“It’s like the climate crisis,” warns Daniel Lambert, managing director of the century-old Bohemian FC in the League of Ireland. “If we continue to ignore the imbalance, we will destroy the entire ecosystem. “Big clubs have the right to be big, but that shouldn’t mean the others don’t exist.”
A tone of revolt permeated the forum organized this Wednesday in Brussels by the newly created European Club Union (UEC), the organization that aims to bring together the almost 1,500 medium and small football clubs of the first and second divisions , together with non-national associations. Professional clubs, the base of the competition pyramid for the continent’s most popular game. They were supported by Margaritis Schinas, Vice President of the European Commission; Matteo Zacchetti, Commission sports expert; and MEPs Tomasz Frankowsky and Iván García del Blanco. They proclaimed the principles of “transparency”, “sustainability”, “equality”, “solidarity” and balance in “competition”, and then Javier Tebas, president of La Liga and major promoter of the project, closed the conclave with a water bomb. “If we do not manage, within a few weeks, to create a strong association that defends all clubs, not just those participating in European competitions, the future of football will be bleak,” warned Tebas, who claims like many presidents of the clubs , that the Super League, the elite project led by Madrid and Barça that aims to abolish the open format of the Champions League and create a tournament analogous to the NBA, remains the secret target of the most powerful clubs, represented by the European Association of Clubs or ECA.
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“UEFA is being hijacked by this elite that runs the ECA, and the ECA says that it represents the clubs but does not give the majority voting rights,” Tebas concluded. “Why can’t clubs be governed on a one club/one vote basis?”
The ECA is the only organization officially recognized as the contact point for clubs before UEFA. The chairman is Nasser al-Khelaifi, who is not only president of Paris Saint-Germain but also managing director of Bein Sports, a company that owns the audiovisual rights to a majority of football competitions around the world. “The conflict of interest is clear!” says Dennis Gudasic, President of Lokomotiv Zagreb and President of the UEC. “How do you explain that the ECA and UEFA have formed a joint commercial alliance to sell the rights to the competitions?”
“We,” concludes Gudasic, “see ourselves as defenders of the core values of UEFA, which has given in to pressure from the richest clubs that are striving for an NBA model.” This model would ensure the privileged position of large companies and the development of medium and small ones prevent companies. Phenomena like Porto in the 80s or Ajax in the 70s would be unrepeatable.”
The Brussels meeting was greeted with horror by the ECA leadership. The club’s official organization released a statement denouncing the UEC initiative as a product of “increasingly extremist individuals” aiming to “destabilize football’s entire governance structure.”
A spokesman for the ECA said yesterday that his organization does not intend to reproduce the Super League, nor to establish other, more or less watertight categories within the European competitions, as the UEC suspects. “That’s nonsense,” he said on condition of anonymity. He adds that the “one club/one vote” formula is not the only way to structure a democratic order. According to this source, the ECA operates under a “proportional system” where clubs are grouped together and elect their representatives in subsections according to the coefficients UEFA assigns to their national associations. The clubs of the six most powerful associations – England, Germany, France, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands – are represented on the ECA Steering Committee with 12 members, the same number as the other associations. Al Khelaifi is not elected but “appointed by the board,” and according to the ECA, he does not hold a leadership position but rather an almost “ceremonial” position.
Madrid and Barca
“The proof that the most powerful clubs cannot hijack football, as Tebas says, is that Madrid and Barcelona had to give up their positions in the ECA to try to create the Super League,” says this employer association spokesman. “They would have no support within the ECA.”
The ECA’s arguments do not convince everyone. Together with other delegates from 90 medium and small clubs, Guasic, Lambert and emissaries such as Steve Parish, president of Crystal Palace, or Fran Canal, general director of Osasuna, traveled to Brussels to express their concerns about an undeniable reality: the competitions reflect on what appears to be an unstoppable divide between the rich and the humble? According to data presented at the conclave, the top three clubs in England, Spain, Germany, Italy and France are winning more games than ever before. Clubs that do not belong to the five major leagues have been gradually excluded from the round of 16 of the Champions League: from 31 in the period 1993-2002 to just 7 in the period 2013-2023. Revenue for Europe’s ten richest clubs has risen from 15% of total revenue in 1992 to almost 30% since 2016. The income distributed by the Champions League accounted for 6% of the wealth generated by football in 2009 and now covers 16%. Between 2015 and 2021, European clubs increased their revenue by an average of 9%; but the ten richest clubs – Chelsea, PSG, City, Bayern, Barça, Madrid, Liverpool, Atlético, Juventus and Dortmund – increased their revenue by 48%.
“The influence of small clubs in decision-making is non-existent, as the influential group of the ECA are the big teams,” said Fran Canal. “No small team is part of the UEFA Executive Board. “A possible and simple solution to restore balance is to set a salary cap.”
Javier Tebas and Nasser al-Khelaifi form an explosive confrontation. Symptom of an industry that is in a constant state of tension, even though the value of the product on offer continues to increase. An ecosystem, as Lambert said, threatened by concentration of power.
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