Champions-League-final tournament: The mode will explode like a bomb

Bayern Munich's Chairman Karl-Heinz Rummenigge has once again warned strongly against inflation of the Champions League. "We don't need any enlarged group phase. Rather, we need to ensure that the Champions League is for the Fans more attractive, not more. I suggest quality and not quantity,“ said Rummenigge in the run-up to the final tournament of the king class, from 12. to 23. August in Lisbon.

Expressly Rummenigge praised the Format of the current competition, the best eight teams. "The biggest Thrill for the Fan of the K. o.-System, of course. The mode will explode like a bomb. In two Games the better team is, from experience, in fact, always, in a game everything is possible,“ he said. "The Format is actually what we know of the world Cup. This is like a European club Cup. It's the best European teams meet.“

For months, it will be discussed about Changes to the Champions League format. Already recently, the Bayern Boss had rejected the in the case of many European top clubs favored model in the future, four groups with eight teams instead of the currently there are eight groups of four categorical.

"There is no need for changes. The radicalism'm now too far. To me, the meaning is missing: It is not something to be fixed, what's broken“, said the former head of the European club Association ECA in January. It also don't give "the dates for the two finalists had to complete in this model, a total of 21 games. And besides, it would create the Eighth-groups, many boring games“.

Whether the new Corona mode could be a pioneer for future game times, was not able to predict Rummenigge before. For the "Reform-discussion to 2024," said the Chairman of the Board of FC Bayern but ideas. "I don't think we need a larger group phase, the group phase has now been decided, with eight groups and four teams on the fourth or fifth round. This is not what the viewers skin from the chairs,“ said the 64-Year-old at the time of inspection of the construction site for a FC-Bayern-world in the center of Munich.