THE CHAMPIONS League, an annual tournament contested by the best teams in Europe, is the pinnacle of club football. Players delay retirement in the hope of winning it. Owners fire managers who fail to deliver it. And supporters trek across the continent to watch it. Ask any of them what glory sounds like, and they will hum you the shrill chorus of the Champions League anthem, a Handel-inspired theme played before every game. But whilst the latter stages of the competition are thrilling, providing home-and-away ties between Europe’s biggest teams, the pool stages are dull. Between September and December each year, 32 teams compete for 16 knockout places. Half of them are realistic contenders from the “Big Five” leagues (Spain, Germany, England, Italy and France), who have qualified by finishing in the top three or four places in their domestic leagues. The others are champions from smaller nations. The result is that many of the 96 pool games are predictable mismatches. In 2015, Sweden’s Malmo conceded 10 goals in their two meetings with Real Madrid; Israel’s Maccabi Tel Aviv leaked eight goals against Chelsea; plucky BATE Barisov, from Belarus, limited Barcelona to five. Such routs are an unappetising spectacle. And even when an underdog does pull off an unlikely result—like Kazakhstan’s FC Astana, who secured a 0-0 draw against Atletico Madrid—their performances are scrappy and seldom lead to progression. Interest in the group stages is waning, explains Jonathan Wilson, a European football expert. This is certainly true in Britain, where few fans have been willing to pay for BT Sport’s coverage of Manchester United versus Club Brugge or Chelsea against Dynamo Kyiv. And there is unease about competitive balance on the continent, too. The Italian, French and German domestic leagues are all set to have the same champions this season as in the previous three. By contrast, the unpredictable English Premier League will crown a fourth different champion in as many years, and will kick off in 2016-17 with a new television deal worth £8 billion ($11.6 billion). Fans want to see games that can go either way: European clubs play too few games that meet this criterion.

This is why the European Club Association (ECA), the representative body for Europe’s elite clubs, wants to reform the Champions League. Officials from top sides, including British teams reluctant to miss out on any new deal, have been meeting throughout 2016 to discuss potential changes. One idea is an extra knockout round to whittle 32 teams down to 16 before the pool stage, whilst creating two groups of eight with each qualifier playing 14 games before the semi-finals. Another suggestion is to give automatic places to the most popular clubs—“wild cards”, in the words of Barcelona president Josep Bartomeu—thus preventing the biggest names from missing out, as Borussia Dortmund, Liverpool and both Milan sides have in recent years. The most controversial proposal of all is a breakaway “Super League” of top teams from the “Big Five” nations, which ECA and Bayern Munich chairman Karl-Heinz Rummenigge hinted at in January. The ECA has since distanced itself from such a notion.

It is not yet clear which reforms, if any, will be enacted. The Union of European Football Associations (UEFA), which runs the Champions League, currently lacks a permanent president, after Michel Platini was banned from football in the wake of the FIFA corruption scandal. Simon Chadwick, a professor in sports business at the University of Salford, notes that this might make UEFA vulnerable to threats from Europe’s biggest clubs. But if these changes were accepted, they could cause more harm than good. The proposed groups of eight would exacerbate the problem of uncompetitive fixtures if too many minnows reach them—few fans want to see an underdog struggle through 14 drubbings—or if two potential qualifiers quickly pull ahead. And the “wild cards” system, whilst allowing more popular clubs to participate, would be subject to great pressure from rich teams looking to protect their European interests. Football administrators hardly have the best track record when it comes to awarding things based on merit.

But meritocracy is exactly what European football needs. For a start, the Champions League ought to divide prize money based on how far teams progress, not where they come from. Last season, nearly half of the €1 billion ($1.1 billion) pot was awarded using the “market pool” system, which favours nations with larger TV audiences; subsequently, Switzerland’s FC Basel collected €18m ($20m) for reaching the last 16, whilst Paris Saint-Germain took home €46m ($52m) after exiting at the same stage. Such an arrangement is not going to narrow the gap between the Davids and the Goliaths.

Another simple way to make Europe’s premier football tournament more competitive is to let the strongest teams play. According to ClubElo.com, a site that ranks football teams according to the Elo points exchange formula, nine of this year’s Champions League pool sides were outside Europe’s best 50 teams; some ranked little better than clubs in the English second division. A new Super League could be designed to exclude such minnows, and allow the continent’s best teams to play each other every week, with domestic competitions acting as a second tier. The opposition to such an idea, however, is substantial, hence the ECA’s public disavowal of it. Administrators in smaller nations worry that their teams might be barred from a breakaway tournament. Few fans would be able to attend regular away games in different countries. And even the smallest changes to domestic leagues have been difficult to force through, such as the Premier League’s failure to introduce a “39th game” on foreign soil.

But whilst a new Super League is unlikely to be formed, the existing Champions League could be altered to include stronger sides. UEFA could invite “Big Five” teams who miss out on qualification spots in their domestic leagues to compete against the minnows in an expanded playoff before the pool stages. Fans of mid-table British and Spanish teams often complain that their sides are better than the obscure opponents drawn for Bayern Munich or Juventus. A knockout contest between the champions of the minor leagues and the also-rans in the bigger divisions would put such claims to the test. The likes of West Ham and Villarreal would have a fighting chance against Manchester City and Real Madrid, two of this year’s semi-finalists: they have beaten them in their respective domestic leagues this season. They deserve the opportunity to do so again on football’s grandest stage.