Heading into the Club World Cup round of 16 match between Benfica and Chelsea, some had claimed that this match was a genuine opportunity for Benfica to pick up an upset win over their English opponents and advance to the tournament quarterfinals.
Considering the fact that Benfica were in good form heading into the knockout stage and coming off an impressive win over Bayern Munich while Chelsea looked rather pedestrian throughout the group stage, it really did seem as though the Portuguese club did, in fact, have a puncher’s chance to score their second straight underdog victory en route to the last eight.
Although Chelsea had the bulk of the possession and the clear majority of the goalscoring chances, they weren’t able to turn these advantages into actual results on the scoreboard in the first half. It wasn’t until the 64th minute when Reece James buried a free kick in the bottom corner of the net. However, the biggest twist of all was yet to come.
Shortly after stoppage time began, the match was paused due to the risk of lightning at the Bank of America Stadium. Play would not resume until two hours later - and shortly after the action resumed, Benfica earned a penalty. Chelsea full-back Malo Gusto was found to have committed a handball off Benfica centre-back Nicolás Otamendi’s header. Benfica’s veteran winger Ángel Di María, who had previously confirmed that he would be leaving the club after the tournament to return to his hometown club Rosario Central, converted from the spot to send the match to extra time.
However, that would be as far as Benfica would get; Chelsea would take over in extra time. Goals scored by Christopher Nkunku, Pedro Neto, and Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall ensured that the Blues would make it to the quarterfinals with a 4-1 victory - though to be fair to Benfica, it was a scoreline that gave the impression that the match was more lop-sided than it really was.
That being said, the clear take-away from the match was this: the gap between the elite European leagues and the rest has never been more obvious. Excluding Paris Saint-Germain’s victory this season - an outlier due to the club’s enormous financial resources - no club from outside Spain, Italy, England, or Germany has won the Champions League since Porto in 2004; there almost certainly never will again with the possible exception of PSG.
Due to current league revenue trends, this disparity is certain to grow as time passes. The share of total revenue with the European professional football system that these top leagues take up has been increasing and with the compounding effect that this increased revenue allows to happen by facilitating broadcasting rights and branding as well as drawing in the best players who seek the big money at an elite club, among other things, the leading leagues’ portion will further increase.
The reality is this: at this point there’s almost nothing that the rest of the clubs outside the biggest leagues can really do anymore. It’s almost a guarantee that as soon as a superstar emerges in one of those lesser leagues, the player in question will soon be signed by a club from one of the top leagues.
So what’s the solution at this point? Frankly, there isn’t really a simple answer. That said, tournaments like this revamped Club World Cup would be a good start - these competitions award much money to even teams who don’t get all that far into the tournament, giving these clubs from lesser leagues a much-welcomed financial boost.
It might also be time for UEFA to look into restructuring how the Champions League’s revenue distributions are set up. By doing so, the disparity between clubs from the leading leagues and the rest could potentially be reduced to some extent.
Finally - and this is admittedly a radical proposal which I’m honestly on the fence over - would barring teams from the strongest leagues from entry into the Europa League and Conference League be an effective step? This way, teams from the weaker leagues would not only accumulate more tournament revenue, but also have more of a platform to showcase what they’re truly capable of - and perhaps eventually paving the way for these clubs to land lucrative sponsorship or other financial deals.
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