Oh yes, now you mention it, I *do* have a blog! Sorry for the lack of action, but I seem to have been constantly busy for a couple of weeks. Anyway…
I struggled to suppress a little shudder the other day, reading that the G14 group is once again trying to meddle in European football. In case you weren’t aware, G14 is a kind of “Carlyle Group of football”, a self-appointed committee of Europe’s most prestigious clubs (eighteen of them… the four 2002 additions didn’t justify a name change).
Until now, G14 has functioned mostly as a pressure group, but a new policy document “G14 Vision Europe” outlines the group’s intention to take control of the Champions League from UEFA. The aim is to ensure continued success for all 18 clubs in an elite European competition. Within this utopian walled garden, the noble heroes could live their privileged lives, unfettered by such troublesome obstacles as…
- Having an off day and being knocked out by a plucky underdog
The Champions League, with its initial league stage, was developed by UEFA in the early 1990s in response to complaints from top clubs who found the pure knock-out format of the original European Cup competition far too risky.
- Silly international competitions such as the World Cup
G-14 are currently in dispute with FIFA over the lack of compensation paid to clubs whose players are injured in international matches.
- Having to give a portion of their money to teams in lower leagues
The whole G-14 philosophy is just a refinement of the thought processes that led to the foundation of the English Premiership. Take control of the money supply, the TV rights, even the choice of opposition. Then build a big wall around your little paradise garden, keeping the money in and the upstarts out.
As you may be able to tell, this all makes me very angry. UEFA’s communications director William Gaillard described it as “Apartheid: it would be the end of the European model of football”, and I totally agree. Restrict the vertical movement to/from the top level of any sport and the result is a series of glorified exhibition matches. The vibrancy of the Champions League and the various Premiership equivalents is created not only by the eye-candy skill of the best teams, but also by the constant threat of new blood replacing old, the spectacle of an underdog team playing “out of its skin” against the complacent Old Guard.
This relationship works at every level, right down to amateur Sunday leagues… remove the chance (no matter how slim) of promotion, and the whole system dies. While lower league teams do owe a certain debt of gratitude to the Champions League superstars for the money they attract to the game, the big clubs simply could not exist without the enormous coaching and scouting network offered by the lower leagues, not to mention the overall competitive potential of multi-level sport. There’s a good reason why the FA Cup is so revered worldwide… it’s a rare opportunity to see every team having an equal chance of playing every other team (despite recent adjustments in favour of the Premiership clubs).
Oh well. I’ve never had an awful lot of faith in the bumbling PR mess that seems to engulf UEFA most of the time, but I just hope they can fight this.
[FYI: The Guardian seem to have covered this better than most news outlets (slightly ironic, given the grotesquely unbalanced pro-Premiership coverage in their sports section!) so here's a link to several articles]