Perhaps an element of nostalgia emerging for Champions League draws of the past is a sign that human beings can never really be happy and will always find something to complain about.
Previously, we would moan about how long these things would last, about what an absurd and undignified sight it was to see Luis Figo or Clarence Seedorf earnestly fishing around in a bowl for some oversized Kinder Surprise pods, about how needlessly complicated it could be with various pots determining who was allowed to play each other.
But now, with the bloodless spectacle of a button being pushed to prompt a computer to decide the league-phase fixtures, then variables for the knockouts limited to deciding which of two pre-determined teams the winners of the play-offs would face, the old way actually seems quite diverting.
There is a vaguely serious — or perhaps more substantive — point here. The function of all that overcomplicating was to ensure a little variety in the latter stages of the tournament: one of the principles of the knockout rounds in the old format was that you couldn’t face a team that you had already played in the group stage. That sometimes happened deeper into the tournament, but the draw was arranged so you didn’t get these repeats straight away.
Now, though, repeated games seem to be a desired feature of the new structure, rather than a slightly irritating occasional occurrence.
Of the eight round-of-16 ties, three of them have already occurred in the league phase: Manchester City vs Real Madrid, Galatasaray vs Liverpool, and Newcastle United vs Barcelona.
This is on top of two ties from the play-offs — Olympiacos vs Bayer Leverkusen and Real Madrid vs Benfica — being repeats. And there might be more on the way: Arsenal have already faced Atletico Madrid but could play them again in the semi-finals, Manchester City might face Galatasaray again, so, too, PSG vs Atalanta.
A similar thing happened last season: Club Brugge vs Aston Villa, Benfica vs Barcelona, Juventus vs PSV, Monaco vs Benfica, PSG vs Arsenal, and Barcelona vs Borussia Dortmund all took place in the league phase, then they had to play each other again later in the tournament.
It’s also an issue in the Europa League, which follows the same format: to pick just one example, this season, Nottingham Forest faced Midtjylland in the league, but will play them again in the round of 16, and if they win that, it could be Porto in the quarter-finals… who they’ve also already played.
And all of this is absolutely a product of the format. While repeats did happen before, they were much less frequent. Indeed, across the 32 seasons between the Champions League’s inception in 1992-93 (relevant not just because of the rebrand from the European Cup, but also because that’s when groups came in, rather than it being a straight knockout where repeats are impossible), and the new ‘Swiss’ system being introduced in 2024, there were only 11 repeat fixtures from the group stages in the knockouts. Two of those were in 2001-02 and 1999-2000, when there were two group stages, which made repeats more likely. Another two were the finals of 1995 and 1999.
In short, there have been as many repeat fixtures in a season and a half of the new format as there were in 32 before that.
The clear counter to this is to point out that variety is naturally created by the league: instead of facing three different opponents twice in the first round, you’re facing eight different opponents once.
But the wider variety in the group stage, slightly counterintuitively, creates less variety at the business end of the tournament.
There’s a difference between playing a team twice in one round and playing them again in a later one. It’s different from a fan’s perspective: part of the joy of European football is a good away trip, and the novelty is removed if you’re going to the same place again a few months later. The nature of a cup competition is that once you’ve played one team, you don’t really expect to play them again later on. It also makes things less variable in the longer term: this format means we’re going to see more of the same fixtures in the knockout rounds across different seasons.
The question then becomes: does any of this matter? Is it a problem that the same fixtures are coming around over and over? Does this sort of thing not allow narratives to develop, rivalries to grow, entertaining animus to fester?
Maybe. But variety is part of the point of European football. Its appeal lies in seeing teams that don’t usually play each other play each other. Of course, you’re going to get the same teams facing off multiple times over different seasons, but that’s a different issue relating to the stratification of the game as a whole, where the richest clubs are in the richest competitions all the time.
This, of course, was predictable. Indeed, it might even have been half the point of the new format, to go for a system in which teams would face the same opponents more often, because that increased the chances of the same big, money-spinning fixtures happening again. That was the point of the now doomed Super League, in a more naked and cynical way, and this format was partly introduced to quench the big boys’ thirst for more, more, more games and revenue.
But these repeat fixtures are making for an unsatisfying tournament all around. Plus, of course, that old draw. Bring back Luis and Clarence and the complications.