With the whistle of the referee, this season's Champions League group match officially ended.
On the last match day, there were not many key matches involving the competition for the right to qualify in the group. For example, the situation of the death group, which fans paid more attention to, lost its suspense as early as the end of the last round:
When Barcelona is forced to play in the Europa League by Inter Milan at home, they have basically locked the fate of playing in the Europa League; When Juventus almost suffered a disastrous defeat at Benfica, Allegri and his team knew how much they were worth.
In this early morning, the biggest news also came from this group:
Benfica, with a 6-1 victory, overtook Paris Saint Germain at the last moment and won the first place in Group H.
The losers either go home or prepare to participate in the Europa League knockout play off, while the winners can wait for the opening of the knockout round after the World Cup.
Sixteen teams will regroup at the end of February next year to compete for the highest honor at the European club level. However, compared with the Premier League and the Bundesliga eight teams, Real Madrid will be very lonely.
If you want to keep the champion in Spain, you can only rely on the defending champion.
Among the top 16, the English Premier League and German Bundesliga have become the big winners.
Since the 2018-2019 season, the Champions League has entered a new calendar. In this European Championships, the top four leagues in Europe will be able to go directly to the Champions League group matches.
Considering that the European points gap between the French league and the English league, the Spanish league, the German league and the Italian league is quite obvious, this rule will basically be equivalent to making the top four of the English league, the Spanish league, the German league and the Italian league qualified for the championship.
Although Liverpool, Tottenham and Chelsea, the three Premier League teams except Manchester City, have all met with many difficulties this season, their achievements in the Champions League group match have not been affected at all.
In particular, Tottenham Hotspur and Chelsea both won the first place in the group, which laid the foundation for the next knockout match. As for the second place in the only group, Liverpool also scored 15 points with Napoli, which has gained a lot of momentum recently, but they fell behind in the game against each other.
As for Manchester City, there is no need to say more.
Similar to their situation, there is also the Bundesliga.
Bayern Munich, Frankfurt, Dortmund and Leipzig Red Bull all qualified smoothly. Although the three teams except Bayern only finished second in the group, compared with the past few years, the German Bundesliga has achieved quite outstanding results in Europe this season.
In fact, this season's Bundesliga is the league with the most teams playing in the Champions League. In addition to the top four teams, Frankfurt, who won the Europa League last season, also went through the group game, so the Bundesliga is actually five teams playing.
The only unlucky guy is Leverkusen. This season, their performance in the league and European games was not good enough, which directly led to the dismissal of Sevanne. After Xabi Alonso took over, they only achieved two draws and one loss in the three group matches.
It's not strange that you can't get out.
However, Leverkusen can still play in the Europa League at least. The worst thing is that he ranks first from the bottom in this group. In the second half of the season, he directly becomes Atletico Madrid, a domestic single line player.
In the whole group stage, Atletico Madrid only won 1 - 2 - 3 in 6 matches, and the team did not show a strong side at all.
For a long time, there have been many criticisms about Simone's team on the offensive side, but at least they were difficult to defeat at that time. However, Atletico Madrid has lost every time against Porto, Bruges and Leverkusen.
With Atletico Madrid being eliminated directly from the European competition, the situation of the club has also become slightly difficult.
According to media statistics, this result will directly cause Atletico Madrid to lose nearly 30 million euros in revenue, which will force them to reach a balance of payments by selling players at the beginning of next year or in the summer.
It is believed that the player destined to be difficult to stay in the team will be Joao Felix.
Recently, there has been an obvious contradiction between Simone and Portuguese young players, and the latter's performance this season is not satisfactory. The potential star with the original transfer fee of more than 100 million euros really needs a question mark in the future of Atletico Madrid.
However, some people think that Simone will leave the club earlier than him.
In fact, the encounter of Joao Felix is also a footnote to the abyss of Atletico Madrid.
In July 2019, Atletico Madrid brought Joao Felix from Benfica to Atletico Madrid at a price of more than 120 million euros. But before that, the Portuguese teenager had just played a full season in Benfica's first team, scoring 20 goals in 42 matches.
This is indeed a potential star, but can it really reach the level of 120 million?
Perhaps in the view of Atletico Madrid at that time, this was a big game that could not be understood by the outside world, but in fact, in the past three seasons, Joao Felix only scored 29 goals for Atletico Madrid.
In the past three years, Atletico Madrid has indeed won a Spanish championship, but I'm afraid that Suarez is more responsible for that championship.
Compared with them, Barcelona people may feel a little lucky. After all, they still have the Europa League to play, but the prize money won from the Europa League cannot make up for their elimination from the Champions League group match.
According to the calculation, even if Barcelona won the Europa League championship all the way later, the total amount of bonuses that can be obtained is only about 14.4 million euros, which is less than the number of bonuses obtained by the teams eliminated in the quarter finals of the Champions League.
In this way, Barcelona is doomed to fail to achieve the revenue target set by the club. Considering that they pledged multiple levers this summer to introduce several strong reinforcements, by next summer, they will certainly need to sell people, cut salaries and other ways to ensure that they will not be overwhelmed by leverage.
The player who needs to leave the team is probably De Jong.
If Atletico Madrid was only dragged down by a transfer of more than 100 million yuan under the influence of the Black Swan Event, the story of Barcelona is much more wonderful than theirs.
From Cudicinho and Denbelle to Grezman and De Jong, Barcelona has been profligate in the transfer market for many years, and only one King's Cup champion and three Gamber Cup champions have been obtained.
After the sudden decrease of income caused by the epidemic, Barcelona's previous business model was severely challenged. Even after the successive salary cuts of the captains, it still came to the point of mortgaging the club's assets.
Of course, as Laporta himself said, the value of Barcelona Club is higher than others.
On the contrary, there are not many stories behind the elimination of Seville, another Spanish league team.
Seville this season lost many key players such as Comte, Diego Carlos and Ocampos in the summer, while the replacement of the team director Munch was not good enough, which directly led to the decline of the team strength.
A clear example is that they not only performed poorly in Europe, but also fell down all the way in La Liga, and even entered the relegation zone.
Therefore, it is inevitable that Lopeggi will be dismissed. Under the leadership of new coach Sampoli, Sevilla's biggest task at this stage is to return to the first half of the league.
After that, they can consider whether to "name" the Europa League again.
In fact, there are teams similar to Barcelona and Atletico Madrid, as well as Juventus in Serie A.
Although they can buy and sell in the market, they are also selling and selling. For example, sending Derihet away this summer is obviously a way to reduce the team's strength in exchange for a transfer of funds.
Their poor performance this season, of course, is inseparable from Allegri. But from a more long-term perspective, the impact of the introduction of Ronaldo is still fermenting, which makes their transfer in the past two years walk on the steel wire. In this way, the team's poor performance naturally becomes a probability.
It is not surprising that Barcelona President Laporta and Juventus President Agnelli are willing to become the pawns of Florentino's European Super League plan under such a background.
However, Florentino is much smarter than them, because his Real Madrid is not only safe, but also a strong contender for the Champions League.
On the surface, the Bundesliga has performed well this season, while Real Madrid is the only team left in La Liga. It seems that it is just a different result of luck and exertion.
But in fact, since the start of the 2020-21 season, teams with good business performance have generally performed better in Europe. There is no need to worry about this because the Premier League team has the capital injection from the gold owners behind it. So Manchester City and Liverpool were among the top four teams in the Champions League last season; The Bundesliga team has always attached great importance to the balance of income and expenditure, and rarely played the overdraft game of "fighting big with small" in the transfer market, so Frankfurt won the championship in the Europa League last season.
Even in Italy, which is also seriously affected by the epidemic, there are also stable teams like AC Milan and Naples. They have also reached the last 16 of the Champions League this year, and the two teams are also competing for the championship in the league.
As for the negative examples of these teams, it is obvious.
The prosperity of the European football market before the resumption of the epidemic will not happen in the short term, so from this perspective, the dilemma of poorly managed teams will continue for some time.
This is also reflected in the fact that the European Super League plan will not die, and the sluggish performance of these teams in European games will not be reversed.
Therefore, in such a new era, the Bundesliga, the English Premier League team with the owner, the Paris Saint Germain with good money, and Real Madrid, which can do both the European Super League and the Champions League, will become the main players on the table in the future.
This is the new normal of the future.
Muzi
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