The first days of May not only provided answers to which teams will fight for world football’s most important club title. What was far from getting as much attention is that at the UEFA Congress in Vienna, a change in the Champions League was adopted, which was moderated based on the original proposals, but still very important when it comes to the future of the tournament. An increasingly super league From 2024, the tournament will be expanded by four teams to 36 – and you get a completely new system for the group game. All teams play eight matches in a joint series before the best teams qualify for the knockout rounds. It is called the “Swiss” model, not without irony, and has as its main goal that the best and most attractive teams should meet several times. It is naive to believe other than that this is only the first step on the road to a champion league that will look more and more like the famous super league project, which managed to be so hated in just 48 hours a year ago. Now it is the European Football Association, UEFA, which is in charge. And then the changes come both slower and more gradually. But they are coming. THE MANAGER: Alexander Čeferin is president of Uefa. Photo: JOE KLAMAR / AFP For the Champions League to be sold to an ever larger TV audience all over the world. Then there is really no limit to how many times the biggest clubs can meet. Liverpool and Real Madrid have, despite their success, only met in five matches ever. Now, in a few years, they may instead end up meeting each other five times per season. What today appears to be a rather unique meeting can become commonplace before we understand what has happened. Those who never give up To the extent that objectivity can be considered part of football, this can actually be called a dream final. At least history tells us that. Real Madrid and Liverpool have a total of 19 victories in the most generous of the European Cups, what is today called the Champions League. 13 of them are won by the Spanish greats, those with the blue blood as part of the name. The last of these titles was won in 2018, against Liverpool in particular, in a final marked by injuries and very strange goalkeeper losses. BRASSESPARK: Gareth Bale became the big hero last time Real Madrid and Liverpool met in the Champions League final. Photo: Darko Vojinovic / AP Liverpool have six of the most coveted titles. The third of these was won in 1981 in Paris. Opponent was Real Madrid. In 2005, they won their fifth, after a comeback you have hardly seen before against AC Milan. The coach of the Italians was Carlo Ancelotti. Today he leads Real Madrid to the Stade de France. When Liverpool last won the Champions League in 2019, it was after a legendary turnaround in the semi-finals against Barcelona and Lionel Messi. 0-3 in Barcelona was turned 4-0 at home at Anfield, and that by an injured Liverpool team. These comebacks are in a way defining the uniqueness of this final. For there are two teams with a striking lack of ability to surrender that meet. PARADE: Liverpool celebrated the previous Champions League triumph in 2019 in front of a sea of people in the city. Photo: PHIL NOBLE / Reuters The royal vultures Real means “royal” and emphasizes a self-image that makes them unique in European football – and which is perhaps an important part of what has brought them so far to the biggest match in the world in club football . For the road to this final has this time been quite peculiar to the Madrid team. It started with a sensational loss at home at the Santiago Bernabéu against Sheriff Tiraspol from the Russian-dominated region of Transnistria in Moldova. Since it nevertheless became clear for the decisive knockout rounds, Real have faced as tough opposition as it has almost been possible. And not only that – every time they have seemed inferior, partly outplayed – and have returned, almost miraculously – first against French PSG, then against defending champions Chelsea in the quarter-finals, and finally against Manchester City in the semi-finals. VICTORY CLAMP: Rodrygo turned the match against Manchester City in the semifinals. Here he celebrates with compatriot Vinicius Jr. Photo: GABRIEL BOUYS / AFP Against City, Real Madrid was down in 178 of 180 ordinary minutes, from the time 2 minutes had passed of the first of the two semi-finals against the English league champions and until the second overtime of the second. Then they scored twice and got extra innings, where they decided. Of course they did. Manchester City’s dream of winning its first Champions League title was shattered. Real Madrid had made another remarkable comeback and were in the final. One began to compare this year’s Real Madrid team with vultures, the scavengers circling around and around the prey until it is finally so exhausted that they can attack. And no one dares call it luck or chance anymore. Reals midfield star Luka Modric talked about “magic”. One almost began to think he had the answer. The belief that Real always wins in the end lies in both the walls and the players’ heads in Madrid. As it obviously does in Liverpool. The foie gras of football It is in many ways the history books that have chosen opponents in this final in Paris. The same history books may also have to write about this finale as the last of its time, feel free to call it the pre-petro era. For the last week has given us yet another reminder of what is inexorably coming. When Real Madrid thought they had agreed on a transfer with what is probably the world’s most attractive player, Frenchman Kylian Mbappé, he chose at the very last minute to stay in Paris and extend his contract with Qatar-owned PSG. The sums it is speculated that he will now be paid to continue in the attacking series with Lionel Messi and Neymar are in the billion class. At the same time, the light blue part of Manchester is waiting to pay tribute to its new fix star, the Norwegian star striker Erling Braut Haaland, who will finally fulfill Abu Dhabi-owned City’s big goals. Both clubs have been so close to putting the harpoon in the sports whaling’s white whale – the champions league. Both have failed at the very last minute. FRUSTRATED: Pep Guardiola could hardly believe what he saw when Real Madrid scored two goals at the very end of the semi-final. Photo: CARL RECINE / Reuters In contrast to Liverpool and not least Real Madrid, who have won 13 of the 16 finals they have played. It’s easy to think it’s not random. And can be called culture. What’s in the walls. That which can not be bought for money. But one day, the traditions and the winning mentality are not enough to withstand the seemingly endless flow of money from the oil states on the Arabian Peninsula. They are the ones who make football’s own goose liver – or foie gras, as it is actually called. Where the clubs are the geese that are forcibly fed through tubes down the throat, in order to achieve the desired quality of the morbidly inflated liver as soon as possible. The one that tastes delicious to many – but which really should have been banned. Until then, you can and should enjoy the dream final in Paris. In the fateful certainty that even for one of the teams it ends up as a nightmare.
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A final for the history books – NRK Sport – Sports news, results and broadcast schedule
