The Champions League — where dreams come true, fantasies become reality, and legends are born. Or something like that.
Unless you’re Dinamo Zagreb, Red Bull Salzburg, Celtic, Red Star Belgrade, Slovan Bratislava, or Young Boys, in which case the Champions League is where fears prevail, nightmares become reality, and careers get ruined.
OK, maybe not that bad, but fans of the above clubs can be forgiven for feeling apprehensive when UEFA’s anthem plays during Matchday Three tonight (Tuesday) and tomorrow.
These are teams who are used to dominating their domestic leagues, winning 60% or 70% of their league matches year after year (even as high as 84% last season for Red Star) to claim title after title.
Taking the past seven domestic seasons, Dinamo, Salzburg, Celtic, Red Star, Slovan, and Young Boys have won 38 league titles between them, out of a possible 42. Dinamo has taken every one of those Croatian championships with Red Star doing the same in Serbia, and the rest have won six of the available seven.
They are superior in their homelands almost to the point of boredom. And yet, from their combined opening two rounds of Champions League matches this season, the six teams have scored 12 goals between them and conceded a whopping 49. That’s a combined goal difference of -37 from 12 matches.
Transferring domestic bliss to European success is not easy, especially when your budget is a fraction of the spending power available at Manchester City, Real Madrid, or Bayern Munich.
According to transfer website Transfermarkt, Slovan has spent a total of £2.6million ($3.4m) on new signings in the past three seasons and their squad has a total estimated value of £24m. The same source lists City as having spent £365m in the past three years (which, to be honest, feels quite frugal for them) and their squad value is estimated at being a smidgen over £1billion. So, City has spent roughly 139 times as much as Slovan since 2022, and their squad is worth 43 times as much.
When the teams faced each other three weeks ago on Matchday Two, Slovan’s odds for winning on home turf were 40/1. They may have a monopoly on the Slovakian title, but with a budget akin to a club in League One, English football’s third tier, they were predictably no match for City.
“We dreamt of, one day, the best team in the world, or one of the best, coming (here),” Slovan manager Vladimir Weiss told reporters before the match. The reality, however, was less romantic: City had 28 shots, scored four goals, hit the woodwork three times, and registered an expected goals (xG) figure of 3.8. Slovan had 24% possession and didn’t register a shot on target.
“Honestly, this was just as we expected,” Tomas, a Slovan fan who attended the game, tells The Athletic. “Slovan has not played in the Champions League for 32 years (having failed to get past its qualifying rounds on 11 occasions), so it is a big success to even be there.
“When we beat (Denmark’s champions) Midtjylland to qualify (having got through three previous ties in a campaign that began four days before last season had ended with the Euro 2024 final on July 14), it was one of the best results in the last few years and was like a European final for us.
“Then we were drawn against Manchester City, Bayern Munich, AC Milan, and Atletico Madrid (among their eight league-phase games). These are matches we have not had for many, many years, so even though we will probably lose, it is still a big prize. The Celtic defeat (Slovan lost 5-1 in Glasgow on Matchday One) was not good, but even a club like Celtic has much more money than us.
“We have Dinamo (Zagreb) at home (on November 5), a match we can look to draw or win, but mostly I want the eight games to be a lesson for the players and the owners, and for us to make money from TV and full stadiums to spend on improving the team.”
There is a distinct “happy to be there” vibe from Slovan, but that does not apply to every Champions League ‘minnow’.
Salzburg, who will compete in the revamped Club World Cup in the United States next summer courtesy of their consistent Champions League group-phase qualification in recent years, are adjusting to life under a new manager in Jurgen Klopp’s long-time Liverpool assistant Pep Lijnders, and were probably thought of as a bit of a dark horse going into the league phase.
Instead, they were comfortably beaten 3-0 at Sparta Prague and then surprisingly trounced 4-0 at home to French newcomers Brest. They lie fourth in the early-season Austrian Bundesliga, six points off leaders Sturm Graz, but have two games in hand.
Pep Lijnders acknowledges Salzburg fans after defeat in Prague (Michal Cizek/AFP via Getty Images)
“I don’t want to make excuses, I take full responsibility,” Lijnders said in a press conference after the Brest defeat. “This group has enough quality that it should not happen like this. That worries me a little bit.
“We expected a completely different start in the Champions League, especially with the qualification (beating FC Twente, 5-4 on aggregate, and Dynamo Kyiv, 3-1). I’m sick of people calling us a young team. There are no excuses, we have enough quality to win football matches in the Champions League.”
Young Boys, whose Swiss Super League is of a similar standard to Austria’s Bundesliga, will also have expected better than to be propping up the 32-team Champions League table after two defeats (3-0 at home to Aston Villa, 5-0 at Barcelona).
Like Salzburg, the Bern club are enduring domestic woes and sacked manager Patrick Rahmen, who had only been appointed in the summer, a week after the Barcelona thrashing. They are 10th in a 12-team domestic league. A visit from Inter Milan, Serie A champions and three-time European Cup/Champions League winners, awaits on Wednesday.
Dinamo also dispensed with their manager after suffering one of the heaviest defeats in Champions League history, losing 9-2 at Bayern last month. Sergej Jakirovic had led Dinamo to a Croatian league and cup double in 2023-24 but the Bayern thrashing was deemed unacceptable, and he left two days later by mutual consent.
Celtic fans enjoy their European trips – until the football starts (Dean Mouhtaropoulos/Getty Images)
“There’s maybe an unrealistic expectation at the club that we should be doing better, but given our resources compared to the Premier League and the big Spanish, German, and Italian clubs, we’re on a different planet. We’ll find the new format only skews the imbalance further.”
We are working with an incredibly small sample size after two rounds but the early results in the expanded 36-team ‘league phase’ do suggest the scales are tipping further. We have seen scorelines of 9-2, 7-1, 5-0, and 5-1, plus four 4-0s. After 36 matches, this is proving to be one of the most goal-heavy editions of the Champions League, with 3.19 per game being close to the highest on record (3.24 in 2019-20).
So far, it has been the most one-sided Champions League season yet, with an average margin of victory of 2.57 goals, comfortably above the next highest of 2.37 from the 1993-94 season.
By expanding the competition, the quality will be diluted, while this bigger first stage could lend itself to teams playing more expansively, given the probable need for only 10 or so points from your eight matches to reach at least the playoff knockout round, where places in the last-16 will be up for grabs.
As the rich get richer and the financial imbalance across Europe increases, expect more of the same. And expect fans of relative Champions League minnows to dread rather than relish their continental adventures.
(Top photos: Getty Images)