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Remember when everyone was up in arms about the European Super League? This season it came into being.

The new Champions League format fended off agitations for a breakaway, but it’s diminished UEFA’s flagship competition, until the knockout stage at least. In the six sets of matches before Christmas, I often found myself thinking, ‘Who’s playing who this week? Not sure. And what does it mean if Team X wins this game? Er, not sure’.

I’m not against new formats. When UEFA launched the Nations League and tied it to qualifying for the Euros and World Cup, it was the most confusing thing ever invented – even a manager of one of the national teams involved told me he didn’t really understand what was going on.

Nations League - good, Champions League format - bad

Yet it replaced nothing (pointless friendlies) with something. Leagues of four teams mean there’s always something at stake – promotion, relegation, a major tournament play-off spot or the Nations League trophy itself.

North Macedonia and Georgia reached their first Euros. San Marino got promoted! Wonderful.

In contrast, the new Champions League replaced something (a respected format understood by all) with something worse (an unfathomable league stage with less jeopardy).

Some 144 games – each between teams thrown together for no apparent reason – to eliminate 12 of 36 clubs. The bloated table was too vast to have any great meaning.

Big clubs seemed to coast through the early matches – if they slipped up, they thought they’d get through anyway. Meanwhile, Young Boys and Slovan Bratislava got battered every game. Enjoy it, lads?

The league stage draw was worse, too: just a bored Cristiano Ronaldo pressing a button 36 times. He didn’t even shout ‘Siuuu!’ once.

Is this what the European Super League would have been like? It’s not for me, Clive.