Forget the Romance, Europe's Outsiders Deserve a Crack at the Champions League

For the UEFA Champions League’s great outsiders it all happened dramatically and very, very late.

FC Astana of Kazakhstan will feel they had it the worst, beaten on August 3 by a stoppage-time penalty at Celtic Park to go crashing out at the death in the third qualifying round.

The previous night in the Azerbaijan capital, Baku, FK Qarabag lost to Viktoria Plzen of the Czech Republic, another late goal seeing them also exit the tournament amid heartbreak.

Later that evening in County Louth, Dundalk of the League of Ireland did what their eastern European counterparts couldn’t, scoring a last-minute breakaway goal to knock out BATE Borisov of Belarus and progress into the uncharted territory of the Champions League play-off round.

It means the Irish champions are two games away from achieving the unthinkable, a place at the top table of European football and what would be a whirlwind 10 weeks in the autumn in the world’s spotlight.

It may not happen; Legia Warsaw, the Polish champions, stand in their way, and Dundalk will be rank outsiders to upset a club who have more than once been right to the business end of this competition, albeit in another era.

If, as expected, the Irish club miss out, there could be as few as two countries ranked outside of UEFA’s top 20 represented in the group stage. For football-hungry Ireland and Azerbaijan, the long wait for a crack at the Champions League will go on.

It’s all a sobering return to the status quo after the underdog romances of the summer in France, one that poses a question of the current qualifying process.

European football is changing. Now the conditions need to be put in place for it to be allowed to continue to grow, not just upwardly piling wealth upon wealth at the top end, but also outwardly, to bring into the fold those countries traditionally on the periphery but who are beginning to make noises.

The European Championship was a neat example of what happens when top-level football is opened up beyond its usual fringes.

Europe has responded fantastically well to seeing new countries compete on its main stage, as well as to old names coming back in from the wilderness.

That is a qualitative appraisal, but what is easier to track is the greater variance of matchups at Euro 2016 than before; teams meeting for the first time at a major tournament, and more people being brought together inside stadiums and cities that had previously not been given the chance to host such games.

Iceland, Wales, Albania, Northern Ireland and Slovakia all made their European Championship debuts in France, while Hungary returned after a 44-year absence.

Wales, of course, reached the last four, Iceland the last eight, and Slovakia and Northern Ireland the last 16. Albania went out in the group stage, but the players nonetheless returned home to a hero’s welcome, their names etched into the wall of the new national stadium in Elbasan and into the hearts of their compatriots nationwide.

UEFA, European football’s rule-makers, has no obligation to pander to the fanciful and the sentimental. But it does have a mandate to encourage the growth of the game at all levels.

This means giving due recognition to the careful investment of countries’ resources into building up football as something both fundamental and necessary in those nations, because when that happens, everybody benefits.

The Albanian Football Association has done exactly that over 10 careful years of planning, education and spending, and off the back of success at Euro 2016 there is every incentive for that process to continue.

Yet FK Partizani Tirana were eliminated from the Champions League in qualifying, 3-0 against Austria’s RB Salzburg, 12 months after their compatriots Skenderbeu were thrashed 6-2 on aggregate by Dinamo Zagreb in the play-off round.

Albania, like Ireland and Azerbaijan, have never had a team in the group stage, but there is a case to be made for European football broadening its horizons.

All the signs are that when a previously unrepresented country gets a side into the tournament, good things happen.

The 2008/09 season was a breakthrough campaign in that respect, seeing Anorthosis Famagusta of Cyprus and BATE of Belarus become the first side from either nation to make Champions League proper.

The results were encouraging; Anorthosis held Inter Milan to a thrilling 3-3 draw in Famagusta and missed out on qualification by a hair’s breadth, while BATE drew twice with Juventus before being knocked out.

Indeed, the side from Belarus’ industrial centre have become the unlikely flag-bearers for underdog success in the Champions League. In 2012/13 they beat Lille OSC and eventual winners Bayern Munich, part of a run which has seen them play in the group stage in five of the last seven seasons using an almost entirely home-grown squad.

Cypriot football, too, has continued to find success; Apoel Nicosia reached the group stage in 2009/10, drawing with Chelsea at Stamford Bridge, before going on a stunning run to the quarter-finals two years later, losing out eventually to Real Madrid.

Despite having shown that they can at the very least compete at this level, none of these performances have done much to improve the chances of clubs from Cyprus and Belarus succeeding in Europe, since all nations ranked from 17th to 48th by UEFA are given the same entry point in Champions League qualifying.

In 2009, UEFA separated the qualifying paths for sides entering from lower down the table in higher-placed countries and those entering as champions, but the system remains stacked in favour of clubs from Greece, Croatia, Scotland and Europe’s other footballing metropolises.

The obvious retort is that if clubs aren’t able to play their way past their qualifying opponents then they don’t deserve a place in the Champions League, and that they would struggle to do much more than make up the numbers once there.

Interestingly the same could have been said of Wales, Iceland, Hungary and Albania on the back of their previous tournament qualifying records.

Only in lieu of a more accommodating qualifying process did any of the four secure their place at Euro 2016; none would have qualified directly under the previous format.

All of which speaks to the influence that the opening-up of major tournament stages can have on players, breaking the monotonous regularity of near misses in qualifying and redefining what is within reach.

Any solution would have to be found with the immovability of Europe’s top tier in mind. No amount of progressive thinking will move UEFA to strip the top six leagues of any of the 15 automatic Champions League group-stage places they hold, but lower down the coefficient table there is less financial power.

There are five positions in the group stage set aside for the champions of the bottom 39 ranked leagues. This could be redistributed to guarantee one place, or two, for the champions of the lower-ranked nations without upsetting the balance at the top.

UEFA has shown with the restructuring of its international competitions that it recognises the way Europe is changing. The Euro 2020 qualifying process will guarantee at least one place for the national sides ranked from 40-55, and one more from the next 14 highest. It’s a small step, but a significant one.

In the meantime, it’s all eyes on County Louth to see if Dundalk can wrestle with the odds and crash Europe’s most exclusive private party.

All quotes and information obtained firsthand unless otherwise indicated.