A Modest Proposal

I can tell you what every football fan hates: the 0-0 draw. It is closely followed by the 1-0 "park-the-bus" win. And in something as important as the Champions League, it's pretty much an enormous letdown. After all, attacking football is the exciting football. Don't we want to see Barcelona do their stuff? Isn't it great watching Arsenal rip other teams to pieces?

So here's the deal: minnows in the CL and domestic leagues tend to put 10 men behind the ball, and while that may be tactically sound it is REALLY FUCKING BORING. The fundamental problem is that there is absolutely no incentive for them to do otherwise- until this brainwave that I just had came along.

Pay teams by the goal. That's right, pay teams every time they score a goal. Reduce their sponsorship monies, but then add a bonus every time they score. And give a bonus to the winners, obviously. Here's what would happen:

The minnows, teams like Rubin Kazan and APOEL, are so glad to be in the Champions League that they don't want to win, they just want to get draws and parachute into the Europa League. And that's fine, good for them. But we want to see something interesting when we watch the Champions League, and since they're going to lose anyway, why not make a case about it?

Then, the big clubs like Barca, Chelsea, whatever, they can score goals at will. But since they have a much greater chance to win the CL, they can park the bus after they score because they don't need the money quite as much. The amount of cash distributed should be enough to encourage the little guys to go all out, but not so much that the quarterfinals and knockout rounds become an all out brawl. There needs to be some preservation of tactics.

That's my idea. Platini, it's your move.