English Football Thread! 2006-2007 Season

[Doc Sark]

And so they should not have since they didn't win the Russian league hence should not be entering a competition specified for champions. But by allowing such teams to enter the tournament you are restricting the amount of places available to other teams who did win domestic titles thus lessening their chances

So you'd see the Champions of Malta play rather than the Russian runners-up, a move which would reduce the quality of opposition in the competition. Lets not forget it was CSKA Moscow's great performance winning the 2005 UEFA cup which has helped the Russian league gain deserved recognition and a couple of extra coefficient points to bolster their collective Champions League ambitions.

The number of countries (with national football teams) from Europe certainly outnumbers those from Oceania which makes reasonable sense as to why they are allocated the amount of spaces they have. Barring Australia much of these teams from Oceania would probably get thumped by most European squads especially given the fact that most of them aren't professional footballers anyway.

That logic is so flawed. The amount of professional teams in England is more than the amount of professional teams in Albania, and the quality of English sides is far better. By your logic the fact that England has more teams than Albania, it makes "reasonable sense" that England have more teams in the Champions League than Albania

The Champions League however, is a much different story. Don't forget teams from eastern Europe are fully capable of defying the 'stereotypical' status automatically given to them by upsetting the odds and handing able teams defeats they would not normally have seen coming.

Yes, but they don't upset the odds regularly enough to justify say Slavia Prague's entry in the competition over say, Liverpool's. You want the best teams on the continent competing for arguably the biggest accolade in club football, not the fricking Faroe Islands champions, just because they won their league but would probably get turned over by a Leyton Orient under-18's squad. People get far too caught up in the name of the competition, which in the context of the spectacle, is wholly irrelevant. The Champions League is designed to bring the best clubs in Europe together and see who wins. These smaller footballing nations have their chance in the Intertoto and UEFA Cups, and only the Russians and the Turks have really made any impact from Eastern Europe in recent years, by winning the competitions, and that is reflected in the fact they have extra qualifying places in the Champions League now, compared to when it started.