You'd hope, although it's not likely to happen, that this move has castrated the big clubs enough for UEFA and the Champions League to start telling them to fuck off with their threats and bullying tactics and actually open the competition back out to clubs across Europe.
I mean we take the piss out of Scottish football, but is it really fair that the club that won the title in the 14th best league in Europe has to go through 3 qualifying rounds to get into a tournament with 32 spaces, while the 4th placed team in England or the 2nd best team in Russia go straight through to the tournament? And people might say that they're shit, but why is that? Is it because they've had extra obstacles put in front of them because they just want the big teams in every year? I still remember not too long ago when Celtic would give the big boys a run for their money at times. And I'm using Celtic, but it could just as easily be Dinamo Zagreb, Red Star Belgrade, Olympiakos, or any other number of teams that were actually champions. And even if they get knocked out in the first round, how is that any different to the rags or automatic qualifiers Rennes and Marseille who went out with 1 and 3 points respectively?
Hell, it was only because of covid fucking up the schedules that Ajax didn't have to qualify. Fucking Ajax! Champions of the Dutch league and semi-finalists two years ago, and they would have had to go through the qualifying rounds. But if West Ham scrape into the top four this season, they'll go straight to the group stages because they're from England despite never having either won the league or competed in the Champions League.
I'm all in favour of making it harder to qualify from the big five leagues (maximum 2 automatic qualifiers and the rest go through qualifying rounds) and have more automatic qualifiers from smaller leagues. But I bet it won't happen because UEFA are more interested in lining their pockets than principles, and big teams from big leagues do that unfortunately.