According to president Aleksander Ceferin, Uefa could be counted on to prevent anything like the European Super League ever happening.
Aleksander Ceferin’s Champions League plans are designed to keep the big clubs on top – just like the European Super LeagueCredit: Reuters
His exact words were: “Teams will always qualify and compete in our competitions on merit, not a closed shop run by a select few.”
Now in a Putin-esque about-turn he’s presenting a scheme in which two teams with historic records will be allowed into the Champions’ League in two year’s time without qualifying by a top placing in domestic competition.
No matter how the reasoning is dressed up the fact is he and a group called the European Club Association are nodding to a rich boys’ club who don’t like the idea of fair competition at home leaving them without a ticket to further big bucks abroad.
England in favourable World Cup draw with USA, Iran & Scotland, Wales OR Ukraine
Uefa intend to add four clubs to the original 32, and to turn the first round of their premier competition into a single table involving ten ties for each club.
What we haven’t been told is how opponents will be selected — not drawn from a hat, you may be sure.
My deep suspicion is a ranking system will be fixed to give an extra boost to the continent’s aristocrats’ chances of reaching the knockout stage of 16 clubs.
The proles must wait another season.
If Ceferin thinks that all is fair in love and football then I guarantee all but the supporters of falling giants don’t. Their failures are the result of their own shortcomings and, meanwhile, better-managed, ambitious clubs will be marginalised.
In Ceferin’s system, a club coming fifth in, say, the Premier League might well be omitted in favour of another who comes sixth or even seventh. I make that a protection racket and there is no place anywhere for that let alone in competitive sport.
The excuse for these shenanigans has, as you no doubt realise, nothing to do with fairness and in time that will surely be its undoing.
When competition is corrupted by money, as boxing once was, public interest declines.
Football is miles from being fixed but even a sniff of off-stage deals is enough for doubts to emerge.
In three of the past five seasons Arsenal would have qualified for the Champions’ League under Ceferin’s proposals without ever coming fourth in the League.
This would be a perfect result for Uefa planners but hardly for a number of teams in other countries who have better competitive claims but don’t attract the crowds or, vitally, the appetite of television companies.
English football is enthusiastically followed around the world. The reasons for such support are obvious. Our teams feature internationally famous players who value their jobs and wages.
In general they play entertaining, exciting football and know that winning the Premier League is a prize of great value.
And a word for the Championship, too. It attracts the third highest attendances in the game and, no wonder, because effort and tension buzz through every match.
It also has a system of promotion and relegation understandable to kids of six or seven. Not in the future though.
To all of us the shortly to be considered Uefa plan is so complicated its proud claim of “a coefficient based on historical performances” deadens my heart and brain.
A year ago Ceferin also commented: “Our game has become the greatest sport in the world based on open competition, integrity and sporting merit, and we cannot and we will not allow that to change. Never, ever.”
