Now the real show begins - How the Champions League knockout phase can make or break a club

From the backstreets of Buenos Aires and Bloemfontein to the exclusive academies of Barcelona and Beijing, people from all walks of life have access to, and can enjoy, the beautiful game. At the elite level, however, it's all about the money.

Deloitte’s latest edition of the Football Money League highlighted the importance of finance and illustrated how success off the pitch intrinsically, if not eventually, leads to success on it. In the transfer market, cash injections at clubs such as Manchester City, Paris Saint Germain and Anzhi Makhachkala have challenged the convention that the best players only join the perennial superpowers.

If a club cannot count on a billionaire CEO from the Middle East or Asia, or cannot lure away the marketing brains at Real Madrid or Bayern Munich then the most vital source of revenue is the Champions League.

Qualifying for the knockout phase has become a minimum requirement for the traditional big guns; primarily so that they can challenge 15 other teams to become Europe’s best team and also to claim the biggest chunk of Uefa’s prize money. However, for the dark horses and the underdogs still in the running, it provides an opportunity to stage a fairtytale run deep into the competition and gives an equal shot at the financial rewards.

Last season, Tottenham, and to a larger extent, Schalke demonstrated how lucrative the latter stages of Europe's richest competition can be. Schalke jumped six places in the Money League, to 10th, and their revenue skyrocketed from €139.8 million to €202.4m thanks largely to their romp to the semi-finals. They pocketed €39.75m from Uefa and their broadcast revenue more than doubled that of the previous year. The exertions in European competition on the part of Spurs and S04, however, impacted their domestic performances. Both finished the season in modest places and failed to retain their Champions League slots.

2010-11 TOP CHAMPIONS LEAGUE EARNERS - Teams that made the knockout phase -

Emerging from the group stage, however, doesn't immediately guarantee largesse. In last season’s prize distribution, Shakhtar Donetsk and Copenhagen made it out of their groups but earned less than Panathinaikos, who failed to progress to the knockouts.

The reason for this disproportion is because performance-based prize money in the Champions League only makes up a small cut of the earnings. It’s the share of the television revenue, or market pool, that determines the big winners and losers.

2010-11 TOP CHAMPIONS LEAGUE EARNERS - Teams that fail to make the knockouts -

The number of surprise packages in this season’s knockout rounds could potentially cause another unpredictable market pool distribution. Basel have already raised plenty of eyebrows by eliminating Manchester United. If they can oust Bayern, and go far, they could be this year’s success story. The same goes for Bayer Leverkusen and CSKA Moscow, both of whom could generate mass appeal among TV audiences if they stun Barcelona and Real Madrid respectively in the last 16, as could Napoli if they continue their English giant-slaying run and add Chelsea to their Manchester City scalp.

Realistically, there is unlikely to be a lot of interest in the fate of APOEL, this season's Cinderella side. They could suffer the same misfortune as Shakhtar and Copenhagen when the time comes for Uefa to hand out the cheques.

While there is no guarantee that an appearance in the Champions League knockout rounds will secure a bigger share of the earnings from Uefa, remaining involved in the competition beyond December has become a necessity to boost a club's financial health.

If the money distribution breakdown from last season's tournament is anything to go by, just qualifying for Europe's blue-ribbon club competition has become more important than ever. But it's the progression to the knockout stage - or failure to - which can make or break a club's fortunes.

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