The Grand Illusion of a ‘Must-Win’ Game
So, let’s get this straight. The corporate suits and their media mouthpieces are calling this Benfica vs. Ajax match a “final that has to be won.” A final. You have to laugh, don’t you? A group stage game, a desperate, pathetic scramble from a team with zero points, is being packaged and sold to us as some epic, do-or-die coliseum battle. It’s a marketing slogan, a hollow catchphrase designed to inject some manufactured drama into a system that has bled the real passion completely dry. This isn’t a final. It’s a farce. It’s the institutional equivalent of a manager’s last stand before the board inevitably brings down the axe, a frantic attempt to secure a parachute into the Europa League—the competition for UEFA’s forgotten children—just to squeeze a few more euros out of the broadcast deal.
This is what modern football has become. A soap opera. A poorly written one at that. The suits at UEFA have bloated this competition into a six-match slog where half the games are meaningless, so when two legacy clubs find themselves drowning, the spin doctors have to work overtime. They have to convince you, the fan, the person whose ancestral loyalty they exploit for profit, that this matters more than it does. It matters for the balance sheet. It matters for the TV ratings. But for the soul of the game? Please.
A Ghost at the Feast
Remember Benfica? Not this current iteration, but the real Benfica. The club of Eusébio, the two-time European champions, a name that once struck fear across the continent. That Benfica is dead. It’s a ghost haunting the corridors of the Estádio da Luz, a brand name slapped on a squad that functions as little more than a high-end development academy for the financial behemoths in England and Spain. They find the talent, they polish it, and then they sell it to the highest bidder before the ink is even dry on the kid’s first major contract. And we’re supposed to be shocked they have zero points? It’s the logical conclusion of a business model that prioritizes transfer profits over trophies. They are perpetually rebuilding, forever in transition, a team whose primary purpose is to feed the top of the pyramid. Disgusting.
And then there’s Ajax, their opponent in this grand “final.” Oh, the irony. Ajax wrote the book on this model. The great Johan Cruyff’s philosophy of beautiful, attacking football has been perverted into a ruthlessly efficient production line for the super-clubs. They churn out brilliant youngsters, have one glorious run every decade to remind the world they exist, and then watch as their team is dismembered, picked apart by vultures with bigger checkbooks. So this isn’t a clash of philosophies. It’s a meeting of two high-level feeder clubs, two farm teams battling for the right to sell their prize cattle at a slightly higher price next summer. The outcome of the game is almost irrelevant to the long-term trajectory of either institution. They are locked in a cycle of develop-and-sell, and this game is just another data point for the scouts in the luxury boxes.
The Rot at the Core: UEFA’s Puppet Show
You cannot talk about this sham without pointing the finger directly at the source of the sickness: UEFA. This entire competition is a monument to their greed and corruption. The Champions League isn’t a sporting tournament anymore; it’s a closed shop designed to funnel endless cash into the coffers of a self-appointed elite. Financial Fair Play? A sick joke. It was created to pull up the ladder, to ensure that no new money could challenge the established order. The format changes, the endless tinkering, it’s all done to guarantee more games, more broadcast slots, more opportunities to sell advertising to cryptocurrency scams and state-owned airlines. They’ve turned the beautiful game into a content farm.
And look at the other fixtures they’re trying to shove down our throats. Galatasaray vs. Saint-Gilloise. Who is this for? It’s filler content. It’s background noise for a Tuesday evening, a product to fill airtime between commercials. The passion of the fans in Istanbul or Brussels is real, but to the organizers, it’s just another “asset,” another “market” to be exploited. The very essence of competition has been diluted to the point of meaninglessness. It’s a predictable, pre-ordained procession where the same 8 or 10 clubs will end up in the latter stages, because the system is explicitly designed to ensure they do. It’s rigged. Utterly and completely rigged.
The Inevitable, Depressing End
So what happens in this so-called final? Maybe Benfica, fueled by desperation and the roar of a crowd that deserves so much better, pulls off a miracle. Maybe they win. So what? The coach gets a temporary stay of execution. The board has a slightly better talking point at the next shareholder meeting. A few players might add a couple of million to their transfer value. Then what? They’ll get hammered in the next round, or drop into the Europa League and get knocked out by a team that actually wants to be there. Nothing fundamentally changes. The cycle just resets.
Or maybe they lose. The coach is sacked, replaced by the next name on the managerial carousel. The media writes scathing columns about the club’s “crisis.” The fans rage. And then the January transfer window opens, the club sells its one remaining valuable asset to balance the books, and the whole pathetic process begins anew. That is the reality. This isn’t a final. It’s a single data point in a long, slow, managed decline. It’s a symptom of a disease that has infected the entire sport, a world where history, loyalty, and passion are just buzzwords to be leveraged by corporate overlords. And they expect us to pay for the privilege of watching it all burn. Absolutely not.
