GOALThe tournament returns this week and it's bigger than ever before – but will it be really any better?
Former UEFA chief executive Gerhard Aigner once dismissed the idea of a European Super League as "an illusion" – but its power has always been very real. As former AC Milan director Umberto Gandini pointed out, "the birth of the Champions League in 1993" was effectively UEFA's response to Silvio Berlusconi's attempt to create a breakaway competition for Europe's elite.
It was also no coincidence that just two years after Berlusconi backed another bid to create a Super League, UEFA increased the amount of teams and games in the Champions League, and introduced a second group stage to generate more matches.
"The threat of a Super League always ends with UEFA promising the big clubs more revenue," Tsjalle van der Burg, an assistant professor in Economics at the University of Twente, told GOAL in January 2021. "As long as UEFA is doing that, there will be no Super League. However, by constantly meeting the big clubs' demands because of the threats, we will end up with a format that closely resembles a Super League."
And that's exactly where we now find ourselves, with the expanded Champions League set to kick-off this week with a new format that makes the competition look like a Super League in everything but name.
