{"id":445271,"date":"2026-01-29T13:59:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-29T13:59:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/445271\/"},"modified":"2026-01-29T13:59:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-29T13:59:08","slug":"football-as-a-content-machine-18-champions-league-games-was-fun-but-overstuffed-champions-league","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/445271\/","title":{"rendered":"Football as a content machine: 18 Champions League games was fun but overstuffed | Champions League"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s half an hour after attempting to watch 18 football matches at the same time on the final match day of the Champions League<\/a> group stage, so it\u2019s still a little early to tell whether I think it was a brilliant night of football or not.<\/p>\n

The information overload from a TV, laptop and phone means I may need a couple of weeks to really process it \u2013 by which time of course this will all be forgotten and we\u2019ll be wondering whether one point from three Premier League games is enough for Thomas Frank to keep his job.<\/p>\n

It is fair to say that the jeopardy does go right to the end with this format. And the obvious truth is that if you put enough football matches on at the same time, odds are something interesting will happen. Thirty-six teams in an eight-game league means the as-it-stands table will change a lot. Make it 128 teams playing four games, and see how the permutations algorithm deals with that.<\/p>\n

Is it a surprise that Chelsea were up to eighth and down to 12th and back up to sixth as goals went in in Naples<\/a> and elsewhere? Of course the rights holders have an obligation to tell you this is exciting \u2013 and to a certain degree it is.<\/p>\n

Perhaps it\u2019s all worth it for Anatoliy Trubin \u2013 not a man I\u2019ve spent a lot of time considering until today. It\u2019s at least an eight out of 10 on the Jimmy Glass scale. The Uefa script writer would have happily accepted Jos\u00e9 Mourinho\u2019s goalkeeper scoring a flying header<\/a> in the eighth minute of five minutes of added time to beat nine-man Real Madrid and squeeze into the playoffs.<\/p>\n

In the list of best things that can happen in football, a goalkeeper lolloping into the opposition penalty area and scoring is right up there alongside fan in the crowd heading the ball back into play and an outfield player going in goal. There is something about the way a keeper moves before the free-kick: big long limbs, remarkably unmarkable because keepers don\u2019t even really know where they\u2019re meant to run.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s been no team meeting to decide who picks them up. And it feels (and here\u2019s some recency bias talking) as if the ball has some kind of magnetic attraction to the person in a different colour kit doing their own thing.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a moment to make you even feel joy for Mourinho. Hugging a ballboy like peak Everton Duncan Ferguson. \u201cWe knew that he could it \u2026 We know that the big guy is capable of this, it\u2019s an amazing goal for the guy,\u201d beamed Jos\u00e9.<\/p>\n

Benfica\u2019s head coach, Jos\u00e9 Mourinho, channels his inner Duncan Ferguson by embracing a ballboy. Photograph: Armando Fran\u00e7a\/AP<\/p>\n

If you really want to feel it, find the Ukrainian commentary. \u201cTRUBIIIIIIIIIIIN. AN-A-TOLIY-TRU *voice cracks* BIN \u2026\u201d And great casting from TNT to have Ally McCoist sitting on a little bar stool to bring the moment to life \u2013 although, I\u2019d watch him watching anything; Gogglebox have missed a trick not getting him on an eight-year amortised contract.<\/p>\n

The evening had started terribly, Paris Saint-Germain winning a penalty after THEIR OWN PLAYER (Bradley Barcola) HANDBALLED IT ON TO the outstretched fingertips of Lewis Miley. On the list of organisations beginning with I that need abolishing, it is clearly a long way below ICE, and it\u2019s hard to get too passionate about football while the world burns, but Ifab\u2019s determination to single-handedly destroy the game through its interpretation of the handball law is almost reason enough to take to the streets.<\/p>\n

Between that and Trubin\u2019s wonder moment, lots of exciting things. Viktor Gy\u00f6keres scored a nice one, someone absolutely belts one in for Pafos, Brugge have scored twice, Manchester City<\/a> and Liverpool see off any jeopardy<\/a>. Copenhagen lead in Barcelona! Sporting turn it around early, Napoli take the lead. Benfica lead Real. Newcastle equalise! Half-time. Stare at a league table that is just too big for a legacy football fan\u2019s eyes. Breathe, maybe lie down.<\/p>\n

Spurs score a goal. Jo\u00e3o Pedro, what a hit. Ah Jamal Musiala is fit again, oh Simon Mignolet is still playing, I hope Harry Kane finishes that imperiously at the World Cup. Bod\u00f8\/Glimt! Probably the good news story of the group. We all know they\u2019re good on 4G in -4C but winning at the Wanda, sensational. No time to think about it, Spurs score again. Marcus Rashford scores a free kick \u2013 he\u2019s smiling; did the internet give him permission to do that? Harvey McBarnes skews it wide. Alisson Santos for Sporting \u2013 and finally Trubin with the cake, the icing and the cherry.<\/p>\n

Marcus Rashford looks pretty pleased after his fine free-kick for Barcelona\u2019s final goal in their 4-1 win against Copenhagen. Photograph: Joan Monfort\/AP<\/p>\n

There was that time during Covid when Premier League games were staggered and you could watch every minute. And you suddenly realised that sometimes the \u201cproduct\u201d really benefited from a lot of games getting only the seven-minute Match of the Day edit.<\/p>\n

This is the opposite. Football as a content machine. Never-ending things happening, swooshing from match to match. The game wasn\u2019t invented to be consumed like this. The joy of football is the big moments are rare, they have meaning. You watch one game, very occasionally two in an afternoon, and then move on to Traitors (I\u2019m voting for yourself, Linda).<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no chance to consider the games on anything but a superficial level. You are watching everything and nothing. That doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s not entertaining \u2013 it is. And perhaps one night like this a season is OK, not getting bogged down in three at the back, high-intensity duels and forward progressions.<\/p>\n

As I said, still processing. To misquote Gennaro Gattuso, it was sometimes maybe good, sometimes maybe not that good. As Jonathan Wilson pointed out this week<\/a>, it is a lot of football to get down to this one evening: players being flogged into the ground. Teams and fans celebrating because they don\u2019t have to play more football matches feels counterintuitive.<\/p>\n

On Thursday\u2019s Guardian Football Weekly<\/a> Nicky Bandini made two really important points. First that from a Premier League lens, there is less jeopardy than if you are a Sporting or Benfica or Bod\u00f8 fan, and second that perhaps this night will become an event in the football calendar, not one we need every week but a one-off bun-fight free-for-all where we just lean into the sheer amount of it.<\/p>\n

But it is the football we have, and you have a choice whether you consume it and how you do. The previous night I watched Cambridge United 1-0 Shrewsbury (Ben Knight 90+1 daft handball penalty). It felt like a different game, a different world. A more attritional, more boring, and far less eventful world \u2013 but one which was much easier to follow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s half an hour after attempting to watch 18 football matches at the same time on the final…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":445272,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-445271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=445271"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445271\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/445272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=445271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=445271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=445271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}