The £3.7bn Champions League behemoth, Brady and Beckham watch Birmingham win

The Athletic FC is The Athletic s daily football (or soccer, if you prefer) newsletter.

Sign up to receive it directly to your inbox.

Hello! The Champions League returns.

Has any brand in history nailed it quite so well? Coming up: Why UEFAs crown jewel sparkles Brady edges Hollywood derby Is Man Utd starlets career over ? Finding Arsenal s feisty mascot Stars Align: How Champions League became 3.7bn beast Its trendy to dunk on UEFA and, by association, the Champions League.

Behind some undeniably exquisite football lurks avarice and empire building .

The limit of UEFAs altruism is broadening its most elite competition to allow half of Europe to compete in it.

But none of that is to pretend that, as a concept and a product, the Champions League has not been wildly successful.

As an example of how to rebrand, repromote and refresh a single tournament (the former European Cup), very little can touch it.

FIFA s World Cup gets more eyes on it, but the World Cup occurs once every four years.

The club scene is where its at and, commercially, UEFA has it cracked.

Advertisement Dont take my word for it.

The Champions League returns tonight in a new convoluted 36-team format (a word of advice: go with it.

It should make sense before long), and the story of the competitions original reincarnation in 1992 told by Phil Buckingham is a marketing teams delight.

Heres the proof that its forever on the up.

In 2011-12, UEFAs income was 1.17bn ($1.54bn).

The forecast for this season is 3.7bn ($4.9bn).

AC Milan were top earners in 2006-07 with 33.7m ($44.5m).

Manchester City s prize money in 2022-23, the year they won the trophy, was 113.6m ($150m).

It reads like inflation on steroids.

Because it is.

TV companies crave the rights.

Adam Crafton has been investigating what the fortune spent by U.S.

broadcaster CBS bought it .

Brands are falling over each other to pay for exposure.

The Premier League is a commercial beast but not even it can match the Champions League for rock-solid identity or access to the biggest players and clubs.

The initial marketing of the Champions League was astute and aggressive.

Its star logo became instantly synonymous with the tournament, as did its anthem (and if you think creating an anthem like that is a doddle, check out the Premier Leagues equivalent).

But UEFA went further.

Restrictions on domestic leagues freedom to televise games on Champions League nights homed attention in on European ties.

Those leading the rebrand fought with media outlets in certain countries to ensure they called it the Champions League in print, rather than foreign translations.

The nit-picking spawned this funny tale from Craig Thompson, who helped managed the 1992 launch: Id get, You f***ing American, were French, dont tell us to say it in English, Thompson said.

But It was in our DNA that the brand was sacred.

They planted an acorn and, for better or worse, a forest grew.

Not everybody digs the Champions League .

Not everybody is digging the change of format (although I dare say it creates scope for tastier group ties and it achieved the rare feat of a governing body discovering its sense of humour ).

But the architects of the redesign could not have asked for more phenomenal results or a brand with a stronger, more era-defining shelf-life.

UEFA Champions League: Young Boys vs Aston Villa , 12.45pm/5.45pm, CBS, Paramount+, Amazon Prime/TNT Sports; Bayern Munich vs Dinamo Zagreb, 3pm/8pm, Paramount+/TNT Sports; AC Milan vs Liverpool , 3pm/8pm, Paramount+/Amazon Prime; Real Madrid vs Stuttgart, 3pm/8pm, Paramount+/TNT Sports.

Champions League LIVE blog Brady Becks: A-list cast but Stansfield steals the show for Birmingham Tom Brady turned out and David Beckham came with him ( theyre friends, of course.

Their families like the same Miami pizza haunt ).

Rob McElhenney was in town, too.

Ryan Reynolds couldnt be present but joined via camera phone.

Birmingham City versus Wrexham got its Hollywood backdrop.

There was also a game, in which bragging rights went to the NFLs finest .

Birmingham spent big on striker Jay Stansfield and the 21-year-old showed why with two poachers goals, including the header below.

Hes too good for League One .

Realistically, so are Birmingham.

Its not jumping the gun to suggest the title is theirs to lose.

A Lost Generation? Here are some choice stats.

If Vinicius Junior wins the Ballon dOr, hell be the first player born in the 21st century to do so.

Rodri would be the first born in the 1990s.

Either would be the first winner with a birthday later than November 1987.

At the root of these anomalies are Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi .

They hogged the prize forever.

But in thinking about their dominance, Oli Kay stumbled across a peculiar trend: footballers born in a particular patch of the 90s creating smaller waves than they should .

Advertisement Why that is, nobody can definitively say.

Transfer market forces could be a factor.

Advances in the way professionals maintain their online image are referenced, too.

But if youre in Rodris cohort, the chances of you winning the Ballon dOr are genuinely miniscule.

All power to his considerable elbow.

An Uncertain Future: Williams Man Utd career is over as he faces a dangerous driving charge Gifted young footballer doesnt make the grade and leaves a big club.

It happens, and it happens a lot.

Injuries can do it.

Competition can, too.

Many still craft a positive career at a lower level.

Brandon Williams a Manchester United player until his contract ended in June is different.

As Danny Taylor writes, its a sorry case.

Williams isnt injured.

Hes not heading to a smaller club either.

Hes 24, hes unemployed, hes facing a charge of dangerous driving (which he denies) and theres a real chance his career is done.

Dannys looked into how it came to this ; how a full-back who played in the Europa League before he was 20 drifted so far off course.

Theres a parallel universe where Williams is thriving, but in the real world, its far from certain that you will read about him in a football context again.

Around The Athletic FC Catch a match (Selected games) Carabao Cup: Everton vs Southampton , 2.45pm/7.45pm, CBS, Paramount+, Amazon Prime/Sky Sports; Manchester United vs Barnsley , 3pm/8pm, Paramount+/Sky Sports.

And finally...

Playing out from the back is an in-vogue tactic and its here to stay.

Its not a hard-and-fast rule that goalkeepers must go short study goal kicks and youll find variety in the length of distribution but aimless hoofs have gone the way of the dinosaurs.

Done well, it looks mightily impressive .

The Champions League is stuffed with slick exponents.

Done badly, its the cause of acute embarrassment like Bolton Wanderers conceding this abomination (above) to Huddersfield Town over the weekend.

The worst thing about it? Bolton were already 3-0 down but thought it made sense to go all Guardiola anyway.

No wonder the stadium was half empty.

(Top photo Tom Brady and David Beckham watch Birmingham City beat Wrexham.

Credit: Alex Pantling/Getty Images).

This article has been shared from the original article on theathleticuk, here is the link to the original article.