European knockout phase fixtures

[Modo]

They'll have to chase it at Madrid. They'll fuck themselves up

Hope so

 

[StevieM]

Haha, that's was a nice watch.

Objectively it's better for us if Real get knocked out, but my heart is just craving more City misery and tears.

Bayern can do that in the next round.

 

[Dreambeliever]

Who said this format wasn’t more entertaining?

 

[rubans]

It isn’t for me. It’s just a grind like a bad japanese RPG now. Brest v PSG in playoffs? No Same country lock. Another really boring aspect of it.

 

[Farkmaster]

That banner for city is so, so city.

They paid to have it made for a single game. It celebrates an individual award that is clearly a popularity contest and a bit of a joke. The banner itself targets a single other player, and not one who they have any particular rivalry with, but for what they've read in the press. They could have made it to celebrate their own great, but now it's pretty much unusable. It's not witty. It's not even that much of a dig. It only helps motivate your opposition if anything.

 

[Mystic]

Who said this format wasn’t more entertaining?

Anyone with a brain.

 

[Mystic]

It isn’t for me. It’s just a grind like a bad japanese RPG now. Brest v PSG in playoffs? No Same country lock. Another really boring aspect of it.

It's fucking shit, you know a competition, or it's format, is shit when your prize for doing better is getting to play it less. The old format was perfect.

 

[rubans]

It's fucking shit, you know a competition, or it's format, is shit when your prize for doing better is getting to play it less. The old format was perfect.

It's got shitter as it has gone. Pointless, only thing is money. Only thing worse is the Europe and Conference leagues, I mean the saturation levels for them is horrible. Surely no one is interested in it.

 

[peterhague]

I always thought that second group stage was quite a good way of stringing it out while keeping it reasonably interesting, which is basically what they're after.

This new format just seems mad to me.

 

[Squiggles]

I’ve generally found it okay. I’ve enjoyed the increased variety in the first round, but the benefits of finishing first don’t seem all that great. So many top teams collapsing in the Champions League has skewed things, but maybe that’s not a coincidence, maybe teams aren’t taking it as seriously as they used to, adopting a ‘just enough will do’ approach, which is concerning.

The old format had plenty of dead rubber ties that few cared about, but the Champions League always felt like an occasion and teams would try their best until they were mathematically out in the final round of games. Has that been the case time around? I'm not so sure. I'm fairly ambivalent about the format itself, but the sheer number of games is what really bothers me, which I accept that increasing the about of games was 85 percent of the reasons for the change, with the rest just bluster and fluff.

 

[darkstarexodus]

I'll reserve judgment for at least another year. This season we saw an unlikely number of top teams struggle in the league phase, creating some weird playoff ties.

Let's see what happens next season. I have no doubt some tweaks will be needed after but I'm comfortable to say it's not any worse than the previous format. It just may not be any better.

 

[The Nomad]

It's fucking shit, you know a competition, or it's format, is shit when your prize for doing better is getting to play it less. The old format was perfect.

Old format had its flaws. As i said before though. Easy win was adding an extra team to each group. Rather than this round Robin shit.