Only the Meltdown of Manchester City has saved tonight's Champions League Bonanza from becoming the mother of all the damp Squibs.
When UEFA revealed their big plan for one Monster 36-Club League to replace the group phase, this was supposed to be a red-letter night.
With 18 games that start at the same time, it was a party of football, enough to melt the remote controls of supporters with glasses with glasses over the continent.
And yet only the collision of the city with Club Brugge has real danger to both clubs.
The fallen Premier League champions from Etihad Pep Guardiola have to win, while their Belgian opponents need a draw to prevent elimination.
If this had been a normal campaign for the city, there would be little English interest in tonight's procedure.
Instead, the men of Pep lost at Sporting Lisbon, Juventus and Paris Saint-Germain while wasting a lead of three goals to Feyenoord at home, so it is 'Game on' in Manchester.
This new format-the most hyped 'Swiss model' because Ursula Andress got into the sea in Dr. No-der assumes to make it almost impossible for the richest clubs in Europe to continue to the knockout phase.
Nevertheless, City has searched to make a serious hash everything and ended up in the elimination zone together with the usual suspects from Eastern Europe and the Alps.
And the prospect of elimination for the European Champions 2023 is the only real intrigues in the gigantic list.
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We have had 126 competitions and it is essentially an ocean of largely meaningless filling material content for the TV schedules.
While adding congestion of the fixture, the fatigue of viewer and player burnout at many elite clubs that will be confronted with a Month-Lang Fifa Club World Cup next summer.
Fa Cup Third and Fourth Round Repeats were deleted to house this Wangertrankt, from which Non-League Tamworth missed a rematch with Tottenham.
And the two legs of the Semi Final of the Carabao Cup are played four weeks apart-What means that most neutrals are forgotten the results of the first legs before the return games are played.
This Champions League format corrupts the whole idea of competition football – the idea that every team plays each other in the table.
And although sowing is meant to balance the 'weight' of clubs' liabilities, real sports integrity has been lost.
Fans have difficulty understanding the complexity of the size-the top eight go directly to the last 16 in March, while the next 16 are confronted with a two-legged play-off, with only the bottom 12 poured out.
Three more of tonight's matches – Aston Villas Battle of Britain with Celtic, Lille v Feyenoord and champion The collision of Real Madrid in the French club Brest – all represent a kind of shootout for a place in the top eight.
But even that does not bring the danger of elimination from the event, those who do not receive automatic qualification, are only confronted with an extra round.
The most likely result of the night would be a draw between Stuttgart and PSG, both of which would continue to the play-offs.
So what could real excitement bring back to the European Elite Club competition?
How about a straight knockout competition such as the original European Cup?
As if someone at the upper table would vote for danger if they could grow fat in the yield of increasingly larger TV filler.
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