The UEFA Champions League isn't broken, so why fix it?

TYNAN'S TAKE BY STUART TYNAN

WHILE many will see the FIFA World Cup as the pinnacle of football, you can make the argument that when it comes to quality and drama, nothing comes close to the UEFA Champions League.

With almost all the world's top players playing for the best clubs across Europe, since its rebranding from the European Cup in the early 1990s, it has produced classic moment after classic moment for almost 30 years.

AC Milan's stunning demolition of Johan Cryuff's Barcelona in 1994. Ajax's wonder kids of 1995. The comebacks of Manchester United and Liverpool in 1999 and 2005. The world being introduced to Jose Mourinho following Porto's shock success in 2004. Pep Guardiola's all-conquering Barcelona side of the late noughties and early 2010s. Read Madrid's three-in-a-row side in recent years. I could go and on talking about the finals alone.

But it seems an unnecessary change is very much on the horizon. Juventus and European Club Association (ECA) chairman Andrea Agnelli gave the body's approval to UEFA proposals for a new-look continental competition to begin in 2024 with 36 instead of 32 clubs.

Under the proposal, teams would play 10 matches in the autumn rather than the current six in the group stage, as part of a Swiss system - whereby teams do not play every team in the league, but teams with differing strengths based on a seeding system - within a 36-team league.

How the four extra places are allocated is a major issue, and the idea of clubs qualifying via a historical co-efficient rather than how they performed the previous domestic season should be a non-runner from the start.

But I hope this idea full-stop doesn't come to fruition. It is simply a case of clubs looking for a bigger slice of the pie as they don't get enough from their domestic leagues and possibly making entry for the so-called lesser clubs across Europe into the Champions League virtually impossible.

Instead of trying to devalue their own leagues even further, perhaps these clubs should be looking at solutions at improving the leagues they are currently in.

LEAGUE OF IRELAND RETURNS

ON home soil, the League of Ireland Premier Division makes its return to our screens this weekend (with the First Division commencing a week later), and there is plenty of interest from these parts with a host of Mayo players competing in the league.

In addition, there is also Mayo interest for the Women's National League which starts at the end of this month.

The clubs across the county who have had a helping hand in developing these players deserve huge credit for their success to date. With the high standard of the junior football in county, and with a large number of Mayo natives competing in the national leagues, it's an exciting time for soccer this season and further beyond in Mayo.

*You can read Stuart's full column every Tuesday in our print edition.