Football Daily | The Champions League returns! Only 144 games until the knockout stage

1 day ago 13

BIGGER CUP IS BACK, BABY!

After enduring the slog of one season of Bigger Cup with its “Swiss Model” 36-strong league table, where each team plays eight matches against different sides, Football Daily still hasn’t decided if Uefa’s experimental new format is better, worse or much the same as the fairly jeopardy-free group stage it replaced. Instead of needing what seemed like an already excessive 96 matches to whittle the 32 competing teams down to 16, as its name suggests, Bigger Cup now requires a whopping 144 matches to eliminate just 12 of the 36 teams lining up on this season’s grid. A $uper €eague in all but name, Uefa is painfully aware its flagship club competition is now an even more unwieldy, bloated mess that places unreasonable and unnecessary demands on the bodies of exhausted footballers but doesn’t appear to care. When it means it gets to pit Manchester City against Real Madrid for the 11th time in six seasons and the cash keeps rolling in, then who is Uefa to concern itself with Mikel Arteta looking increasingly forlorn at the sight of a succession of Arsenal players pulling up lame with hammy-twang as they sprint from the Duty Free checkout to the boarding gate for their flights to Bilbao, Prague or Milan?

On the face of it there are some standout fixtures between bona fide European heavyweights dotted throughout the eight separate matchdays, and quite a few of them will almost certainly be thrilling games for the TV viewers who watch them. However the almost total lack of league-phase jeopardy surrounding your PSGs, your Bayerns, both Madrids, at least four of the six English teams and other Big Name contenders who will probably require no more than 11 points from their eight games, means that this side of the knockout stage will always be a little “meh”. Of the 36 teams who contested last season’s Bigger Cup, the only one to raise eyebrows by making it into the knockout stages were the plucky little Breton outfit Brest. Theirs was a truly heroic and heartwarming effort that earned them a 10-0 aggregate shellacking at the hands of the eventual champions and prompted no end of schoolboy snickering and lewd innuendos from CBS’s b@ntertastic Bigger Cup pundits.

Arsenal are the first of the English representatives who will stand to attention for the Bigger Cup anthem when they are hosted by Athletic Club in one of two early kick-offs later. And while the first ever competitive meeting between these two storied clubs ought to be a special occasion, the near-certainty that both sides will advance to the knockout stages suggest that whatever happens this evening means it really doesn’t matter who wins. After all, an almost imperious Liverpool dropped just three points in last season’s league phase only to lose in the next round, dumped out by a PSG side who went on to win the tournament in style despite losing three and drawing one of their opening five games. Still the rights have been paid for, the games must be played and we know that come February the knockout stages will be largely great. For now, there are just 144 matches to get through in order to separate the revenue-generating wheat from Bodø/Glimt, Qarabag, Pafos and other whipping-boy chaff.

LIVE ON BIG WEBSITE

Join Barry Glendenning at 5.45pm (all times BST) for minute-by-minute updates of Athletic Club 1-3 Arsenal, while Scott Murray will be on hand at 8pm for Tottenham 2-1 Villarreal, and Rob Smyth will be on clockwatch duty for the rest of the night’s action in the Bigger and Milk Cups.

QUOTE OF THE DAY

With all the offers he has received, I think it is really, really brave [to stay]. Everyone says to him, ‘you should do this, or you should do that’ and I think he is true to himself. He believes in what we are doing here and knows the grass is not always greener on the other side. [Ole Gunnar] Solskjær went to Besiktas and he’s not there anymore. He has done a hell of a job and the loyalty he has to the club, to the people and the project is extraordinary … the easy part would be to go for the money and hop on to somewhere else” – Bodø/Glimt suit Havard Sakariassen tempts fate by praising manager Kjetil Knutsen’s “extraordinary” devotion to the Norwegian minnows, who he has led to Bigger Cup despite heralding from a fishing town in the Arctic circle that Football Daily could fit into its back pocket.

Chris Wilder has the ideal opportunity to out-Ange the new Forest boss at Sheffield United (yesterday’s Football Daily) and declare the arrival of trophies on his third tenure” – Callum Taylor.

Lovely quote of the day yesterday concerning the Thuram brothers and their dad. A far cry from the last time I played a match against my brother: he executed a double-footed, over-the-ball tackle into my knee that left me unable to walk for a month, and with a scar that’s still visible 40 years later. To add literal insult to injury, the referee (who happened to be our dad) didn’t even book him, let alone send him off, claiming not to have seen the incident, despite it happening three feet in front of him. Happy days” – Paul Taverner.

Re: yesterday’s News, Bits and Bobs (full email edition). The story of Manchester City rather churlishly firing a barman for wearing a United top (and fair play to him, I’m not that brave) reminds me of a rather amusing tale from my youth. Arriving unfashionably late to an FA Cup replay circa 2008 between Liverpool and Luton, which involved sprinting across Stanley Park, we were met by a steward at the away end who greeted us with a cheerful: ‘I hope you lads win tonight, I [expletive deleted]-ing hate Liverpool.’ [Narrator: Luton did not win.] Still brings a smile to my sadly less youthful face all these years on” – Patrick Brennan.

If you have any, please send letters to [email protected]. Today’s winner of our letter o’ the day is … Patrick Brennan, who wins some Football Weekly merch. Terms and conditions for our competitions are here.