Eamon Dunphy column: Manchester United and Spurs are joke shops, they shouldn't be allowed near next season's Champions League

The Champions League is the most coveted prize in European football.

And that reason is simple, because it is reserved for either the champions of each country, or in the case of the stronger leagues, the teams who finish in the top four.

It shouldn’t be a place for also-rans.

Yet next year it will be.

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No team who finishes 15th or 16th should ever be allowed qualify for the Champions League. When you are a pair of teams who have lost 35 league matches between you, you should be trying to hide with shame.

Yet it is almost certain that one of United or Spurs will be in the Champions League next season, by virtue of a makey-up rule that allows the winners of the Europa League to enter next season’s Champions League.

What message does it send out to the teams competing at the top end of the Premier League, Manchester City, Nottingham Forest, Aston Villa and Chelsea?

Imagine how those players will feel if they miss out and a team 10 or 11 places below them in the table gains entry to the 2025/26 Champions League.

This tournament should be preserved for winners, not for a team who crashes to 4-3 defeat to Brentford, nor one who has lost more league games - 19 - this season than they have won (11) or drawn (5).

Spurs are a joke. Their manager, Ange Postecoglou, is a controversial figure among their supporters, because of his attack-minded philosophy. Everyone knows he is on managerial death-row, ready to be sacked if this season ends trophyless.

But even if it doesn’t, we have to examine the quality of the trophy that Spurs may win.

The Europa League is the poor man’s version of the Champions League. The latter is silk; the former cotton.

Yes, United and Spurs have done well in the competition, reaching the semi-final stage, building sizeable leads after the first leg of their last four games. United, to be fair to them, were excellent in Bilbao last week, building a 3-0 lead.

They fought for that win. Their captain, Bruno Fernandes, led by example. Their opponents were frightened by the image of Manchester United, by the club they used to be, not the one they are now.

For years, United had an aura.

Now they have nothing.

Think about it. They went to Brentford yesterday and lost. Brentford have never won a major trophy. United have won 68, including 20 Premier League titles and three Champions Leagues. Their average attendance is 75,000; Brentford’s is 18,000.

So how come the underdogs are so much better than United this season? It comes down to coaching. United are poorly led; Brentford are the opposite.

Then there are the additional factors, the inability to ever find a suitable replacement for Alex Ferguson, the number of poor signings they have made, the fact their owners are only interested in making money, not in making history.

So, in this context, they should really get what they deserve out of this season. Nothing.

But somehow they have played the role of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, brilliant in Europe, a disgrace in the Premier League. And because of their march to the semis of a lesser competition, they may make it into the hat for next season’s major, well regarded tournament, the Champions League.

They don’t deserve it.

Nor does any team who wins the Europa League.

A situation should never exist where a side like Spurs could lose 19 times, and counting, in the Premier League, and yet make it into Europe’s elite competition.

It’s wrong.

And once again it makes you question the people who run football.

They ruin everything.

If they want to make the Europa League a meaningful competition, then you have to be clever. By rewarding its winners with an escape out of the following year’s event, they are being stupid.

It’s as if they are saying: win it this year and you’ll never have to spend time in our company again.

Yet if there is one thing I have learned about Uefa and Fifa over the years, it is their ability to make eejits of themselves without any shame whatsoever.

The expansion of the Club World Cup into a 32-team month long tournament is both farcical and disgraceful. It means football will now run for 51 weeks of the year. Arne Slot, the Liverpool manager, reacted to the news that his club would not be in this year’s competition by uttering one word: good.

He was relieved to have missed out on the invite because a football man like Slot knows what matters.

And it isn’t a contrived competition.

Think about the tournaments clubs and countries want to win. They are those that have been there for decades. The first World Cup was played in 1930, the first European Championship in 1960, the first European Cup in 1956, the first English title competed for in 1888.

Tradition isn’t something you create. You can’t make up or change the name of a competition and expect people to be attracted to it.

That is why the Europa League is an irritation in the eyes of people who remember the UEFA Cup, why the Club World Cup is seen as a sham, nothing more.

And it is why we have to stand up to TV companies who yearn for more games and who ignore tradition.

The game is in crisis right now. TV companies, Fifa and Uefa are ruining it. And clubs like United and Spurs stand to profit from some boardroom bluffer who thought it a good idea to create a rule where the 15th and 16th best sides in the Premier League get to play off to decide who gains entry to next season’s Champions League.

That’s wrong.

No one can tell me it isn’t.

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