Clubs could leave the Champions League, and even their domestic leagues, if UEFA approves this "self-serving" reform

There seems to be on going plans by a number of clubs to secede from the UEFA champions league competition for reasons valid to them.
According to reports in Mirror Sport, a number of 'smaller' clubs that participate in the biggest club football stage in the world are threatening to snub the boycott the tournament even if it means to quit playing in their local leagues if UEFA passes a recently proposed reform.

The offended clubs feel the plans are “greedy, and self-serving”.

Mirror Sport revealed last week that the reform could see an extra, seeded knockout round added to the Champions League in an effort to eliminate smaller, less ‘glamorous’ clubs as they bring little revenue to the competition. With Barcelona’s trip to BATE Borisov a case in point - the group stage game was the least viewed across the continent.

The plan would now see two groups of eight teams, largely from Europe’s elite, who would play out the next phase with higher TV viewing figures and generating more revenue for the competition. The reforms on the other hand would damage the finances of league champions that rely on the competition to boost their balance sheet.

Mirror now claim they have consulted a number of those aggrieved clubs across Europe. Below is what they have concluded:

• Those negatively affected could be willing to break away from the Champions League and form their own similar multinational competition.
• Clubs are also examining the legality of UEFA insisting they play in their domestic leagues, with leading sides from several nations examining the possibility of a multinational league with far greater television rights and sponsorship deals sold around the world.

In response, clubs spoken to in Scandinavia, Western Europe and Central Europe revealed that they were unanimously unhappy with the proposals and many were considering drastic action in response.

Nearly every club spoken to admitted that they would be forced to analyse the pros and cons of leaving the Champions League, while some confessed that informal conversations to that end had already taken place between club chiefs in recent years.

One club president, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for now, felt that the Champions League’s attempts at ‘streamlining’ were “inevitable” and driven by “greedy, self-serving” clubs.

While these proposals have come to light as a result of the Premier League’s richest clubs and Bayern Munich attempting to get what they see as a more ‘fair’ deal for the financial riches they bring the Champions League, no formal proposal has been made to UEFA yet.

And this was echoed by Niclas Carlnen, CEO of Malmo, who this year were paired with Real Madrid in the group stages. He said having not been notified of any changes to the structure, he would prefer to comment on the current setting.
“We are working to close the growing gap between the bigger clubs and the smaller. One step is the new distribution between UCL and UEL and we need to move in that direction and not the other way around.”

These aggrieved clubs noted that the latest developments would be a complete contrast of the Michel Platini led UEFA. Which was to  make it easier for domestic champions to access the competition at the expense of fourth-placed sides in bigger leagues by separating them in qualification. Thus this news coming as a complete shock to even officials.

Top officials of the club now claim they would ratify it by leaving their domestic leagues in search of their own riches.

FC Copenhagen CEO Anders Horsholt was willing to go on record in telling Mirror Sport that, if Europe’s elite would ruin competition in search of more money, then this was a serious consideration for clubs like them too:

“F.C. Copenhagen are always looking for clubs with a similar point of view and similar concerns to our own. After a lot of problems in UEFA – and FIFA – maybe the time has come to take a serious look at how the leagues overall are structured in Europe.

“It might be the time to look in to whether the national federations and UEFA should even hold the rights for organising the leagues. One could argue that the current way of organising football is distorting competition for clubs in countries like Holland, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, Scotland, Poland and Norway, since we can only compete within a certain geography and its difficult to find any other industries with a similar structure.

“Of course UEFA would like a status quo in order to keep the moneyflow going through them but the question is if this is the best solution in the future for football."




Credit: Mirror Sport