UEFA CAN’T SEE HOW TRANS-EURO EXCESS MIGHT DERAIL FOOTBALL
IF you fancy welcoming the Legia Warsaw ultras to a stadium near you, the chance should come up again soon.
They are not doing brilliantly in the PKO Bank Polski Ekstraklasa – Poland’s Premier League equivalent – but, under UEFA’S ludicrous reconstruction of their club competitions, there is a decent chance Legia will finish high enough to qualify for one of them.
It could well be the UEFA Europa Conference League again, to be renamed the UEFA Conference League for the 2024/25 season and expand from 32 to 36 teams, the same enlargement being inflicted on – sorry, undergone by – the Champions League and Europa League.
If you can’t keep up with the amount of fixtures currently being played in European competitions, just wait until next season when there will be an extra 117 matches.
On a basic level, think of all the extra flights – for teams and fans – that will be made.
For an organisation that says it is committed to achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2040 – and a reduction of 50 percent by 2030 – UEFA are going a strange way about it.
But there are other reasons why an even busier European schedule is the last thing professional football needs.
Even for those of us who believe they are occasionally exaggerated, there is absolutely no denying the physical and mental demands on players are growing from one campaign to the next.
Some people inside UEFA believe one of the ways to lessen those demands is for domestic top-flight leagues to consist of only 18 teams.
Germany’s Bundesliga and Ligue 1 in France are already made up of 18 sides, but there is no way the Premier League will ever follow suit.
Fourteen of the 20 clubs would need to vote for a reduction and that would be a lot of turkeys voting for Christmas.
So, those demands will continue to increase and there will probably be nine English clubs competing in Europe next season.
Quite frankly, that ridiculous.
There are likely to be five Champions League places for English teams, reaffirming its name as the most inappropriate in sport.
One day, European football will lose some of its allure, but, judging by the numbers of away fans at fixtures, it hasn’t just yet.
But the greater the is proliferation of fixtures, the more chance of the type of shocking scenes seen outside Villa Park and in Birmingham on Thursday.
Legia Warsaw ultras (left) have serious form, having been banned from their previous away tie against Zrinjski Mostar in Bosnia after vicious fighting with Dutch police at an earlier fixture in Alkmaar.
But there has been plenty more trouble at European games this season.
Obviously, fans behaving terribly is no stand-alone reason to rail against the expansion of European club competitions, but that means greater demands on police, on stewards and on officials.
It will come, though, with greater revenue for UEFA and the participating clubs.
And, as ever, they only see the bottom line.
There will probably be nine English clubs competing in Europe – and that is ridiculous