Uefa’s new Champions League is less about greater jeopardy, than its growing desire to supplant sporting integrity with the confected thrills of the TV game show

Once more, with seeding. Uefa’s new Champions League group-stage format is known as the “Swiss system”, and frankly you can write your own jokes there. It’s full of holes. It’s totally unaccountable and its inner workings largely impenetrable to outsiders. It’s a handy conduit for sequestering and laundering the money of some of the world’s worst people. It’s a complex and morally contested way of putting people to sleep for long periods of time. Take your pick.

Perhaps fittingly, it is in Switzerland that the first strides into this bold new era take place, with Young Boys v Aston Villa selected as the early Tuesday kick-off, alongside Juventus v PSV. And of course this is an emblematic choice for other reasons, too. The Berne-based club may be competition outsiders, having secured their spot in a playoff against Galatasaray last month. But domestically they have been an insuperable force, claiming their sixth Swiss title in the past seven years despite a season marred by internal wrangling and insipid route-one football.