Champions League returns with continent’s best out to stop English elite

This picture shows the UEFA Champions League trophy prior to the draw for the 2021/2022 European football tournament in Istanbul on August 26, 2021. (Photo by OZAN KOSE / AFP)

The Champions League knockout stage kicks off this week with a blockbuster showdown between Paris Saint-Germain and Bayern Munich topping the bill, doubts surrounding all of the English contenders and talk of a breakaway Super League resurfacing again.

Three and a half months have passed since the group stage ended, an unprecedented pause in the Champions League season caused by the break for the World Cup.

Since the tournament in Qatar there has been another transfer window of record spending by Premier League clubs, whose £815 million ($1 billion) outlay on new players in January represented 79 percent of the total across Europe’s biggest five leagues according to analysts Deloitte.

That provides the backdrop to the return of the Champions League, with the financial gulf between the Premier League and the continent greater than ever and the promoters of the breakaway Super League project revealing their new vision of how the competition might look.

Bernd Reichart, the chief executive of the A22 group promoting the Super League, this week told German newspaper Die Welt that “the foundations of European football are in danger of collapsing. It’s time for a change.”

He presented the idea of a Super League with 80 teams, all places based on sporting merit and no permanent members.

– Pressure on Man City, Chelsea – But there is not yet anything concrete in place, and for now clubs from outside England will be aiming to stop the cash-rich Premier League teams from dominating the latter stages of the Champions League.

There are nevertheless doubts surrounding