zulu9812

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I'd like to edit the Champions League so that only one team from each country enters. Does anyone know how this can be done?
 
Well seeing as there's only 22 EU states, that doesn't even make up the group stages, let alone the qualification stages.

Here's some questions for you to think about, before editing anything:-

What would you do with the Europa League?
How would this effect the game economically? So many clubs would be missing out on CL revenue, and there would be less to aim for. All a club would do is get to the CL and then dominate their domestic league.
Why would players then want to come to Europe to play football, rather than playing in other regions such as South America.
 
Well, there are 54 EU countries and they wouldn't all enter at the same stage, so I think that it's workable.

My general feeling about the Champions League in real life is that, in becoming a de facto super league, it's lost some of its international flavour. 17 of the last 20 winners have come from 4 countries and that's taken the the thrill out of facing top teams from other countries, such as Dynamo Kiev, Red Star Belgrade and so on. Champions League money has become concentrated in these four countries to the point that other countries become virtually excluded. Okay, Celtic had a blip last year but that definitely went against the grain.

With regards to the risk of one club getting into the CL and then dominating domestically, that rather implies that the reverse is true with the current model - and I don't think that it is. Since the inception of the CL, English football has become notable for being dominated by the handful of CL-qualifying clubs, and old greats like Leeds, Nottingham, Newcastle, etc. have fallen by the wayside. I think this is because if there was one team qualifying for the CL, that team has one shot at establishing European glory. If they don't make it - or if their European exertions takes its toll on domestic results - they fail to qualify the following season and another team gets their shot. But with 4 qualifying slots in English football, it's created a merry-go-round where a club can be almost there, can make a slip, but still qualify for the CL, still get that money and hold off a team that might otherwise do better (Arsenal vs Spurs being a good example). I guess I'm tired of every groups stage having Man U, Man City, Chelsea, Arsenal, Real, Barca, Bayern, Dortmund, another German club, Porto and/or Benfica. It's boring.

A one-club-per-nation tournament makes it feel more like a club world cup, or in this case a club European championship. There's a novelty to matches featuring teams you don't get to see very often, as opposed to Arsenal v Juventus yet again. I think that quality might suffer initially, but it will lead to talent being more spread out. Top players will want to play for title-winning teams in any given country, rather than moving to mid-table strugglers in one of the four big leagues. That's as it should be. To give an example, Dejan Lovren should be playing for a team like Barcelona or Juventus - not wasting his time at Southamption, joining because they're able to compete with high wages.

Finally, re: what to do with the Europa League. After going on about how much I like dislike a super league, I think that the Europa League can function as a very effective one. There'd be less teams going into Europe overall - England wouldn't get 1 CL spot and 6 EL spots - but otherwise it can work more or less as it is. I just don't see the point in the CL and the EL both being super leagues - especially when the latter tends to be dominated by teams knocked out of the former. The obvious criticism of this model is that it could result in whoever wins the EL being a better a team than whoever wins the CL - but this could be advantageous, as it would actually give some meaning to the European Super Cup.
 
If your plan for the Europa league is to have an equal number of teams for each country entering (as it is for the champions league) then it is doable. The problem with the editor is as soon as you edit continental competitions, coefficients become irrelevant. However many qualified teams you specify for each country, that's what they'll have for the entire save game.

On second thoughts, you'd face the issue of having to have qualifying rounds for the sake of evening the teams out. Either you seed the teams (which will never change as coefficients are out of the window), or go for random selection for the qualifiers.

I'm trying out the seeding idea now, you could rank the top 11 nations together*, and the lower 42 separately, play the lower group off for 21 winners. This gives 32 teams for a group stage and so on.

* Spain, England, Germany, Italy, Portugal, France, Russia, Netherlands, Ukraine, Belgium, Turkey (UEFA.com 28/09/13)

Edit: 1st test went well, 2 seasons done and some surprise packages making it through to the knockout phase, Levski Sofia from Bulgaria got to the semi final in season 2 (destroyed by the eventual winners Chelsea), in fact, the second season was much more unpredictable than the first (Vaduz, Molde, Levski, Dinamo Bucharest all battling hard).
 
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