Seven, you have a very biased point of view on this, for reasons i can't figure out, either you don't follow your national championship or don't care for it. but it doesn't matter actually because one thing's for sure, it's in a better position than mine, or fli's is, as it gets a cl spot or two regulary, so of course you wouldn't pay too much attention to it.
in today's format the cl favours the big teams and kills the small teams, not only the teams but the whole leauges. from your point of view of course you won't care, i probably wouldn't as well, but put yourself in some other position. the champion of croatia gets into the second qualifying round of the uefa cl, THE CHAMPION, surely it's no attractive quality leauge but still. and at the same time a forth placed team from italy, spain, england..gets the same treatment. from a completelly neutral point of view, something is obviously not correct here. anyways so year in and out croatian, and numerous others, champions get knocked out in the third qualifying round by exactly those teams who finished 3rd or 4th in their respective leauges! not only is this killing the teams, the leauges, the players, it's killing the fans! you may not understand that but players in such leauges don't have anything to play for, cl is practically unreachable to them, no matter what they do. players play for money and whenever the chance comes they run to some leauge in qatar, lybia or whichever just because they will get good money, same money their own club would be able to give them if it wasn't taken from by uefa and it's system. young talents slowly get destroyed, national teams suffer, people loose interest in football itself, just because they can't get quality football in their own backyard.
and no, it's not because croatian football is horrible and teams suck, we have some impressive results, for such a small country, behind us both in the national team competitions and club competitions. dinamo zagreb won the uefa cup back in the 50's or 60's, i can't remember exactly but it wasn't called that back than. another example i don't know if you remember it, but i think you probably will, but in 1995, in the old cl format, there was one croatian team that entered the cl, hajduk split. they were in a group with benfica, steaua and anderlecht. it may not mean much for you but it does for me, and the whole croatian nation, hajduk passed the group stages! that team had names such as robert jarni, aljosa asanovic, slaven bilic, igor stimac, alen boksic, those were all world class players, surely that was our golden generation but not cause of luck or anything else, it was cause they had something to play for! wow! not only did they enter the cl but they passed the group stages! and what happened next? they played one of europe's biggest teams ever, ajax! they drew on home turf 0:0, i don't think you can imagine the euphoria that took over the whole nation! of course the next game they lost to a clearly superior opponent 3:0, but the whole nation was proud and till this day we look back to that year, it was 12 years ago, not too long ago, but such a time with this format will probably never ever come again.
now i'm sorry pal because you don't care, but i'd rather see my team trashed and smashed year in and out by europe's greatest, if it means football here will have some meaning, and if in 10 years a generation that will make us proud will come once again. i think that's more important than one(one meant sarcasticly) man's from belgium desire to watch the best teams face each other every year and feed of the uefa money. but like i said, you can't possibly understand that, you have a pretty competitive leauge which gets europe's highest competitons year in and out, so all that's left for you care is to care for your own personal enjoyment.
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. And I agree with his general point that the more expansive the game become it is only the better for the fans in general. I cannot imagine that we would have the kind of depth in class today without the financial attraction the big europeans and cl brings to the players. Beside, he isnt against cutting down the number of spots in a big leagues by any means. I think Seven is just wary against taking this competition into an old format whereby only the "champions" are allowed to participate in the tournament, which clearly is undesirable.
