The Champions League Reimagined 🏆

Good Morning, football fans!Welcome, new subscribers! Hello, old friends!This morning we look at:

• Mourinho’s loss to Tuchel last night.

• The Fifa World Club Cup (yep, it’s still happening).

• The potential for a revamped Champions League format.

CLUBHOUSE CHAT 🎙️We hosted our first Clubhouse event last night discussing the rise of Sports Newsletters and the future outlook for newsletters as a medium. We also had the opportunity to listen to Jurgen Klinsman discuss the Bundesliga’s influence on American football. Jurgen Klinsmann only has 96 followers on Clubhouse showing you that everyone has to start somewhere. We’ll be hosting regular conversations about football on there and you can follow us on Clubhouse SPURS 0 -1 CHELSEA ⚽

With Harry Kane’s injury likely to not be as bad as first thought, and a League Cup final on the horizon, there’s enough to play for for Mourinho to spin the season as a success but that does little to a fan base that was used to watching a completely different style under Pochettino. Click on the scoreline to view highlightsFIFA WORLD CLUB CUP 🏆

Whilst COVID has put a stop to most things, other than between March and June last year, there’s nothing that could stop FIFA from going ahead with unnecessary football games.This brings us neatly to this week’s Fifa World Club Cup (FWCC).It had originally been intended to be extended to a 24-team-tournament in June 2021.The plan was to have the tournament spanning 18 days, replacing the Confederations Cup, and have it every four years rather than annually. Similar to the current format, it would be made up of the winners of the major international club cups but this would feature the winners and runners-up of the previous four years leading up to the tournament. The idea was circulated around the same time Fifa was thinking of other galaxy brain ideas like having a 48 country world Cup, basically an FA Cup tournament but for the world.However, COVID has provided FIFA with some humility and they’ve decided to delay the plans for the larger FWCC revamp. That hasn’t stopped them from going ahead with the old format.The preliminary stages saw Al Ahly from Egypt beat Al-Duhail from Qatar (the host nation).André-Pierre Gignac’s Mexican Tigres beat Ulsan from South Korea. This one’s worth watching for the disallowed goal alone.

The full format is odd with the semi-finals (below) now bringing in the winners of the Champions League and the Copa Libertadores.

The final will be played on February 11th. Click on the scoreline to view highlightsA NEW CHAMPIONS LEAGUE FORMAT? 🤔

The threat of a European Super League has UEFA rethinking the current Champions League format and potentially replacing it with… one large European league.Teams play 10-games in a “Swiss-system”.The increase in games during the Autumn period could mean we lose the League Cup in England, something which Uefa’s president, Aleksander Čeferin, has said it would be“better for everyone”.LolThis is all on the back of several discussions between European clubs about forming a European Super League. Whilst clubs are leading the proposal, their respective supporter’s groups, with the Football Supporters Europe (FSE), which includes 139 fans groups, have signed a statement describing the European Super League as “unpopular, illegitimate and dangerous scheme”As always, thanks again for reading.If you have any feedback, please reply to this email.You can subscribe and forward onto any friends that you think might like to read it. For those that have had this forwarded, you can subscribe here.DL