premier league: View: The advent of the Champions League made Europe a priority for more teams than ever before
Why not add a third, then — one that encompassed all of the teams that were not quite good enough to qualify for the other two competitions? Why not advertise this new tournament as a way to make European football more “inclusive,” a prize available to the sort of teams that have been locked out of major finals for decades? And make sure to include a single, resentful representative from each of the powerhouse leagues of western Europe? And how about a long, cumbersome and deeply unappealing name?
And yet, though the Conference League as a concept seemed nothing short of folly, the sort of notion that could only be conjured up by a stifling and self-important bureaucracy, we are rapidly approaching the point where we have to acknowledge the improbable: It is, as it turned out, a good idea. Its games are competitive. Its stadiums are full, or close enough. The teams involved, even the ones that might have been expected to view this new league as an encumbrance, are sufficiently invested in the idea of winning it.
There has been at least one angry encounter in a tunnel, the sure sign of a competition with meaning. Countries that have for years had precious little interest in the final stages of Europe’s showpiece tournaments have found themselves enjoying the best kind of football: winner-take-all in the springtime. Even those fans who initially saw the Conference League as a money-grab, a consolation prize and — worst of all — an entirely artificial construct have been won over. Value is not an innate thing.
The Champions League does not carry more weight than any other tournament by divine right. It will not always necessarily be seen as the game’s highest peak; its beginnings, too, were accompanied by such considerable skepticism that the English, initially, did not deign to grace it with their presence. Nor can significance be reliably measured in pounds, dollars and euros. The Champions League is not the most important tournament because it is the most lucrative; it is the most lucrative because it is the most important. Someone — probably SoftBank, if we’re honest — could launch a far richer competition at any point but would not make it more meaningful. No, value is not inherent.
Rather, it is applied. It is a form of cultural convention, a tacit agreement among players and coaches and executives and, particularly, among fans: We determine which tournaments matter. The Conference League illustrates that axiom perfectly. The tournament is important because those involved have decreed it to be important. So, too, in reverse, goes the fate of the FA Cup. Anyone who has ever spoken with an English football fan of a particular vintage will know that there once was a time when the FA Cup final was the highlight of the season. To win the cup was, the myth goes, better than winning the league because the whole country watched the cup final.
Myth is, perhaps, a touch harsh. As recently as the mid-1990s, the day of the FA Cup final was the centerpiece of the English football calendar. For years, it was the only game regularly broadcast on television. It was a more widely accessible occasion, and therefore a more memorable one. Mythical or not, the FA Cup’s status has diminished over the last three decades. The cup no longer matters quite so much as it once did, not because the competition has changed — it has not — but because the circumstances around it have.
The creation of the Premier League necessitated proclaiming that competition’s significance at the expense of almost everything else, and after a while, the propaganda became self-fulfilling. Football’s natural order shaped itself around the league. The FA Cup became an afterthought. The Premier League, too, heralded the dawn of football as a televised product; the cup would no longer be exceptional merely because it was broadcast. At the same time, the game’s increased internationalism and the advent of the Champions League made Europe a priority for more teams than ever before and a richer prize, too.
The FA Cup got a little lost in the mayhem. That is not to say that, from the perspective of 2022, the FA Cup does not matter, or that it does not produce drama, romance, intrigue or glory. The competition does on all fronts. But its value relative to the rest of the game has been reduced, both for those involved with the games and those watching them. A competition’s meaning is not fixed. It can rise and fall, depending on our tastes. The game — that uneasy alliance of all of those who play and watch and run and love football — decides what matters.
The Europa Conference League is a useful reminder. It might easily have failed, had the cynicism of the major European leagues — the ones who believe that all anybody wants is to watch the same teams play each other, over and over again, in various combinations — proved infectious. That it has thrived is not simply because it was a good idea. It is because we accepted that it was a good idea and because we decided that it mattered.
