The comedian Mark Steel, host of Radio 4's wonderful Mark Steel's In Town, was not alone in being nonplussed this week by the new Champions League format.

"It's simple," he posted on X. "64 teams play each other in a league, the top 48 go through and the bottom 16 go into a play-off league from which the top 14 go through and the bottom 2 go into a play-off from which the top 2 go through."

And the thing is, he wasn't hugely exaggerating. The format of Uefa's restructured competition is so pointlessly inflated it is doing its best to make satire redundant.

Looking back at the results this week it is close to impossible to work out what any of it means. In the old format, which in itself was hardly a template for economy, you knew where you stood at every moment.

With two of the teams from a group going on to the knock-out rounds and two eliminated, it was clear that ten points across the pre-Christmas fixtures would likely see you through.

Thus, after the opening salvoes, Aston Villa, Liverpool and Celtic would, under the previous system, have been a third of the way there; Arsenal and Manchester City would still have work to do. But since the revamp? No idea. Barcelona sit 23rd in a 36-team table. In previous circumstances that might suggest impending crisis. But given that 24 teams will progress, we can safely say probably not this time.

What the new format has done is introduce an additional 48 games to the schedule in order to eliminate the same number of teams who were evicted under the old system. No wonder Manchester City's Rodri was moaning about the burden placed on those obliged to deliver the new format.

The fact is, it has not enhanced the spectacle, it has not made it more compelling, it has just added more. And as it has done so it has become so elongated, so convoluted, so bloated it has extracted the one thing that sets sport apart: jeopardy.

The Champions League is not an outlier in this relentless determination to expand. This week we have been witness to the less than edifying spectacle of England and Australia playing a day/night one-dayer on September 19. England v Australia, the most potent and lucrative content in world cricket's portfolio, reduced to a tacked-on after-thought in the autumnal gloaming.

This week too, it was announced that the forthcoming Club World Cup, Fifa's green-eyed attempt to park its tanks on Uefa's lawns, has failed to secure a television deal. Clearly Gianni Infantino and his Fifa cronies had not anticipated that the footballing public does not share their enthusiasm for their utterly unnecessary ego-fest foisted on to an already furred-up seasonal calendar.

But this is what modern sporting authorities do: at every opportunity they pump up the volume. Never mind the quality, feel the width. Make things longer, add more rounds, extend the season: that way, they assume, profit lies. No doubt at Uefa they are already planning a new competition to schedule in that lucrative Thursday morning television market.

What they have not recognised is this: for the spectator, that holds ever diminishing appeal. Brian Moore, of this parish, once put it best. He explained that the difference between sport and real life is one of outcome. In the rest of our lives, everything is coloured by compromise; it is one long grey area. In sport it is black and white, you win or you lose (and occasionally share the spoils). Except, clearly, in the new Champions League, when defeat is no full stop. There is always another chance to progress.

Oddly, in the USA, the home of capitalist expansion, they understand this. Sports leagues there do not constantly bloat and expand. The NFL season, which has just got under way, will this year be as it always has been: short, sharp and meaningful. Each team plays just once a week across 18 weekends, each match an event. In that competition they understand the term rarity value. For them less is more.

And we have just witnessed the true power of frugality in the sporting world. The Paris Olympics took us constantly to the edge of our seats because every second had meaning. Across just a fortnight, in each of the sports on show, the purpose was brutal in its simplicity: victory was all, lose and you were out, three years of graft notwithstanding.

The truth is what gets our juices flowing is the excitement of competition that matters. Which is why, in February, we will all be watching when the Champions League eventually, by the most circuitous route, arrives at its knockout stage. The clue is in the word knockout. All or nothing, boom or bust: that is what proper sport should be about, not this pointless faffing.