Celtic join push to keep Europe’s lesser lights at Champions League top table
CELTIC have joined a group of four clubs who are warning UEFA that its slide towards a Champions Super League will ruin European football.
The Scottish champions’ chief-executive, Peter Lawwell, teamed up with club heads from Ajax, PSV Eindhoven and Anderlecht to travel to Switzerland last week to speak with UEFA’s power brokers about their fears over the new Champions League plans.
From August 2018, the group stage will be an elite monopoly between England, Spain, Germany and Italy, who will get half of the 32 places on offer.
However, Lawwell’s lobby group have told UEFA that it risks damaging football finances across the rest of the continent.
The anxiety is already in the top club boardrooms in the Netherlands and Belgium, with Dutch media yesterday leaking the disquiet of Ajax, who are four-time European Champions. It seems, though, that Ajax, PSV, Anderlecht and Celtic are speaking on behalf of a larger group.
The quartet met last week at UEFA’s headquarters in Switzerland with its secretary general, Theodore Theodoridis, and Champions League executive, Giorgio Marchetti, according to Dutch newspaper Voetbal International. They told UEFA they want to see the Champions League group stage expanded to 48 clubs.
The UEFA executives were told that the new Champions League format would see “a collapse of Europe’s football eco-system,” according to Voetbal International.
Lawwell’s lobby group stated television contracts in the smaller countries have collapsed in recent years, in contrast with the explosion of broadcasting deals in the richest leagues.
The quartet argued that an expanded Champions League might be less attractive in drawing views in the top countries, but it will boost any future television deals in the smaller ones.
Television money, of course, is at the core of the Champions League changes. The English Premier League’s new £9bn television deal was the catalyst for other major European leagues to force a revamp of the competition last August.
The top teams, led by European Clubs Association chairman and Bayern Munich chief executive, KarlHeinz Rummenigge, threatened a walkout if changes didn’t go through. They want a 24-team event, with 16 of those spaces guaranteed for the top four leagues.
At a UEFA meeting in Monaco last August, Lawwell was able to persuade them to keep the “champions’ route” for qualification purposes, the one which allows the Scottish Premiership champions a lifeline. Notably, ensuring that Scotland’s champion would not face top-two clubs from leagues ranked five to 10 in the qualifiers.
One of UEFA’s changes was on the coefficient, meaning clubs are now judged on their own record rather than the national league coefficient.
The other was for historical success in the competition being brought in as a coefficient points contributor.
Lawwell said when the changes took place last August: “This decision affects all European football and we just hope what’s done now and in the future will benefit every European club.”