Plans for European expansion pose a long-term threat to our domestic game
Machinations over the future of elite competition demand careful scrutiny, says Steve Parish
Steve Parish
Wednesday March 31 2021, 12.01am, The Times
Share
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/...ng-term-threat-to-our-domestic-game-6p93jh978
Even for the small few who are engaged with football politics, the changes being proposed to European club competitions from 2024-25 onwards are hard to keep track of and confusing. But it is my view that we need to scrutinise them every bit as much as we do decisions taken in the Premier League. Make no mistake, these are the latest in a long line of machinations that represent long-term threats to domestic football as we know it. .
Yesterday, Uefa postponed a decision on Champions League reforms that include proposals to give two places to top clubs based on their historical record in Europe and expand the number of teams and games played at the group stage of the competition. Uefa is operating under the threat of some clubs forming their own competition — “Champions League” or “Super League”, call it what you will — led by the European Clubs Association (ECA), which is basically Europe’s 20 largest clubs.
This one-time pressure group has implanted itself at the centre of policy development. Indeed two ECA members sit on the 19-person Uefa executive committee and eight members on the 18-person Uefa competitions committee — bodies that pass all these decisions on to the rest of us. Meanwhile, the rest of the game, ie the many thousands of other clubs around Europe, has only one representative at this top table: the president of the European Leagues, Lars Christer Olsson.
Uefa itself is compromised by a conflict of interests. Like Fifa, it is a governing body that sets out the football calendar and regulates the sport while at the same organising tournaments that generate huge revenues.
We find ourselves at a key point in a debate about the future of the game we love. When we vote in the Premier League, I understand that we have a unique responsibility and duty to the game and that there will be scrutiny of our decisions — as there should be. In contrast, there is a very real danger these fundamental European reforms — which would begin to change football irrevocably — could just slip through.
From within the ECA membership, there is a constant lobby to cement the position of certain clubs into a gilded elite that can never be challenged or toppled. Their original proposals were watered down because of public opposition and their own internal conflict, but on the table are still plans that would install three principles that have scope to be extended. For me it’s a clear “foot in the door” strategy.
The first is increased places for the big leagues — a system under which qualification on merit and even the money earned for success gets altered by a “coefficient” based on your qualification and performance history in Europe. This would have meant in the 2019-20 season that a team finishing in fifth (Leicester City) in the Premier League would have been usurped by the teams in sixth and seventh (Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur). Applied to this season you may end up with West Ham United finishing fifth but losing their spot to Liverpool in seventh.
And every time a “historic performance” team accesses Champions League money at the expense of a club trying to do it on merit, the gap between the elite and the rest of football grows. Success stories like Leicester’s become remote.
And how can proposals be right that would give the Premier League six places but deny, say, the champions of Poland — a nation of 40 million people — automatic qualification? Surely ensuring as many nations as possible are represented should be at the heart of the European governing body’s principles — not the maximisation of their revenue from a tournament.
Second is the number of matches . The expansion at first seems small — six to ten group games but it means the Champions League goes from 125 to a staggering 225 games.
The third is the easily expandable nature of the “Swiss system” to add yet more games down the track and revisit the real prize for the “recently historically successful clubs” of Saturday 3pm European matches.
Imagine if the Premier League and FA proposed the following: an expanded league with incremental fixtures that meant the end of the League Cup, allied to a flexible format that allowed for an ever-increasing number of games so the FA Cup would eventually be threatened too.
Plus that promotion to the Premier League would now be governed by a “coefficient” that would mean, say, an eighth-placed Leeds United, an Aston Villa or even Crystal Palace promoted to the Premier League ahead of Brentford who finished third without even having the inconvenience of a play-off. This is the equivalent of what’s being put forward.
Let’s be clear about these proposals, most clubs don’t want them, most fans don’t want them, broadcasters aren’t asking for them. But it is likely that they will pass because 20 members of the ECA have effectively highjacked the governance of the game. They also know that the consequences are so remote that by the time we wake up to it, it will be probably be too late.
•
Steve Parish is the chairman of Crystal Palace
