Trying to keep across 29 hours’ worth of football was not just akin to major substance abuse but a cause of fear and panic
Raspberry Beret by Prince, Stayin’ Alive by the Bee Gees, American Pie by Don McLean, All I Want is You by U2, the theme tune to Sesame Street: these are all in their different ways excellent pieces of music. But as part of playlists broadcast without end and at high volume, all have been used by the US army in psychological warfare – demonstrating that too much of a good thing is not just possible but, at extreme levels, absolutely excruciating. Watching the manic conclusion to the Champions League group stage on Wednesday brought those playlists to mind, as I debated whether I was being entertained or encouraged to run screaming from my house.
The trend in sport for many years has been to make competitions bigger, longer, more drawn out, and at first the new 36-team Champions League format felt like another step on this tiresome journey. But the widely acknowledged need for the final games of a group stage to be played at the same time forced tournament organisers into a temporary swerve in a very different direction. If you watched the final round of fixtures traditionally, soberly, one game at a time, even without breaks or pauses it would take you one entire day and five additional hours, including stoppage time.
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