European Club Association is being cast as an evil elite killing football. What nonsense
There are some debates in football which just never go away: Pelé or Maradona? What should the handball rule be, exactly? And, perhaps most infuriatingly, what makes a “big” club?
This last question has popped up again over the past couple of weeks, but with a strange twist. Rather than bigging themselves up, some people are suddenly keen to claim that they are in fact “small” and being treated terribly by the so-called “elite”. In particular, these “small” clubs are apparently suffering from not playing in Europe and need Uefa to give them more money to make up for it. In fact, at a recent conference, La Liga’s president Javier Tebas and Crystal Palace chairman Steve Parish cast themselves as the champions of these “small” clubs.
In my role as CEO of the European Club Association (ECA), I’ve been fortunate to spend time at clubs of all shapes and sizes, and I know that, as with many things in life, context is key.
Fans of teams who spend much of their time fighting against relegation, such as those towards the bottom of the Premier League, must feel like underdogs battling the big guys. But this debate is about European football, so we need to look at it on a European level and compare the facts rather than the feelings.
One of ECA’s vice-chairs is Aki Riihilahti,
the former Palace midfielder and current CEO of HJK Helsinki. HJK’s turnover for last year, when they won the Finnish title, was about £13m. Palace’s turnover, when they finished 12th in the Premier League, was just under £160m – more than 12 times higher. In fact, the team finishing last in the Premier League this season will make more money than most domestic champions in Europe.
So, you can understand my surprise to find out that the ECA is apparently the “evil elite” killing football. I asked my colleagues on the ECA board from clubs such as Legia Warsaw in Poland, Malmö in Sweden, Young Boys in Switzerland, FC Copenhagen in Denmark and FH Hafnarfjörður in Iceland whether they realised that we were to blame for everything from the Super League to West Ham fighting relegation. It was news to all of us.
Now, I’m not here to criticise the Premier League or any of the big domestic leagues – they are incredibly popular for a reason. But there needs to be a reality check in how we talk about “big clubs” – even the smallest Premier League clubs dwarf almost everyone else in terms of revenue.
Most countries in Europe do not have the population size for the type of huge domestic TV deals enjoyed in England and Spain – the only way they can try to keep up is through European competitions. Uefa’s three men’s club competitions are vital to so many clubs across the continent. Not just the 108 who will play in them every year from 2024, but the hundreds more who play in the qualifying rounds or benefit from the solidarity payments to clubs who don’t participate.
So it’s a bit rich to see clubs who already have more money than everyone else suddenly claim poverty and demand a bigger slice of the pie. If they really believe in solidarity, maybe we can start a debate about how much the Premier League and La Liga – whose 40 clubs make twice as much between them as all of Uefa’s competitions combined – should give to clubs in other countries from which these leagues take money through massive TV deals. It’s very easy to demand money from someone else, a lot harder to offer to give some yourself.
As I said, context is key. Everyone has a different perspective based on their position and that is why the ECA exists: to bring together clubs to find consensus and make sure those positions are heard. By the end of this summer ECA will have 330 voting members from all 55 Uefa nations – from the very biggest to the very smallest. All can vote on their representatives on the board and stand for election.
It’s not perfect – nothing is – but it has delivered a huge amount of positive change that benefits all clubs, from those solidarity payments to compensation from Uefa and Fifa for releasing players for international tournaments and the expansion of competitions such as the Europa Conference League.
It is Uefa’s job to balance these different perspectives when it makes decisions. That is why it recognises ECA as the sole body representing clubs at the European level, along with the European Leagues as the body representing domestic football and the National Associations as representatives of everything else from grassroots to the international game. Again, it’s not perfect, but it works. We saw what happened when a small number of clubs tried to upend the structure and do things their own way – it was called the Super League and it failed miserably.
So let’s have the debate. It’s one of the brilliant features of European football that we have such variety and a strong pyramid. But let’s be honest with ourselves about who the real elite are and what the rest are doing just to try to stay alive.
Charlie Marshall is the CEO of the European Club Association