With the next World Cup starting in June this year, the debate over whether the UEFA Champions League is better than the World Cup has been lively.
Chelsea manager José Mourinho recently said that the Champions League is now better than the World Cup because the teams in it are at a higher level than the national teams who cannot buy the best players. Former Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson agrees with him.
There is some bias in this statement and it is selfish, as Europeans have long tried to convince the world that Europe plays the best football.
I do not agree with Mourinho because a comparison between the two competitions and a look at the figures refute his argument.
First: level of play: European clubs have the best players, but so does the World Cup. But soccer is a game and the team with the best players is not necessarily the best team.
The best evidence we have is the Club World Cup when the winner of the Champions League competes against the champions of other confederations and here the Europeans have only won 5 of the 9 tournaments.
The World Cup and the Champions League have strong teams and teams with weak squads. But the former has a higher level of soccer because it has all the best players who play for their respective nations and each country has its own style of play. The teams play with a deep commitment to the flag knowing that the best achievement is to win the trophy and be crowned the best in the world.
On the other hand, in the Champions League, the teams are a mix of players from different countries with different playing styles and the players have no connection to the club they represent except for a contract and you can always move to a new club in the next season.
For example, with Brazil Neymar plays a fluid style with freedom to roam the entire pitch. But when he plays for Barcelona he is trapped in the band and relegated to helping Messi, making him less effective.
Second, Universal vs. City Based – The World Cup spans the entire world, including more than 200 countries in Europe, Africa, North and South America, Asia, and Oceana. It shows the different styles of soccer that are played around the world, increasing your competitiveness and color.
In addition to this, FIFA now plans to expand the tournament to guarantee underrepresented areas such as the Caribbean Football Union region and Oceana, a full place in the tournament.
In contrast, the Champions League is limited to just 32 cities in Europe and where fan support is largely limited to the city where the club is based.
Third, popularity: Due to its universality, the World Cup is much more popular. So the 2010 World Cup in South Africa was seen in every nation and territory in the world, including Antarctica and the Arctic Circle, and was watched by 3.2 billion people or 46.4% of the world’s population. The final game was watched by 909.6 million viewers (or more than a billion if you include those who watch outside their homes in bars and pubs).
The Champions League is not even close to those numbers. Just 150 million watched the last game of last season (or 360 million if you include those away from home) (Bleacher Report – Why The World Cup Will Always Be Bigger Than the Champions League, by Sam Pilger, February 26 2014).
Fourth, more than a game:
(a) World Cup.
Unlike the Champions League, the World Cup is more than a game. It is more than winning and losing.
It unites countries and cultures (black and white in South Africa, Serbs and Croats in Bosnia) and is for many countries the only opportunity to give their nation any recognition in the eyes of the world.
The event creates heroes and villains, so for example, players who won the World Cup in 1966 are still heroes in England and you don’t get that status by winning the Champions League.
It leaves lasting memories such as seeing the skills and art of the great Pelé in 1970, Socrates in 1982 and Maradona in 1986.
The group stage of the World Cup is better than the Champions League because it is more dramatic as a team must win at least one match and can only lose one to qualify for the next round.
The World Cup fever for the next tournament has started to pile up. A countdown from day to day has already begun. Players fear injury that might rule them out and take great pride in donning the national team jersey as evidenced by the enthusiasm with which some of them sing their national anthem before a game. This cannot be matched by the Champions League anthem.
In 1 month every 4 years, all the people and cultures from all over the world converge in a host country where the games are played in a carnival-like environment and the 90 minutes of soccer is just part of the show.
The World Cup can also bring far-reaching political benefits.
In the case of the 2018 World Cup to be held in Russia, a country caught between the old cold war world and the new, the event is expected to welcome Russia and open it to the new world.
Qatar, which will host the 2022 tournament, hopes to use it to streamline its economy to tackle a post-oil and gas world and show that the Middle East is not just a region of instability.
(b) Champions League.
It’s all about money. A long-lasting tournament that runs for 10 months a year to win money; most games are easy to forget as there are many weak teams like FC Basel or CSKA Moskva.
Every year the same top 10 clubs reach the quarterfinals as the gap between them and the rest is huge and therefore boils down to a competition between a rich club against a richer one. In the 2011 final, mega-billionaire Roman Abramovich’s Chelsea was hilariously cited as the underdog against mighty Bayern Munich.
CONCLUSION
The World Cup is better than the Champions League because the level of play is higher, it is more popular and it is more than a game with more to offer.
A 2006 poem trailer for a World Cup tournament describes its impact as follows:
Close the shops,
Close schools,
Close a city
Stop a war
Fuel a nation
Break the borders
Build a hero
Crush a dream
Answer a sentence
And change the world
(Soccer Lens – Why the World Cup is better than the Champions League, by Abe Asher, October 24, 2013).
The difference between the two competitions is best described by Roy Hodgson, the current England manager, when he said: “I think most players at the end of their careers would say that going to the World Cup was their peak. Not many would. they will say I was playing in the group stage of the Champions League against Standard Liege on a Wednesday night “(Bleacher Report, Why the World Cup will always be bigger than the Champions League, etc.).
That is why the World Cup is more than just a game and it is the ultimate soccer event.
Victor A. Dixon
March 21, 2014