Source: Daily_Mail
IAN RIDLEY: Revamped UEFA Cup is in a league of its own for utter lunacy
It was an intriguing, if anticlimatic, Champions League week thatmeans a more exciting next few days as Chelsea and Barcelona, Arsenaland Manchester United square up again.
Amid it all, though, does anyone recall the UEFA Cup semi-final scores? Thought not.
For the record, Shakhtar Donetsk are favourites to be the Ukrainian representatives in the final after drawing 1-1 in Kiev against Dynamo,while Hamburg look like winning the north German derby after beating Werder Bremen 1-0 away.
Wake up at the back.
In an attempt to stimulate what has become a bloated sideshow, UEFA are reorganising the subsidiary competition. Next season, it will become the Europa League and have a new logo. Oooh, swish.
No go: Harry Redknapp is not a Europa League fan
It threatens to make the tournament even more like La Grande Bouffe but without the same explosive outcome.
For the past few weeks, Harry Redknapp at Tottenham and Roy Hodgsonat Fulham have been fielding questions about reaching Europe nextseason.
They have been making all the right noises - honour and a privilege,etc - but their noses point in the air as if having detected a nastysmell to betray their real feelings.
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It is easy to see why they would prefer not to be involved nextseason if they could afford to be honest, rather than having to keeprevenue-chasing club officials and thrill-seeking fans happy.
The competition - involving 160 teams - will begin on July 2, thoughthe first Premier League club do not come in until the third qualifyinground, on July 30.
A play-off round, on August 20, will bring in two other English clubs.
All are two-legged affairs. After that, 12 groups of four come together, meaning six games, home and away, which at least makes more sense than the five-team groups previously.
To follow, there are five knock-out rounds, with home and away ties until the final, to be played in Hamburg.
Thus an English club could play 19 games in the competition next term - which is half a domestic season.
On the principle that you can put lipstick on a pig but it remains a pig, the name change to Europa League is hardly going to give the same glamorous uplift of the Champions League.
Not memorable: Konstantin Zyrianov (centre) scores for Zenit St Peterburg against Rangers in last season's UEFA Cup final
Instead, spirit and stamina-sapping journeys to Boratland are likely merely to interfere with league aspirations.
And for what? English clubs can make more from a league finish a few places higher. Neither is there much kudos to it.
We can just about remember last season's final, since it was in Manchester, where Rangers fans ran rampage and Andrey Arshavin looked sharp for Zenit St Petersburg, but does anything else spring to mind?
Will anyone be searching the channels for action from Donetsk or Hamburg after the epics at the Emirates and Stamford Bridge this week?
And that is not just insularity, since Europe, Asia indeed, now finds English clubs and their style very watchable, containing as they do representatives from all over the world anyway.
You would understand this if UEFA's aim was solely sporting or to encourage the smaller nations, even the lesser clubs in the bigger nations, so the gap with Champions League clubs might be narrowed.
Instead, it feels more like them enriching themselves and expanding their empire to build some new wing of their headquarters in Switzerland and take on more minions.
UEFA should actually be condensing the competition, regionalising it in its early stages to improve attendances, then making sure the knock-out matches are events that people want to watch and TV will pay for. That way, there would be fewer costs and greater rewards.
The Champions League still has its tedious passages in winter but has been improved by cutting out the second set of groups. UEFA should have learned from their own lesson: when it comes to European football, less is more.
Sir Alex Ferguson is unhappy with some of the smaller dressing rooms around the Premier League, given all the personnel and paraphernalia that accompanies a top side these days.
You can only imagine how difficult it must be these days to swing a teacup, dodge a pizza or get in a good back-lift for hurling a boot.
The spring sacking season is upon us. There is realisation that results have not been good enough, success not achieved.
Exit Jim Magilton; enter Roy Keane, for example. But just what is success for a manager?
These days, there are all sorts of performance charts and statistics to illustrate a player's ability, while managers are simply judged by results, at least from outside the game.
But managers should also be ranked according to points per pound of wage budget, sums made and lost in the transfer market, chairman satisfaction with the job they have done, even gate figures.
Can some bright spark out there not come up with an index that shows us whether a manager is actually any good?
Could someone in League Two, pound-for-pound, be doing a better job than, say, Arsene Wenger?
