Premier for Premier League

In 1992 when the geniuses at UEFA decided to re-invent the wheel called the Champions League, I cannot believe this is what they intended. Three of the final four teams in this year's Champions League are English clubs (Liverpool, Manchester United & Chelsea) with only one Italian team (AC Milan) breaking up the party.

Somewhere I must have missed something. Do the Major Leagues (baseball) have another champion besides Saint Louis? Does Indianapolis (Colts) have company sitting in their throne of the NFL right now? OK, the NHL does have multiple winners with the (Detroit) Redwings owning the President's Trophy while Carolina (Hurricanes) own the Stanley Cup. But 3, count them, THREE champions?

When I first moved to Belgium in 1990, the system made some sense. Each country has two competitions. A regular league schedule and a cup tournament. The winner of the League was given the chance to vie for a spot in the Champion's League. 1 per country with the exception of the champion from the year before who was allowed the chance to defend their crown. The winner of the Cup got to play in the "Cup-winners' Cup". Once again with 1 possible team per country. Last you had the UEFA Cup. This was a "Best of the Rest" selection where it could be possible to find 4 German, English or Spanish teams with only a couple of Danish, Czech or Austrian teams, but this was normal.

Today, the "Cup-winners' Cup" no longer exists and it is only the two competitions. However, the English, Italians, Spanish and other countries can have multiple teams in the Champion's League (Even Belgium occasionally qualifies two). However, this system makes it hopeless for smaller countries to ever dream of winning the big prize anymore. Granted, there have been few winners from smaller countries in the past with the obvious exception being Ajax Amsterdam of The Netherlands having won 4 times. PSV Eindhoven is another Dutch winner (1988) as is Feyenoord (1970) with Celtic of Scotland (1967), Steaua of Romania (1986) and Crvena Zvezda of the former Yugoslavia (1991) being the only other exceptions of note unless you consider Portugal (Porto '87 & 2004 and Benfica 1961 & '62) a small nation.

In the 51 years of Champion's League play Real Madrid has won 9 times including the first 5 with Barcelona claiming 2 more for the Spanish.

Italian Clubs have won 10 titles including six to the city of Milan.

The English have 10 titles with Liverpool owning 5 and Manchester United and Nottingham Forest each taking 2 and 1 to Aston Villa.

Ironically, the Germans have only as many titles as the Dutch (6) with Bayern Munich having 4 titles and Hamburg ('83) and Dortmund ('97) each getting one.

The biggest loser among "big" nations would be the French with only Marseille (1993) to look up to.

However, since the change in 1992, the chance of a Celtic, Steaua or Crvena Zvezda winning Champion's League went down drastically and all winners since that time come from rich football heritage and deep pockets. Only Dortmund in 1997 could be considered a true outsider from this exclusive club (they currently occupy the 4th place from last in the Bundesliga table).

It is only this writers opinion, but the desire to generate more top matches between top clubs in earlier rounds might have made sense from a revenue point of view, but it cheapened the sport and the meaning of the tourney. As far as I'm concerned, this 3/4 English Final Four is exactly what UEFA deserved.