European Soccer

Off Topic
1385

I am pretty much for anything that gives us less soccer at this point. City is back on again in about 3 weeks for the who cares Club World Cup which potentially goes until July 13th and then the Prem kicks off again August 16th until next May again and then straight into the World Cup.

How can I miss something when it’s never gone? It’s become so ridiculous the amount of matches they are expecting out of players so yeah, I’d be all for a smaller Champions League, but the greediest of people at UEFA will make sure it goes the completely opposite direction.

This has been the first couple of years where I have taken pretty significant breaks from watching, I was completely burnt out after the Euros and then it just keeps right on trucking.

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1386

Expanded Club World Cup is a huge L. No one wants to play in it. Feels like ever since COVID there has been crazy fixture congestion.

Of course, I will obviously end up watching anyways :rofl:

1 Like
1387

People only pay attention to the three legs of the treble right (league, UCL, national cup)

I know there are other comps but nobody cares and squads are generally pretty rotated, no?

The CL has existed I some form for like 75 years so I feel like those three are pretty enshrined on the calendar

1388

In England it’s the Quad, CL/League/FA/EFL(Carabou)

Feels like most clubs in contention do a mix of A and B team for the cups, but anyone mid-table and below seems to bring the A squad to everything.

Pretty sure most countries only have a treble though. The Polka something in Germany, Copa del Ray in Spain and and the Coppa in Italy.

1389

I think it is pretty club-dependent but it is normal to rotate squads for domestic cup games (especially the EFL cup) but I don’t think anyone really knows what to do with the Club World Cup… It used to be a small six team event that was just a one-weekend money grab, now it is a full-on tournament that FIFA is trying to build to somehow compete with UCL and has 32 teams.

Add in the international fixture crunch, new Nations League Tournaments, etc. and there just hasn’t been a ton of free space.

Even the new format added extra games though, right?

Everyone plays 8 group games vs. 6, plus the playoff round now I think.

1390

It’s bigger fir sure but I don’t think the two extra fixtures are a massive workload difference

And yeah, FA and Carabao early rounds are generally very rotated - assume Copa Del Rey, etc are the same

CL generally is a major test of club depth, we’ve seen the mid-week European fixtures break smaller clubs that get in (Newcastle last year, Brighton in Europa)

1391

I mean, it is more games when we should be trying to figure out a way to play less.

I think fixture congestion is absolutely a real problem and the Club World Cup is a huge part of that.

There’s been a huge outpouring of complaints about it for good reason.

1392

I am by no means trying to defend the club World Cup

More saying “let’s boil this down to league, national cup, and UCL”

1393

The vibe I get from the Club WC is the European teams are using it basically as summer scrims and the South American teams are approaching it like the super bowl.

1394

Yeah – it is replacing the preseason tours for the European teams.

I’m sure it’ll be a big deal to non UEFA federation teams.

1395

It’s 2 more games; but 2 less games than 15+ years ago when they had 2 separate group stages.

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1396

Also I think the point about more games is a bit overblown. There used to be 22 teams in the EPL, (4 more games per year) FA Cup matches could go to a SECOND replay if tied twice, as I said Champions League had 2 separate group stages.

1397

My beef is really more with FIFA continuing to expand everything and cram as much as they can into the breaks on the calendar.

The only nice thing about it is we can basically just blow-off the CONCACAF qualifying going forward with 6 freaking teams making it instead of 3 and a playoff. Like the world really needs to see 90 minutes of Nicaragua sh!thousing Portugal to a 0-0 card fest.