At Real Madrid’s annual meeting in November, club president Florentino Perez defended the “Super League”, the project from some of Europe’s biggest clubs that collapsed in a spectacular way last spring.
According to Florentino Perez, the Super League would mean a necessary and radical upheaval of European football that would mean healthier finances.
But the European Football Association Uefa opposed, with the help of a massive protest movement of supporters, mainly in England.
“Uefa is a monopoly,” said the Real Madrid chairman.
On Saturday, his plays team final in the Champions League against Liverpool – a Spanish old big team with financial problems against one of the top clubs in the Premier League, the league that pulls away from everyone else with its huge TV deals.
The Super League, which still exists as an organization, took inspiration from American sports and wants to be a closed league in which the clubs that own it participate. It goes against the European model where the whole system is connected from the lowest series in each country to the international top in the Champions League, and it is possible to move up and down between the divisions.
At least in theory. In practice, many believe that some form of super league already exists, as it becomes increasingly difficult for others to compete athletically with the clubs that have the most money.
There are several different stakeholders in the tug-of-war over what the club football system should look like. Among the players are the unions themselves, Fifa and Uefa, which are also the institutions that regulate the entire system.
A few weeks ago, Uefa decided on a new, expanded format for the Champions League, Europa League and Conference League after 2024, with 36 instead of 32 teams in each. More UEFA matches means more UEFA money – which the association distributes to the clubs.
That is why the biggest clubs want a super league where they themselves own the TV rights to the matches instead of Uefa, and that is why the smaller clubs are protesting against both the big clubs and Uefa.
– It sounds presumptuous to say that we are grass roots – there are many among us who are grass roots – but in this system we are grass roots. And you have to understand that if you do not take care of the entire ecosystem but just put more and more things on top, then it has consequences further down, says Mats Enquist.
He’s Secretary General for Swedish elite football (Sef), the Swedish elite clubs’ interest organization, and sits on the board of European Leagues.
In the negotiations on what European football should look like, there are two different organizations that represent the clubs. It is the ECA, where the biggest clubs are located, and the European Leagues, which represent all leagues.
The European Leagues have advanced their positions in recent years, under the leadership of former Sef chairman Lars-Christer Olsson, and now have a seat on UEFA’s board.
The new format for European football means more Uefa matches competing with the domestic series both on the TV market and in the match calendar, but the European Leagues and European supporter organizations achieved some success. The group stage is extended by two matches instead of the proposed four, and a proposal that clubs’ historical results should be weighed in the qualification, which would have benefited the already successful, was not passed.
But the new format has been dealt with separately from the question of how the money from the tournaments should be distributed. Those discussions will begin at a meeting with the UEFA Club Competitions Committee this weekend.
The 2021-2022 season gives UEFA’s club tournaments on the men’s side net sales of SEK 35 billion. Four percent of it goes to those who do not participate at all.
Of the approximately 29 billion that remain after, among other things, costs for the events and a contribution to the women’s Champions League, 6.5 percent goes to Uefa. The rest is distributed to the participating clubs. 70 percent to those who play in the Champions League, 16 percent to the Europa League, and 8 percent to the clubs in the new third tournament Conference League.
How much money you get does not just depend on how many matches you win. In the Champions League, for example, 30 percent of the money is distributed according to a coefficient based on the results of the last ten years, and 15 percent according to the value of each country’s TV market.
European Leagues vill have a distribution that they see as fairer, where those who do not play in Europe get more.
Mats Enquist points out how European money has become a watershed that makes it more difficult for clubs that have not been in the European Games to catch up, and addresses the huge player salaries and transfer fees that are at the highest level.
– Was that what we were looking for? That individual players and agents would take such an incredibly large part of the pie? The small number of clubs that get the most, they are fighting for the absolute most attractive players. We would turn that around a bit so that even the associations that do not participate but are still important for the ecosystem also receive part of the prosperity, that the gap does not become too large, he says.
In Sweden, Malmö is FF the club that has managed to join Europe continuously and thus become significantly richer than the rest. The association’s CEO Niclas Carlnén sits on the big clubs’ organization ECA’s board, where he represents the third club level out of four, and also on UEFA’s club committee which will meet this weekend. How ECA will stand is too early to say, he says.
Niclas Carlnén points out that it is still the domestic TV agreements that account for the biggest money in European football, and that European participation is not as crucial in the big leagues as it is in Sweden.
– Malmö FF is a large club in Sweden, but a medium or small in a European perspective. I think it is important to improve for the clubs that are our size to get into the European Games. And hopefully they will succeed in the new format, he says.
Facts. “Chess models”
After 2024, the three European tournaments Champions League, Europa League and Conference League will have a new format for their group games, the so-called “Swiss model”, which is taken from the sport of chess.
● All teams are placed in the same table, even though not everyone meets. The eight teams that take the most points go directly to the round of 16, those in places nine to 24 play the playoffs for the remaining playoff places.
● In the Champions League and Europa League, all teams play eight matches each. Who you meet is determined by a seeding of the teams, which means that the big clubs will meet each other more often. In the Conference League, there are six matches.
● The number of teams will be increased from 32 to 36, and two more match days for European matches will need to be planned in the calendar.
● Of the four new places in the Champions League, one will be taken third in the fifth-ranked league, which today is the French. A place goes through the qualifiers to a team from one of the leagues outside the top ten. Two places go to the leagues with the best ranking last year, which this year would mean that the fifth in the Premier League and the second in the Eredivisie would go directly to the Champions League.
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