kabibe game Adapting to the Champions League’s New Reality

Lille’s players lingered on the field at the Stade Pierre-Mauroykabibe game, communing with their fans. The stands were still full, long after the game had finished, and the party was showing no signs of ending. Ethan Mbappé — famous name, if not quite a familiar face — wore the broad grin of a man who was going to take considerable pleasure in messaging his brother later.

His team had enjoyed a mixed start to the season. Lille sat fifth in Ligue 1, France’s top division: three wins, two losses and a draw. Quite what the next few months would bring was not yet clear. There would not, in all likelihood, be a title challenge in the league. Competition for a Champions League slot was looking intense.

And now, all of a sudden, everything had gathered into cold, sharp focus. Whatever else happened during this campaign, whether those early victories heralded the start of something or whether those defeats were harbingers of trouble, this would always be remembered as the year that Lille beat Real Madrid.

ImageLille’s victory in the Champions League on Wednesday ended Real Madrid’s 36-match unbeaten streak.Credit...Francois Lo Presti/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Over the course of its first two rounds, it has been difficult to know what to make of the new format for the Champions League. There is some firm ground: The competition’s new guise is, we can agree, a monument both to the self-interest of Europe’s most powerful teams and the cravenness of the bodies charged with acting as custodians of soccer’s health.

It has been expressly designed, after all, to bow to the incessant demands of the continent’s aristocrats. They wanted more games against each other. Thanks to UEFA’s spinelessness, they got them.

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