Scrapping two-legged Champions League semi-finals – would it work?
The Athletic FC Podcast
The Athletic
4.0 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 5 May 2022
⏱️ 32 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Mark Chapman & The Athletic's Matt Slater discuss reports that UEFA are thinking about scrapping the two-legged Champions League semi-finals that we are all enjoying at the moment. Is it too cynical to think any discussions about doing this would come down to money?!
Joining us is Ricardo Fort, who for over 25 years experience in the sports industry leading the Global Sponsorship teams of Visa and The Coca-Cola Company, Ricardo launched Sport by Fort Consulting to help sponsors, leagues, investors and athletes successfully invest in sports.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | The Athletic. |
| 0:12.8 | Hello, I'm Mark Chapman. |
| 0:14.1 | Welcome to the Business of Sport podcast on The Athletic. |
| 0:16.6 | Mark Slater with us as usual. |
| 0:18.8 | Coming up today, we're going to talk in the main about a piece that |
| 0:23.0 | Matt has written about reports that UEFA are thinking about scrapping the two-legged Champions |
| 0:28.2 | League semifinals that we're all enjoying at the moment. We'll touch on Russia as well and we'll |
| 0:34.0 | touch on Chelsea a little bit later. But these rumours about UEFA's plans are what's going to dominate the pod. |
| 0:40.9 | And if I was being cynical, Matt, which regular listeners might think I am, |
| 0:46.0 | I may suggest this is all about money. |
| 0:48.5 | Of course it's all about money. |
| 0:50.9 | That's what we talk about in this podcast. |
| 0:52.3 | It's what makes the world go round. |
| 0:53.6 | Yeah, so just to remind listeners, do you remember 2020, the pandemic and all that? |
| 1:00.2 | Yeah, they did a final eight tournament. |
| 1:02.0 | I think I'd almost forgotten that. |
| 1:04.0 | Yeah. |
| 1:04.3 | When they stalled the season, they restarted, and they had both European club competitions to finish. |
| 1:11.2 | And they finished the Europa League in Germany. |
| 1:14.0 | And they finished the Champions League in Portugal. |
| 1:17.3 | And they did it basically over about 12, 13 days, I think it was. |
| 1:22.8 | And they squeezed four quarters, two semis and a final in. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Athletic, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of The Athletic and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.