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.

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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.

It’s official David McMillan is the UEFA Champions League’s top scorer so far with 5 goals from 4 games. #DFC… https://t.co/jZXFVyUJ4i

— Dundalk FC (@DundalkFC) August 3, 2016

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