Football as a content machine: 18 Champions League games was fun but overstuffed | Max Rushden

The joy of the game is that big moments are rare – the climax of the UCL group phase felt like too much of a good thing

I

t’s half an hour after attempting to watch 18 football matches at the same time on the final match day of the Champions League group stage, so it’s still a little early to tell whether I think it was a brilliant night of football or not.

The information overload from a TV, laptop and phone means I may need a couple of weeks to really process it – by which time of course this will all be forgotten and we’ll be wondering whether one point from three Premier League games is enough for Thomas Frank to keep his job.

It is fair to say that the jeopardy does go right to the end with this format. And the obvious truth is that if you put enough football matches on at the same time, odds are something interesting will happen. Thirty-six teams in an eight-game league means the as-it-stands table will change a lot. Make it 128 teams playing four games, and see how the permutations algorithm deals with that.