With the group stages of the Champions League now finished, it has been interesting to see the media’s and fan’s feelings towards the perceived dilution of the quality of sides participating in the competition with many fans and journalists pointing to the likes of Qarabag, Maribor and APOEL Nicosia as ‘not good enough’ to even be in the competition.
This is an interesting argument, worthy of further investigation. First, let’s take a look at results from this year’s group games for the three aforementioned clubs. All three propped up the bottom of their respective groups with Maribor and APOEL taking just two points from two draws. Maribor did slightly better with three points, though neither of the three clubs managed a win, scoring an average of 2.3 goals between them.
At the face of it, this seems to vindicate the argument that these teams are not good enough to be in the competition. However, context is important and when we look at their opponents, things are perhaps not as clear cut as they seem. Qarabag were in a group with Roma, Chelsea and Atletico Madrid, two of which have appeared in Champions League finals in recent years and the other, Roma, a sleeping giant of a team as evidenced by their topping the group despite being the third seed. The fact that Atletico, runners up in 2016, did not even qualify to the knockout stages further shows how competitive the group has been. Still, the minnows managed two draws, both with Atleti.
In APOEL’s group, the so called group of death, were Real Madrid, Tottenham and Borussia Dortmund, the winners of last year’s competition, another runner up team from 2013 in Borussia and a young team that finished second in the Premier League the year before, beat Real Madrid away at the Bernabeu and finished top of the group. In fact, APOEL finished with an identical record to Borussia who did not manage to beat them either home or away and only managed not to qualify for the Europa by there (significantly it has to be said) worse goal difference.
Maribor were in a comparatively easier group along with Sevilla, Spartak Moscow and Liverpool and finished with three draws, two at home and one away at Moscow. By all accounts, the minnows did not do as badly as expected, with APOEL in particular having two more points, two in all, than most people expected them to have when the groups were drawn.
What is not so easy to see, however, is the impact competing in the Champions League has on these clubs in the long term from the considerable financial benefits to just being in the competition. This is more easy to see in the case of APOEL, who had appeared in this year’s competition for the fourth time since becoming only the second Cypriot team to ever appear in the competition in 2009.
As so happens, and yes this makes this author somewhat biased, they are the author’s home town club who has seen first hand what effect that Champions League money can have. In a newly built-up area of the capital of the small island builders can be seen putting the finishing touches on a brand new, state of the art, training complex that has been in construction for a couple years.
It consists of several buildings and houses multiple gyms, indoor full size and futsal pitches, outdoor training areas, medical facilities and academies for children and young players of all ages among other things. It belongs of course to APOEL, the only team in the country with the financial clout to pull off a project of this magnitude but its effects go far beyond just that one club.
Emphasis on academies, in particular, has had a profound effect on the number of young players coming through the first team, getting opportunities at the absolute highest level in the Champions League and either sticking around or getting transferred to another club in Europe by nature of their performances in the Champions League. Just this summer, a young 23 year old player, Peter Sotiriou, was sold to FC Copenhagen who, ironically, ended up not qualifying for the Champions League while his former club did.
Sotiriou ended last season as APOEL’s top scorer in the domestic league with twenty-three goals and in the Europa league with five, while his record for Copenhagen this season is seven goals in fourteen appearances. His transfer would no doubt had not happened were it not for APOEL’s participation in the Champions League, nor, can it be argued, would he have improved as much as to draw admiring glances from bigger teams in Europe had he not competed at that level in the first place.
While there have been other Cypriot players to be produced in the past that have been good enough to play abroad, the opportunities to be seen and to compete with players at a much higher level have been few and far between. The reality is, the level of domestic competition in the Cypriot first division is quite poor, somewhere between Championship and League One in England with only APOEL perhaps being capable of competing for promotion from the Championship. In order for players to improve, they need to face quality competition. For Cypriot teams, this only really happens when playing in continental competitions.
And APOEL’s record in the Champions League is not bad, by any means. They surprised everyone by getting to the quarter finals, that would be the best sixteen teams in Europe according to the organisers of the competition, the media and fans, back in the 2011-2012 season, beating Olympique Lyon on penalties to reach the quarter finals were they lost to Real Madrid in what was only their second ever appearance in the competition.
Since then, they have qualified another two times and have continued to invest into their academies, infrastructure, playing and coaching staff, helped by a, weirdly for Cypriot teams, competent club president who has been instrumental in putting Champions League’s financial contributions to good use at a time of huge financial strain in the country and during a period were several other previously big clubs are still right now close to bankruptcy and in one case, Omonia Nicosia, even having to be bailed out by their own fans in a weird crowd funded scheme.
Just like in England, where the obscene rolls of cash handed to the Premier League by TV rights every year have contributed to raising the playing level of the entire league to the point where it is the most competitive in Europe, so too have Champions League money helped to raise the level of competition both in the league as a whole and to make teams like APOEL not just a footnote on Wikipedia as ‘having once appeared in the Champions League’.
Surely money flowing to smaller teams, which, if invested wisely, can raise their level is a good thing for football as a whole, just like it has been in the Premier League where even clubs at the bottom of the table can offer big wages and attract better players. How significant has it been for fans of Huddersfield to see their club in the Premier League for the first time, competing against giants like Chelsea and the Manchester clubs, when mere promotion means a financial windfall of enormous proportions. That is the kind of excitement that fans, like this author, have felt by seeing their team play in the Champions League, something no Cypriot fan ever thought they would get to see.
In closing, lament not the so called dilution of the competitive level in the Champions League. These are not teams of ‘farmers’, like this very site was once shameless enough to suggest, though certainly most player’s ancestors were definitely farmers like my own grandparents were, but professionals competing at the highest level their profession can offer in a league that provides avenues for young foreign players to grow and compete in Europe. It is no accident that a large percentage of players in the league are both young and foreign, while most Cypriot players stay in the country despite better wages being found elsewhere – and it’s not just the sandy beaches and great weather either.
If anything, a team that competes in the Champions League consecutively for sixteen years but does not make it into the quarter-finals for over a decade and only once ever is far more undeserving of being in the competition than APOEL, who had done it on their second appearance, or the long list of teams that had got to the quarter final stage since. That team is Arsenal, who no one has ever called ‘farmers’ despite great furrows being plowed in between their supporter’s eyes at the inevitability of their being knocked out of the competition on the first knockout stage game year after year.
