Hate the new Champions League format? Embrace the change and open your mind | Max Rushden

A A few weeks ago, I was sitting down to eat the neighbor’s cat (it’s okay, I’m an immigrant) when I saw something even more blatant – a Uefa Champions League X (Twitter) video called The dawn of a new era. This 30-second clip was an attempt to cushion the European Cup format starting next week.

They had hired a good number of ex-pros: Luís Figo, Gianluigi Buffon, Robbie Keane (who has presumably supported the new 36-team league system since he was a small boy) looking confused. It culminates in Zlatan Ibrahimovic being ready to lead the orchestra. “Who wrote this?” he asks. Walking in the impossibly shiny shoes of UEFA president Aleksander Cefer. “I did,” he says, arms outstretched, before folding them and smiling.

Why is he front and center in this ad? It’s true that some – not all – younger fans support the player over the team, but is there some realm of the internet I’m yet to discover where people just want to see football’s biggest administrators in shiny, tapered suits? Who used it best? Gianni or Aleksander?

It’s healthy to be suspicious of football players: their achievements over the years are not great. And now Ceferin wants to write the theme tune and sing the theme tune. Maybe he’ll decide to stick around for another cycle (or two).

As a person, I’m open-minded, but as a football fan I obviously hate change, so I wasn’t disappointed to learn that this terrible ad meant the entire format was a disaster even before a ball was kicked.

And there is cause for concern. Add more games to the already bloated fixture list – players’ well-being, football’s growing carbon footprint. Suppo for the big clubs trying to fight off the European Super League. No guarantees on promised dead rubbers. A league where you don’t play everyone else. League table with 36 teams – whose screen is big enough for that?

I found myself becoming something of a Champions League group stage ultra, even though I’ve spent the better part of the last 20 years being indifferent to it at best. Like all football, it was sometimes good, sometimes boring.

I had closed my mind. Fortunately, Guardian Football Weekly writer Mark Langdon of the Racing Post was on hand to reopen it.

Playing eight teams instead of three is more interesting. Fans get more fun outings. Teams play two opponents from the same pot, which means more “big” games, but also more winnable games for smaller players. Many fan teams can only make the playoffs, which can make it pretty exciting.

Before this forced intervention, my reaction was a perfect example of the generational conflict that all fans experience. We feel that any new development disrupts the game we fell in love with when we were 10 – proud to tell those younger than us that those were the best years, simpler times. But at the same time we roll our eyes at the people who came before us and claim that football was better before we fell in love with it.

Obviously, that’s an oversimplification, but fans who want to embrace nostalgia but not completely reject anything new may find themselves in an uncomfortable no-man’s land between dinosaurs and hipsters. It’s a musical waiting to happen. Richard Keys and Andy Gray stomp on stage laughing at xG while Opta Joe tries to fend them off with an iPad, some analysis and some very long Athletic articles.

From a broadcaster’s point of view, healthy skepticism towards new things is a good thing. You have to be true to yourself, but also remember that you have a vested interest in being employed for about 30 years. Moving with the times is important. XG took a while – it’s clearly imperfect, but it can be useful.

In a very dry moment watching this weekend’s games, I became interested in the Jérémy Doku stat for “carrying the ball” – a phrase that doesn’t naturally roll off my tongue. According to BBC Sport’s website, the Belgian winger has “advanced the ball 747.8 meters through the ball stumps in the Premier League this season, almost 300 meters more than any other player”. Brighton’s Jan Paul van Hecke is second with 457.3 meters.

Is this interesting? It probably is. He runs with the ball significantly more than anyone else. What does that mean? He is good at dribbling. It’s easier to do that by playing for Manchester City. Notably, perhaps, he has the license from Pep Guardiola to do so far more than any of his teammates. And yet there is a feeling that football does not necessarily need anyone to count how many meters Van Hecke advances the ball in each game.

It’s not a conclusion that will go viral, but the reality is that different people want different things from a game. Admire Van Hecke’s ball carry or not. Both are fine. And it’s perfectly acceptable to view your vintage with rose-tinted specs.

Interestingly, when it comes to the Champions League, we have a small group born in the late 70s/early 80s whose early years of learning the game coincided with the European ban of English clubs. The European Cup wasn’t even a thing. You didn’t see it, Saint and Greavesie didn’t talk about it. It didn’t exist. If anyone is going to be open-minded about next week, it should be us. It’s time to open my mind, although I would like the players to take off their suits when the games start, however controversial it may be.