FOR clubs from smaller nations, attempting to qualify for the Champions League must feel like standing waiting to get served in a busy pub while bigger brutes on either side constantly try to muscle you out of the way.

That Europe’s elite are trying to again gerrymander elements of the tournament to protect the interests of the few not the many should come as no surprise. Ever since the re-branding of the European Cup in 1992 any notion of this still being an authentic and egalitarian contest to determine the continent’s best club side swiftly went out of the window.

It feels particularly poignant this week with the sad passing of Billy McNeill to know that the powerful image of the Celtic captain lifting the trophy in Lisbon will never be repeated by a representative from another Scottish club. The way things are going, it will become sufficiently challenging just trying to make it through the qualifying process.

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Ajax’s spirit-lifting run to this season’s semi-finals has served as an inspirational tonic for clubs outside of the big five leagues but that new bubble of optimism has been quickly popped by this week’s missive from the European Club Association (ECA) requesting another overhaul of the Champions League format. That Juventus, the club of ECA chairman Andrea Agnelli, have just been dumped out of the competition by Ajax is perhaps only a coincidence in timing.

Agnelli’s letter to the 232 clubs in the ECA contained plenty of flowery language about “enhancement of mobility and dynamism” and “sporting meritocracy” but the plan to introduce promotion and relegation places to the format while limiting or eliminating direct qualification from national leagues told the real story of his intent. Namely to take an already ever-decreasing circle and make it even smaller.

What would be in essence the creation of a European super league from 2024 would again minimise the prospects of clubs from smaller nations, including Scotland, being a part of it. The lifeline UEFA gave these clubs a few years ago when it created a domestic champions’ qualifying pathway is now going to be removed by the ECA, the elite having seemingly grown weary of having to slum it with non-glamorous opposition who don’t provide them with sufficient box office sparkle.

The irony that most of these so-called smaller clubs have a greater right to be in the Champions League having won their own domestic competitions will not have crossed their minds for even a second. Agnelli has denied it is the case but it is surely only a matter of time before the richest clubs are pushing for guaranteed annual inclusion as a safety net for the occasional poor campaign.

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The ECA are set to discuss it his plans in more detail in June, although a meeting of the European Leagues next week – that Agnelli has called on ECA clubs to boycott – will no doubt outline their opposition to anything that might threaten existing domestic structures.

Agnelli’s plan is so far light on detail but it is fair to surmise it will mean more bad news for Celtic and the rest of Scotland’s European hopefuls. And there has already been plenty of that. Next season all four entrants will need to try make it through to the group stage from the first qualifying round – only Rangers managed it this year – while the creation of a third European competition from 2021 will also see Scottish clubs having to settle for a place in a newly-created “Europa League 2” rather than the main competition.

It all adds up to a fairly grim outlook for Scottish clubs and European football. Granted, success on that front has been minimal of late but when so many of our clubs’ highlights and honour lists revolve around thrilling nights on the Continent it is hard not to feel slightly melancholic at the notion that the pursuit of and participation in European football is something likely to become less significant as the years go by.

We speak all season long about “the race for a European place”, another example of the anticipation of something being far much alluring than the reality. Perhaps for those squads forced to return in June to prepare for an early European adventure it won’t be any great hardship having that removed from them, even if their fans would surely miss the trips.

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It is a different story for the league winners, of course. Reaching the Champions League group stage for a second successive season allowed Celtic to post revenue of more than £100m for the year ended June 2018 and without that income they – or whoever eventually supplants them as Scottish champions – will have to turn to alternative ways of trying to replace it.

It won’t be easy. There has been plenty of fanciful talk in the past about North Atlantic leagues or some kind of tie-up with clubs from similarly disenfranchised nations such as Portugal, Belgium and the Netherlands, and perhaps those will be revisited.

Depriving Celtic of that kind of European income would level the playing field to a degree but it would also reduce the calibre of signings arriving in to the league and weaken the quality of our game overall.

Peter Lawwell, Celtic’s chief executive, is evidently a man of influence but even he won’t be able to stem this rising tide. Europe is moving on and Scotland is in danger of being left behind.