28 Goals Later

5.7.8.8.

Not the last four digits of my debit card. Or phone number.

It’s the number of goals conceded by the four English teams that exited the Champions League at the last-16 stage this week. 

Math isn’t my strong point, but that’s an average of 7 (seven) goals per team across the two-legged ties. In them, there was an incredible average of less than 18.5 minutes between the goals scored by both teams.

When some people (me included) criticised the quality and entertainment levels in the Premier League this season, the counter argument put forward was the high number of goals being scored, as if that was – in itself – a barometer of entertainment. Did this also apply to the Champions League?

8 Days Later

The Round of 16 was hotly anticipated with some great match-ups, on paper at least.

In a little over a week, few of those match ups have lived up to expectations. Many were one-sided and although the goals certainly flowed, the Premier League suffered a harsh reality check, especially when pitted against opposition from La Liga.

Most people had expected Spurs to be the ones to fall hardest against Atletico, given their disastrous Premier League form, and in the first seventeen minutes of the first leg they didn’t disappoint. In the end though, they ‘won’ the rest of that nightmare in Madrid, as well as the second leg to end up with a mildly respectable 5-7 aggregate defeat.

This sounds even more respectable given Newcastle United shipped seven in one match at the Camp Nou, and five in 27 minutes either side of half-time as Barcelona ran riot. The Catalans eased off in the last twenty minutes and possibly spared the Geordies a much bigger defeat, although they could easily have scored more goals themselves across the two games.

The ridiculously high scoring ties had started the previous night when holders PSG added a further three goals to their 5-2 lead from the first leg, highlighting a gap between them and Chelsea that few would have predicted in the summer when the lighter Blues brushed them aside in the World Club Cup. But, like last year, PSG seem to click as the season progresses and this one, by the end, was a complete mis-match.

By comparison, Manchester City were proving positively stingy in only letting in five against Real Madrid in their now-annual Champions League knock-out round face-off. And they had to play with ten men for most of the home leg. Who says Pep hasn’t still got it?

Talking of mismatches, the whole round had a strange feel to it. As well as the extraordinarily high volume of goals, there were precious few close ties. Even the two that had second-leg comebacks saw the home teams win 5-0 and 4-0 while Bayern Munich racked up double figures in their two legs against Atalanta.

144 Games Later

With the competition growing so big, maybe this is an unintended consequence as it’s created a whole round where the gaps are too big between the best and the rest. It also makes a mockery of the extended league phase and the 144 games plus play offs matches played to get to a stage where those teams finishing in the top eight are simply blown away by those who got there via a play off, as happened to Chelsea, Manchester City and Spurs.

It also made me consider the impact on fans. Three thousand Newcastle fans were in the Camp Nou Stadium / Building Site to see their second-half capitulation. Another 7,000 were apparently in the city and watching in bars. There’s never a good time to concede seven goals, but that’s got to be one of the worst.

Similarly, how would a Spurs fan feel when they’d shelled out for flights and accommodation on top of tickets only to see the game – and probably the tie - be over (for them and their goalie) before the first twenty minutes are even up?

It also got me thinking about what fans really want, especially when they travel long distances to see their team on the continent.

44 Years Earlier

Another time period granted, and when European football looked very different, but my uncle – no longer with us so I can’t ask him to compare – was a huge Villa fan and went to every game in their run to the 1982 European Cup Final and win over Bayern Munich in Rotterdam. I know because he purchased a match programme from every game, and I still have them.

In the first round, he was off to Reykjavik in the days before a flight to see an Icelandic volcano was on everybody’s weekend to-do list. I thought he was going to the North Pole as I had little understanding of geography in September 1981. They won 2-0 at FC Valur, following a routine 5-0 win in the home leg.

Next up was an entirely different trip altogether to that one as he – and a few hundred other fans – went  behind the Iron Curtain to watch their team take on a very strong Dynamo Berlin in the Friedrich-Ludwig-Jahn-Sportpark. In those days, the fans and team, plus journalists, directors and any significant others flew on the same plane. In the away leg, an amazing length of the pitch run by Tony Morley helped Villa triumph 2-1; a result that didn’t get enough credit at the time. Not even a 0-1 deficit in the return could dampen enthusiasm. Away goals – another UEFA change; don’t get me started - took Villa through to the quarter-final.

This is where it got really interesting. They were drawn against Dynamo Kiev, when Ukraine was very much still a part of the Soviet Union. Again one plane accommodated all those playing and attending. I remember being told about the extremely basic facilities at the hotel – they had to pass a single toilet seat around – and there is a brilliant ITV documentary that tells it much better.

The game had been moved from Kiev to Simferopol – some 200 miles away – and was played at the Lokomotiv Stadium, where Villa clung on for a goalless draw. In this era, it was exactly the way to approach tricky European ties; try to hold out for a draw in the away leg and then rely on home advantage, and the opponents dodgy form outside of their country, to see you through.  

A fortnight later, two first half goals – the first from the late, great Gary Shaw – put Villa into the last four. That tie, versus Anderlecht, was by far the shortest distance to travel so far yet also the most troublesome. Crowd violence both outside and inside Villa Park had marred the first game which Villa squeaked by a single Morley goal.

In the return in Brussels, more trouble was witnessed off the pitch as Villa hung on for another 0-0 that clinched a place in the final. But a pleasant night it was not, and the violence cost the club a behind-closed-doors game in the next season’s competition and vetoed a trip to the final for me as – after seeing the TV footage and hearing about it from her brother – mother said no.

While goals were at a premium, in the other semi-final, Bayern won 7-4 over two legs against CSKA Sofia. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

One more journey, to the Dutch port city of Rotterdam, followed as Villa defied the odds, and losing their goalkeeper in the first few minutes as well as a star-studded team of Germans who would reach the World Cup Final a few weeks later, to win with a Peter Withe goal in the second-half.

Twenty’s Plenty

That, if you’ve been counting, meant that in the nine games it took to win the thing, Villa had conceded two goals. For those who went to the away games, the goals against column showed just one on their travels.

In 2026, twenty-eight goals were conceded in just eight games by four of the six English clubs in the competition. For those fans at the away legs, the number was twenty across the four matches.

My uncle liked his football and no doubt wanted to be entertained. But in his combined trips to Iceland, East Germany, the USSR, Belgium, and The Netherlands, he’d seen his team play over 800 minutes but only score five times (roughly every three hours) and concede just once.

And yet it was the happiest time of his life.

Sure, he liked to see goals; just like the rest of us. But they aren’t the only, or even best, guide to happiness.

UEFA, in their wisdom, have confused the amount of games, the number of goals and the quality of opposition as being key drivers of fan satisfaction.

But would we rather be celebrating a goalless draw in Berlin? Or losing 7-2 in Barcelona?

Goals will always be important to fans.

But it does also depend on which net they are going into.