this isn’t to be found in ‘more football’. The creation of the European Conference League as an entry point to tournament football for clubs of more modest means has been a good thing, but otherwise ‘more football’ tends to mean something altogether different. It means more matches, tighter schedules and shorter rest periods between matches. For fans it means increased cost. For players it means a substantially increased chance of injury. For owners it means more money. It’s a matter of trying to wring every last penny possible out of players when there is a global demand for them.

The answer to making the game more competitive for a broader range of clubs is a matter of levelling that playing field, but that is something that the biggest clubs obviously do not want. For all the talk of inequities between the biggest leagues, there are several fault-lines in football’s inequality, from those who get to play Champions League football every season to those who play in the top division of leagues with soaring television revenues, but the likelihood that any scales of power are going to be tipped away from the richest seems at best remote, and more likely fanciful. 

So, make the most of that Champions League format you’ve grown to know and either love, hate, or feel broadly ambivalent towards. This is its last season before being changed for a ‘Swiss model’ system which will result in everybody playing the equivalent of ten matches in one giant group. This satisfied the biggest clubs desire for more matches, but the Swiss model is infinitely scalable, now that UEFA have let its foot through the door, and likelihood of that number ever being scaled down is practically slim-to-zero.

At least the final edition of this version of the Champions League will be introducing some different faces, even if not all of them are particularly lovable. Union Berlin make their Champions League debut this season, and Real Sociedad play their third season of football in this competition, with their previous two having come, somewhat strangely, in 2003/04 and 2013/14. Expect to have that minor curiosity repeated at you ad infinitum over the course of at least the autumn. It’s lucky for Sociedad, upon which people will no doubt be dancing, when the year ends in four, and all that. Newcastle United, of course, will be representing Aramco. 

For all that, it remains as difficult as ever to see past a tiny number of clubs winning it. Manchester City ended last season riding the crest of an oil wave and haven’t shown many signs of institutional weirdness over the summer, though it’s difficult to imagine that the departure of Ilkay Gundogan doesn’t leave a significant hole in the centre of their midfield. Real Madrid have secured Jude Bellingham, though Kylian Mbappe’s future remains tiresomely uncertain. Italian clubs are, rather like their national team, always capable of sending a team deep in a major tournament, and Bayern Munich need something to act as a fidget-spinner as they get on with probably winning the Bundesliga again. 

The Europa League, as ever, has a slightly more exotic feel about it, even though it receives considerably less attention drawn to it than the Champions League. England are represented by West Ham, Liverpool and Brighton, the former as winners of the Europa Conference League, while Real Betis, Villareal, Atalanta, Roma and–should they get through a play-off–Ajax will also be in the group stages, with qualifiers being joined by losing third-placed clubs from the group stages of the Champions League. In the Europa Conference League, Aston Villa will be representing England, alongside Eintracht Frankfurt, Osasuna, Fiorentina and Lille, among others. Similarly, losers from the Europa League go into the Europa Conference League.

And that’s where European club football is in the summer of 2023, a strangely contradictory place in which greater financial riches than ever before are accompanied by this mild feeling of trepidation, as though we all know that there’s a shockwave coming, but we don’t know exactly when or how powerful it will be. We know for sure that the Champions League will be vastly changing and expanding at the end of this season, and we know that the most powerful clubs will most likely stay at or near the very top of their domestic leagues. And perhaps beyond that about as much as we can do is just keep on keeping on, still half-wondering why it all had to all become about money while slowly losing hope that anyone will ever want it to be a sport again.