What is wrong with the new reform of the Champions League?

The last indiscretions since Nyon are joined in broad outline: we are on the right track on the reform of the Champions League post 2024, despite some push-to-crime, more Hispano-English than Franco-German, which still delay the officialization of the new format. A Swiss system, an idea blown by Edwin Van der Sar, the general manager of Ajax, with 36 teams instead of 32, a group stage longer than a Scorsese, and double ration of matches in the end ( 180 vs 96), even if it means getting bothered in the stomach even before spring.

“The Swiss system is a good system”

The best compromise by far according to Danel Rommedahl, general manager of FC Copenhagen and member of the all-powerful union ECA (the Medef of the big clubs), joined by 20 minutes : “A lot of people put ideas on the table, and UEFA mixed these ideas to find the right balance, respecting the pillars of the European Cup. The Swiss system is a good system, although we can have disagreements on the number of matches. For example, it doesn’t bother me that my club plays more, it just needs to be more attractive posters. A lot of incense spread on the walls to coat the truth: the capitulation in open countryside of UEFA, anxious to avoid
the famous specter of a Superleague, agitated with even less self-esteem than usual by the European football cartel at the end of 2020.

Through its union, the aristocracy of the Champions League no longer pretends to hide its hegemonic aims. “When you ask the little ones who are sometimes invited to ECA AGs, they come back outraged by what they heard,” explains Domnique Courdier, news director at News Tank Football, a destination news agency. leaders. The ECA is pure business, without scruple. They have long been looking for a formula with more matches, to generate more “matchday” revenue, more TV rights and more sponsorship, while protecting the big guys. There, they went to look far with this chess-inspired format. “

This formula is very similar to the NFL format … when we talk about the Americanization of our football..🇺🇸⚽️ pic.twitter.com/AeAycIgJpK

– kévin Diaz (@ kevindiaz11) February 10, 2021

The ECA always wants more

Some even lend Beelzebub chaired by Agnelli, the boss of Juve, an even more treacherous strategy: to propose an unbeatable formula for better redo the coup of 18-Brumaire with the league closed. Accusations that make our Danish interlocutor smile. “You know, I understand the position of the very big clubs. Copenhagen, in Europe it’s not much, but we are Real Madrid from Denmark. I understand what they think they can bring. Everything is not cleared up, pieces of the puzzle are missing, but we are on the right track. ” Is. The missing pieces are important, though.

Oh, on a sporting level, we only fight for these potters. Knowing, roughly, who will get the four additional places. The ECA, which is not afraid of anything, claims at least half for the top names who would pass through their domestic season (Arsenal this year, at random). The association of the European championships refuses to hear about it, so far. “The negotiations continue, explains its chairman Lars-Christer Olsson to 20 minutes. There is no red line, but we would like three additional champions from small countries to have access to the competition rather than clubs from the big leagues. This new formula still requires adjustments. “

If a compromise is expected on this point, positions are still very distant between UEFA and the clubs on the management of financial income from the new formula. Today, UEFA is doing its little grub with two Swiss companies, Team Marketing (TV rights for the European cups), and CA Eleven (international matches), and is playing je-te-hold-par-la-barbichette with the big clubs. On the one hand, the latter are entitled to a preponderant place at the negotiating table via the UCC (the subsidiary which manages the competitions), on the other hand, UEFA retains a right of veto on a change in the format of the European Cup.

For whom is the management of commercial revenues of the new format?

According to information of Times, the ECA would demand, in exchange for maintaining this right of veto, to take charge of
TV and marketing rights management around the C1, just to use it directly in the cash register, but also to give ourselves some slack on the place given to the sponsors in the stadiums during the matches, or on the marketing of some of the most beautiful actions in streaming almost immediate, for example. “This joint-venture represents in a way the least bad solution, estimates Pierre Rondeau, economist of the sport. It is a good balance between the will of the ECA to recover more rights and the need to keep the “Champions League” label which depends on UEFA ”.

It would look like a Carthaginian peace for Ceferin and UEFA, but the latter has little choice. The pandemic has slashed the income of the big clubs, who want to regain control to redo the cherry. “They take the example of the NFL which renegotiated its TV rights for 10.27 billion dollars a year until 2033. It gives the clubs ideas, who think that with an almost closed-league format with the cream of the crop, they could excite supporters and generate more money. The organizers of the Superleague were counting on four billion euros in TV rights, when the current event generates a little more than three billion, a figure already in constant increase for ten years.

PSG and Bayern, allies behind the scenes

In this great fool’s game, we hear very little about PSG and Bayern, who act rather as stowaways of the reform, despite the presence of Nasser Al-Khelaïfi to the UEFA executive committee. “His influence on the debates? I cannot speak for Nasser, but if we look at the content of the reform, with a fourth qualified for the fifth nation from 2024, I think that the French clubs can be satisfied with the result ”, blows Daniel Rommedhal . It’s nice to put it like that, since that would suppose that “NAK” shows a vague interest in the fate of his fellow L1, which remains to be proven. PSG had indeed given its agreement to the recent Superleague project, without referring it to anyone, like Bayern for that matter.

The German champion has enjoyed adopting the posture of the white knight for some time (“a closed league, how dare you?”), When he was at the initiative of the last major attempt to split with the UEFA in 2016, as revealed by Football Leaks. Moreover, when one asks Lars-Christer Olsson if the two adversaries of the day are more understanding interlocutors than Real Madrid or Manchester United in the negotiations, the Swedish leader answers in an enigmatic way: “More reasonable? I don’t know, I guess it depends on what we’re talking about ”. Verdict scheduled for April 19, according to the latest news.