The Pot Boiler-Pot Four

Rebus looks at the champions League, and with further changes to the tournament on the horizon, shows why hardly anyone will benefit. 

Overview
The CL is a very competitive as well as a financially rewarding competition. In recent times, around 78 teams participate initially in the competition. By the group stage only 32 are left. Furious scribbling on the back of a fag packet, shows that 46 or 59% of participants fail to make it to the lucrative group stages. Some of them drop into the lesser Europa cup but others are out of Europe completely with all of the disappointment and financial penalties that that brings. For example, the most recent financial accounts for Celtic show that the club made a pre-tax profit of around 0.5 million but only through player sales, not through revenue generated from competition in the Europa cup.
The financial benefits of participation in the group stages of the CL are well known but are there any football benefits from participation? Do clubs that participate become better football teams through participation? As we all know, Celtic made the group stages of the CL this season and were seeded as a Pot 4 team. Our first game resulted in a substantial defeat to one of the best teams in the tournament. Is that a typical outcome for Pot 4 teams in the CL? Are these teams just cannon fodder for the best teams from the best leagues: Spain, Germany, England and Italy? Let us look at some evidence on this from the last four completed CL tournaments. While we are at it, let’s explore if there is a better way to structure the CL that would ensure competitive games for Pot 4 teams, and, why not, let’s look for a solution to the Syrian crisis!
The following analysis is based on data obtained from the last four completed CL tournaments: 2012-13; 2013-14; 2014-15 and 2015-16. These data are freely available from Wikipedia and UEFA web sites.
Analysis of Fourth Placed Teams:
Once teams qualify for the group stage of the CL they are categorised into four seeding pots……….creatively called Pot 1, 2, 3 and 4. Pot 4 contains the teams with the lowest UEFA coefficients and are, thus, regarded as the weakest teams in the tournament. Can we assume that if a team is drawn from Pot 4 that it will automatically finish last in its group? If the answer was “yes” then it would be a pretty dull tournament! However, the evidence shows that the seeding system seems to be a reasonable, if not 100% accurate, predictor of where a team will finish in a group. If the team comes out of Pot 4 there is a pretty good chance that it will finish fourth in its group. The following table shows how Pot 4 teams finished in their group for the four seasons examined in this article.


Season
Group Position 12-13  13-14  14-15  15-16  Total
1                                  2          0         1         1         4
2                                  1           0        0         1         2
3                                  2           1        2         0         4
4                                 3            7        5         6       21

To illustrate the table, take the top left hand cell… this shows that, in Season 2012-13, two Pot 4 teams finished FIRST in their group.
So, with the exception of Season 2012-13, the most likely outcome for Pot 4 teams is to finish last in their group. Over the four seasons, 21 of the 32 fourth placed teams in their group came from Pot 4…..i.e two thirds. Whilst it is not likely that a Pot 4 team will survive the Group stage of the CL, there have been some surprises emerging from Pot 4. Most of these occurred in 2012-13 which appears to be atypical of what usually happens. Three Pot 4 teams excelled: Malaga and Borussia Dortmund finished first in their groups, whilst a Scottish powerhouse called Celtic finished second in their group. Similarly, Monaco finished first in their group in 2014-15. However, these kinds of results are very much the exception to the rule.
Not all of the Pot 4 teams are cannon fodder for the other teams in their group. One way of assessing this is to examine the point gap between 4th placed teams and their more successful rivals who finished in 3rd place, thus qualifying for the Europa cup. The following table shows the points spread between 4th and 3rd placed teams in the groups.
Points Gap between 3rd, 4th Placed Teams in Groups
Season
Points Gap 12-13 13-14 14-15 15-16    Total(%)
0-2                       2        3          3         5      13(41)
3-4                       2        0          3          1      6(19)
5-6                       1        2          2          1      6(19)
7+                        3        3          0          1       7 (21)

To illustrate the table take the top left cell….it shows that for Season 2012-13, two fourth placed teams were within 2 points of the third placed team in their group….a glorious if irritating failure!
Teams who had a 7+ point gap with their nearest rivals were the cannon fodder of the group stage. Overall, about one fifth of the 4th placed teams fell into this category (7 teams out of 32). In addition, another 19% of the fourth placed teams were 5-6 points behind the third placed team. Although these teams did not remain in Europe, they made a fist of it in their groups. That is a total of about 40% of 4th placed teams who were well short of hitting third place. Should these teams be in this level of competition at all? We shall return to this issue later. The interesting category is those teams that just failed to make it to 3rd place (13 of the 32 were in this category). So 41% of the 4th placed teams were within 2 points of third place. This suggests that many of these teams are at the Europa cup level of competition. So what does the evidence suggest? There appear to be two categories of teams that finish in fourth place. The first consists of teams that are sadly adrift from the others in the group together with another bunch who are not likely to finish third but can win the odd game. In total these teams account for about 40% of those that finish last in their group. There is a second category of about equal size that comprises those teams that were within two points of finishing third. This is a sizeable group that performed reasonably well but found themselves out of European competition.

Points Distribution for Fourth Placed Teams
Season
# Points                      12-13    13-14    14-15    15-16                       Total(%)
0-2                                          2               3            2            1                       8      (25.0)
2-3                                        5            3            3            2                        13 (40.6)
4-5                                        1            2            3             5                          11 (34.4)
6+                                         0             0           0           0                       0 (0)

To illustrate the table, take the top left hand cell….this means that two 4th placed teams obtained either 0 or 1 point in their group.
What does the table tell us? Firstly, the most likely outcome for 4th placed teams was to accumulate 2 or 3 points….well short of what it takes to progress in the CL and also short of qualification for the Europa. So, based on points gained, about two thirds of the 4th placed teams had no hope of continuing in European competition. They did, of course, make a sizable contribution to their bank accounts through qualification. But is that enough? What about being competitive on the field? Should that not be an aspiration? The data suggests that two thirds of 4th placed teams are not competitive at this level. Notice that no 4th placed team managed two victories out of the six games that they played. Some unfortunates managed zero points in their campaign…..Maccabi Tel-Aviv, in 2015-16; Marseile in 2013-14. Several more only managed a single point:
Dinamo Zagreb, Nordsjaelland (2012-13)
Real Sociedad, Anderleght (2013-14)
Galatasaray, APOEL (2014-15)

If you look along the “0-2” row of the above table you will see that there is a suggestion that more and more fourth placed teams are within touching distance of third place. Being within 0 to 2 points of remaining in Europe takes us into the land of serendipity where a referee’s error, or a single mistake within a game costs you your place in Europe. Some of these teams have a reasonable pedigree and would provide competitive opposition for many teams. They have a place within the competitive structure of European football….at points in time, however they cannot contend with those at the very top of European soccer.

Structure of the CL Tournament

I neither have the space here nor the expertise to re-design the current CL structure but I shall outline some guiding principles. Firstly, the current structure does not suit 59% of the participants because, every year, they are eliminated. Only 32 teams benefit substantially from the current CL.
Many of the teams that make it to the group stage and are seeded Pot 4 do not play competitive games and are cannon fodder for the rest of their group. More significantly, somewhere in the range of 40-60% of teams that finished fourth in their group were within 4 points of their nearest rival that finished third. More specifically, forty percent of these teams were within 2 points of third place. These teams leave European competition after their near miss. Losing out is a reality of competitive sport but, in this case, it is also a consequence of the way that the CL is currently structured. To me, at least, it seems unfair that teams are asked to play outside their competence in order to compete in Europe. Further, it seems unfair that there is no mechanism within the premier competition in Europe for teams to learn and progress, i.e. to gain some form of “promotion.”
Some of these issues and others could be addressed by re-structuring the CL into two tiers. Tier A would consist, largely, as before with groups of 3 or 4 teams. A new tier, Tier B could be constructed, similar in structure to Tier A, but consisting of the best teams not included in the premier tier. Many of these teams would be drawn from those that place third or fourth in the current system. These teams would be determined by their UEFA coefficient. For those teams with the highest UEFA coefficient, entry to Tier B would be automatic, for others it would require qualification. Thus for many teams there would be no pre-season games needed to qualify for Europe. There needs to be a link between the two tiers or more specifically a form of “promotion”. This could be achieved by having the winners of the groups in Tier B promoted to the groups in Tier A the following season. Similarly, there needs to be a mechanism to allow teams to get into the Tier B competition.

The advantages of a system like the above are that teams in Tier B will play more games against teams at a similar competitive level. Similarly, there will be an incentive to perform in Tier B in order to reach Tier A the following season. Those teams that would qualify from Tier B will not have the nightmare scenario of having to play pre-season games to attempt qualification for the CL.
None of the above would interfere with the Europa cup which would continue as usual, but some of the teams that normally play in this tournament would be drawn into the Tier B competition. This would free up room for other teams to play in the Europa. Overall, the proposal would expand the number of teams playing European football….something that is bound to happen at some point in the future.
I realise that there are a lot of missing details from this system. In fact, it is not a system at all, merely an illustration of how deficiencies in the current structure could be addressed. I feel it is important that more teams become involved in European competition, and, as in a league structure, that there is scope for teams to progress to the next level. The current CL structure favours a minority of leagues and clubs….the richest……whilst the majority of leagues and clubs merely get an occasional seat at the table.
This is the correct time to consider change such as the above since the new president of UEFA is from a league that is not a member of the rich man’s club.
Your thoughts on this or alternatives are welcomed….I think!

Rebus