UEFA postpones UCL talks amid club-league row
CHANGES to the UEFA Champions League are unlikely to be decided this year after UEFA yesterday called off joint talks with the heads of European clubs and leagues who have spent months arguing over a potential radical overhaul of the formats of European competitions.
European Club Association chairman Andrea Agnelli, who has been criticized for championing a largely closed UCL, and European Leagues president Lars-Christer Olsson were due to meet UEFA President Aleksander Ceferin on September 11.
“I have decided to postpone the meeting,” Ceferin wrote to Agnelli and Olsson in a letter. “I will send a new invitation as soon as I think that we are ready for a meaningful discussion.”
The letter was sent a day before the ECA executive board, led by the Juventus chairman Agnelli, meets in private in Liverpool to discuss its vision for an overhaul of continent-wide club competitions from 2024. The third competition — provisionally called Europa League Two — is already due to launch in 2021.
“We are currently in the process of gathering feedback from our national associations,” Ceferin wrote, “and I feel — more generally — that a new discussion now would be premature as we are analyzing feedback and proposals coming from different parties.”
The European Leagues group has fiercely opposed Agnelli’s core idea of restricting access to the UCL and Europa League, as have dozens of teams from across the continent who are members of the ECA.
A proposal presented earlier this year by UEFA would guarantee 24 of 32 UCL group teams return the following season, introducing significant promotion and relegation with the Europa League. Leagues fear end-of-season intrigue will be cut in their competitions, with finishing positions currently determining qualification for Europe.
“As you know very well, UEFA deliberately kicked off the review process for the 2024/27 competition cycle much ahead of our regular schedule and we are therefore in no hurry,” Ceferin told Agnelli and Olsson. “We do not, in any case, expect to make a decision this year.”
The ECA has been calling for eight-team groups in the UCL instead of the four now. That would guarantee clubs more revenue from UEFA for playing 14 games before the knockout rounds instead of the current six.
This would benefit the illustrious clubs who want to play each other more often in Europe, appearing to be dissatisfied with a lack of competition at home. Juventus has won eight straight Italian titles, Bayern Munich has won the last seven in Germany, and Paris Saint-Germain has won six of seven in France.
The English Premier League is the leading force resisting dramatic changes to the UCL.
Atletico Madrid led the attack from Spain — which Barcelona and Real Madrid didn’t sign up to — by accusing the ECA of launching a “frontal attack” on the stability of the European game by advocating a model that harms domestic leagues.
(AP)