Sid Lowe

To start with, it didn't seem to me to make a lot of sense.

I thought conceptually the idea of having a league table when you're not playing everyone, of it being structured like this, didn't completely convince me.

There's elements of it that I'm still slightly doubtful about.

But yesterday's final game was fantastic.

And in that sense, I was won over by it.

I think one thing I would say is I feel like we should possibly take a step back from allowing ourselves to believe that the whole format is great because the final day was great.

I think it would be unwise to assume that a goalkeeper scoring an amazing 97th minute goal like that to send Benfica through doesn't necessarily mean the whole format is brilliant and that without that format that would never have happened or that this has happened because of the format.

It's still a goalkeeper scoring a header.

That's still amazing and that doesn't necessarily happen because of the format.

I think there's one or two other doubts I have.

I think there's a slight...

I'm not quite sure how to express this.

I think there's a slight myth of jeopardy.

So there's all this talk about jeopardy and wow, a big team might not get through.

And I think it's a little bit of a myth.

I think we sell ourselves the illusion of jeopardy.

So for example, in Spain, all the discussion was about, oh my goodness, Real Madrid didn't get through.

Well, they did get through.

They're just playing another round of the Champions League.

Another round which, by the way, they'll probably win.