Quote Originally Posted by Winston Ingram View Post
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It's a great article and points out what i've been saying for years.

One of the biggest causes of the CL Money causing the domestic dominance is the introduction of the 'Champions Route' Qualifying in 2009.

This has made it alot easier for these clubs to get in to the CL Group Stages as they don't play anyone from the big leagues, enabling inferior quality sides to Qualify.

It's pretty much the same sides every year competing in that side of the draw. APOEL, BATE Borisov, Celtic, Dinamo Zagreb, Ludogorets, Malmo, Maribor etc are pretty much guaranteed to be playing each other in the 3rd Qualifying round every season.

As a result of that, it's a lot easier for them to get the cash. They aren't going to play a Dortmund, Napoli, Sevilla, Monaco, Arsenal, Liverpool, Atletico Madrid etc.

Now i'd rather more countries got the opportunity to compete in the group stages but t since the Champions Route was introduced 8 years ago, only 4 of the 40 qualifiers have ever made it to the last 16 as opposed to 22 out of 40 from the non-champions route.

So though the benefit is we get more countries in, the stats prove they aren't good enough to compete. The CL money alone is not enough to build a side to get out of the group.

The negatives far outway it.
Dull domestic leagues as the CL money enables clubs to dominate.
Uncompetitive CL group games
Champions League money isn’t that significant for EPL teams since the new domestic TV contracts were signed. That issue was proved by Leicester City two seasons back.

It certainly distorted many domestic Leagues in the past and continues to do so for many outside of the big five. In Scotland the CL cash has certainly given Celtic a major advantage over the rest. Not that they particularly need it.

But you can’t blame UEFA for the current state of the SPFL Premiership. It’s been like that for a hundred years or more with two clubs dominating only seriously threatened by Hibs in the late 1940s and early 1950s, Hearts/Dundee in the early 1960s and Aberdeen/Dundee United in the 1980s. The only difference now is that it is dominated by one club since the demise of Rangers.

This is the situation that was engineered by the old G14 clubs and threatened UEFA and their own national Leagues by threatening a breakaway if their demands were not met. What has happened became inevitable after that. The one pleasing thing is that several of those clubs (Milan, Inter, Arsenal, etc.) seem to have been left behind and now are crying foul.