An American tale: Europa goes west
WHILE on holiday in America I came across an article in a national newspaper headlined ‘Euro League games might be in USA’s future’.
It was centred on an interview with Charlie Stillitano, chairman of the firm that organised the pre-season International Champions Cup, who said American soccer fans deserved to be rewarded with some serious games for showing “their commitment to this product”.
And he claimed that although Richard Scudamore’s 2008 plan to play a Premier League round of games abroad had failed, the idea was far from dead. Indeed it was inevitable, as clubs chase fresh revenue streams, that soon a big one-off game would be played regularly in the USA.
“The Europa League Final could be a possibilty,” he predicted.
That would be two European teams playing out the climax of a 10-month-long European competition in America.
Which should sound shocking. But with the increasing number of Americans owning powerful European clubs and the importance they put on “monetising” the product on a global scale, you sense he’s probably right.