Quote Originally Posted by Psychotic View Post
Quote Originally Posted by me
I understand the contradiction in my statement. But I'm not sure that still makes the current scheme of things totally justifiable. A better solution to this problem would be to allocate every country one spot. Again if you will allow me to refer back to the World Cup, I for one would find it rather unjust to allow any top seeded country (eg Italy) the chance to enter two or three squads (say Italy A, Italy B, and Italy C) to qualify for the finals which is again by the very same logic.
I'd argue that this is not the very same logic. The very same logic would be Man United A, Man United B and Man United C entering into the CL.
Hmm.
In my previous post [post 917] I was partially referring to the amount of professionals footballers owned by the continent being proportional to the amount of spaces they had been allocated. In my last post [919] I used Italy (a country with a long historical affair with football) as an example. If the manager were to require a checklist of all players eligible to play for the country he would have a long list of names that would probably outnumber the population of Brunei shall we say. The current Man Utd squad fails to exceed the number of players of a lesser club in such a way thus branding it ridiculous to allow them an A a B and a C team

Arsenal and Liverpool were certainly the likes of champions, if you watch the way they played. Whether or not you consider them to be deserving of entry into the competition, you can't fault them on the quality of their football/tactics. What's more, both teams were unfancied. Nobody thought they'd get to the final, or make it past the last 16 for that matter.
Are you really serious about this?
Arsenal and Liverpool unfancied? I certainly would expect them at the very least to make the last 16

To continue with the World Cup theme, it's like Turkey or Croatia finishing third. But, if you were to apply the same rules that you want to apply to the CL, the likes of Croatia and Turkey would certainly not have qualified for the World Cup. It's the upper-middle teams that miss out at the expense of the poorer teams, and which ones are more likely to create a shock?
Obviously the world cup is on a broader scale. There are probably five times the amount of countries in the world than there are in Europe so clearly 4 groups of 4 teams would not be appropriate or fair to the teams you mentioned I grant you that.
So, how about extending the amount of groups for the World Cup finals to eight (something already acheived under FIFA's current system) simply because there are more countries in the world than there are in Europe or better yet not change anything about the World Cup (I have no problem with it)