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The Champions League Structure Changes That Actually Benefit Celtic

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So, the much heralded, much feared, Champions League structural changes have been announced, and they are a strange mixed bag.

The headline story, which is that the four top leagues will get four teams apiece in the Groups, guaranteed, has been widely regarded as some kind of stunning news. It’s not. It formalises what happens already.

To me, it’s a non-story, especially with the way the draws are seeded, to virtually guarantee that outcome anyway. This is the definition of No Big Deal.

Other changes are a big deal, however, and it’s those we should be looking at.

First, the Champions Route stays.

Wahey!

This site and a few others predicted exactly that; there was, and there is, no appetite at UEFA for locking clubs out of the biggest competition in world football. Access might be tougher, but it will not be removed. We’re just going to have to up our game in the years to come, to make sure we’re there.

There have been changes to the co-efficient system; this is good news of a sort. We’re no longer going to be encumbered by the poor performances of other Scottish clubs. No offence to them, they work with vastly smaller budgets than we do, but defeats like that which Hearts suffered … they’re just too damaging for words. Over the years we’ve seen unknowns from all over Europe defeat our sides in games which we thought would be a one-sided walk … and we’re no better at times as the horror show in Gibraltar showed only too clearly.

But from now on we stand and fall based on our own achievements. That’s got to be to the good, although it will hurt – it will hurt like Hell – for our fellow Scottish clubs. Our co-efficient points can no longer drag them up. Disastrous.

There’s another unusual benefit in these changes; the clause which takes account of past glories. This means we’ll get a free co-efficient bump as a previous winner of the Champions Cup. This is a new and very welcome change which gives us a leg-up on teams which we otherwise might see get seeded in front of us. There’s little information on how this works, or how big a bump we’ll get from it, but that’s by the by. This is a good one.

There’s one other major change, and this one probably isn’t going to be good, if I’m being perfectly blunt.

More so even than the Big Four getting their teams into the Groups, this is the real prize to the top sides, the one that will cause some anger when the full implications of it are properly taken into account. It’s about money, of course.

There’s going to be more money in the Champions League than there’s ever been.

There will be fortunes available for the teams who do well, and whilst it might sound off-base to be complaining about that, there was some consolation in knowing that the famous “Champions League revenue pool” was there, and that all the clubs would get a share.

The revenue pool share – which comes from TV income – is paid out in slices of the cake, depending on the national television market. As we’re in the UK market we get a share of that – it’s 10% , wich is lousy, when you consider their clubs get the rest. Nevertheless, that’s worth an estimated £8.5 million to us in this particular competition.

From 2018, in spite of rising pay-outs for clubs, the “market pool share” is facing reductions, with the cash going, instead, to clubs based on their success in the tournament; the prizes for winning games and qualifying will be higher, but we’re going to get crumbs from an ever smaller cake. City going through along with us reduced the share we got this year; with four English clubs guaranteed our 10% is as good as it’s going to get anyway … but it’ll probably be worth less.

Again, the actual numbers aren’t published yet so we don’t know exactly what it will mean, but this is a reward for the Usual Suspects, those handful of teams who get to the quarters and the semis year on year on year. This is their real prize.

It could well be that these changes all benefit us. Some clearly do.

What’s to be hoped is that our co-efficient will rise sufficiently to help us into the Groups more often, that the Champions Route will be made less complicated or easier as a result, and that, actually, the prize money increases will offset what we’ve lost from the TV pool so as to make little difference overall … but the teams at the top have been handed a blank cheque here, to keep them sweet and to protect the “integrity of the competiion.”

Which is a laugh.

It’s still called the Champions League … but it’s no longer just for winners.

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