The last surprise: FC Porto won the Champions League in 2004. Goalkeeper Vitor Baia and Jorge Costa present the trophy, coach Jose Mourinho watches the action seemingly impassively from the background.
Photo: imago/Team 2
Football is football and yet a little different than football once was. Back when the Champions League was still called the European Cup and only champions were allowed to play, New German: Champions. There are also a few of them in the competition, which was expanded into the Champions League 32 years ago. But the majority of participants have long since been recruited from lower ranked clubs in the major leagues. Where it says Champions League, it doesn’t necessarily have to have champions in it.
On Tuesday, the European football circus starts in a new guise, with a mode that is difficult to understand and four more clubs than last year, but without all kinds of champions from financially inferior countries. The champions from all over Scandinavia, Ireland, Romania, Hungary and Bulgaria are missing. Russia is also absent for the third time in a row, but there are other reasons. There are five clubs each from Italy and Germany and at least four each from England and Spain. The four financially strongest leagues in Europe make up half of the field of participants.
Circus Europe
Photo: Private
Previously simply the national champions’ cup, today the Champions League: a staged spectacle and football’s money-printing machine. Sven Goldmann looks ahead to the coming matchday.
It is inherent in the system that the same heavyweights keep competing for ever-increasing salaries. What is hurting European football is the frugality of its elites. The certainty that nothing will change, that there will be nice play-off games again next spring with the usual suspects from London and Paris, from Madrid and Barcelona and even from Munich. The elite defines this as planning security, as their natural right to always be among themselves at the crucial moment. And she doesn’t realize that she is neglecting an essential element, namely the great advantage that the football entertainment business has in its distribution battles with cinema or streaming: With football, nobody knows in advance how it will end. But that was rarely the case in the Champions League recently, more precisely, 20 years ago.
Back then, the final took place in Gelsenkirchen and at least featured a superstar, but only on the bench. In the 2004 final, José Mourinho took over the big stage for the first time. The Portuguese coached FC Porto and used the triumph to jump to Chelsea FC, the pioneer of those football companies controlled by high finance, for which the technical jargon coined the term “investor clubs”. Porto’s 3-0 win in the final against Monaco came at the end of a strange season in which all of Europe’s grandees had said goodbye early, Barcelona even in the round of 16 of the UEFA Cup. Last year’s finalists Turin and AC Milan failed in the round of 16 and quarter-finals against La Coruña, Bayern said goodbye to Real in the round of 16 and Real then lost to Monaco.
A long time ago and hardly imaginable today. Incidentally, there was no place for FC Porto, 30-time champions of the football nation Portugal, in the new Champions League, which has been expanded to 36 teams.
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