The Champions League has become lopsided and predictable (but did its group stage draw anyway)

UEFA conducted its interminable Champions League group stage draw on Thursday, and for the second year in a row, it produced no real deathly groups of note.

After a litany of former stars was tasked with slowly pulling a bunch of balls from a series of bowls, the groups broke down as follows:

A
Paris Saint-Germain (France)
Arsenal (England)
FC Basel (Switzerland)
Ludogorets (Bulgaria)

B
Benfica (Portugal)
Napoli (Italy)
Dynamo Kyiv (Ukraine)
Besiktas (Turkey)

C
Barcelona (Spain)
Manchester City (England)
Borussia Moenchengladbach (Germany)
Celtic (Scotland)

D
Bayern Munich (Germany)
Atletico Madrid (Spain)
PSV (Netherlands)
FC Rostov (Russia)

E
CSKA Moscow (Russia)
Bayer Leverkusen (Germany)
Tottenham Hotspur (England)
AS Monaco (France)

F
Real Madrid (Spain)
Borussia Dortmund (Germany)
Sporting Lisbon (Portugal)
Legia Warsaw (Poland)

G
Leicester City (England)
FC Porto (Portugal)
Club Brugge (Belgium)
FC Kobenhavn (Denmark)

H
Juventus (Italy)
Sevilla (Spain)
Olympique Lyon (France)
Dinamo Zagreb (Croatia)

There will be appealing games aplenty to keep the casual fan engaged through the three-month group stage slog. PSG and Arsenal should play entertaining games. So will Barcelona and Manchester City; Bayern Munich and Atletico Madrid; Real Madrid and Borussia Dortmund; and indeed Juventus and Sevilla.

And you can’t help but feel for City, who seem pathologically incapable of drawing a more forgiving group. That Pep Guardiola’s new team has come so far and spent this much money in recent years, yet has no more to show for its five much-hyped Champions League campaigns than a lone foray past the round of 16 is largely to do with terrible luck. It seems the hardest group always seems to find the Citizens. And even when they survive, they manage to be paired with the best team in the subsequent round of 16. Perhaps last year’s run to the semifinals, where they were bested by eventual champions Real Madrid, represented a turn in their fortunes. Or perhaps, judging by this year’s draw, it didn’t.

Because if any group would appear to be the toughest, it’s C. Barcelona are, well, Barcelona. Monchengladbach aren’t world beaters, exactly, but still one of the best teams in Pot 3 of the draw, in spite of having the lowest UEFA coefficient. Celtic aren’t competitive with the continent’s big clubs any longer, but they can spring a surprise on their day.

The latter issue, however, is an increasingly conspicuous and problematic one. Looking through the draw, only a handful of teams truly look like contenders to win the thing. If this is indeed a league of champions, it’s hard to imagine any team not named PSG, Barca, Bayern, Atletico, Real or Juventus becoming the champions of those champions. How many outsiders are there, perhaps capable of a Cinderella run of good form and fortune? Arsenal, City, Dortmund and perhaps Sevilla. That’s it.

You likely picked up on the fact that those clubs are either Spanish, English or German, or extremely rich (PSG) and exceedingly cleverly run (Juve) and still from pretty big leagues. Less than a third of the field of entrants can conceivably win this nine-month marathon.

That’s problematic. As the commercialization of the sport zooms along, and the talent continues to concentrate in the richest leagues, and on the richest teams within those richest leagues, the victim has been the Champions League’s television viewer. Because in truth, the group stage has become a sullen march toward a foregone conclusion. Even the round of 16 is uninteresting most of the time. It isn’t until the field has been winnowed down to those eight or so teams with even a remote chance of winning it, that the thing becomes more watchable.

Did you notice, perhaps, that the Europa League games played on Thursdays – after two days of Champions League drudgery – in a much more even field tend to be far more exciting? This is no fluke. A competition with the continent’s juggernauts in it, and two dozen other decent but conspicuously less talented clubs, will be more lopsided than one with the 33rd through 80th best teams. Such is the gap between the very top and everybody else. Yet it’s those few transcendent clubs doing battle with each other that eventually gives us the most memorable games.

That’s the trade-off of watching the Champions League. Put up with several months marred by duds, and in the end you get to the fireworks.