UEFA the real Frankenstein
LUDOGORETS RAZGRAD of Bulgaria will face Real Madrid, Liverpool and Basle in the group stage of the Champions League this season, after one of the most dramatic qualification victories in the history of the competition.
A tiny club from near the Romanian border — with a ground so small they must play in the capital, Sofia, over 200 miles away — Razgrad had scored late to send their tie with Steaua Bucharest into extra time.
As the game edged towards penalties, their goalkeeper, Vladislav Stoyanov, was sent off and, having used all his substitutions, coach Georgi Dermendzhiev had no choice but to make a battlefield promotion. Centre half Cosmin Moti went in goal, remained there for the shootout and, two saves later, had sent his team on an incredible adventure. With the exception of Levski Sofia in 2006-07, they are the only Bulgarian team to make it to the Champions League group stage.
Yet some will see the arrival of Ludogorets at the top table as an outrage. They haven’t earned it, you see. They are new money, not among the ranks of the entitled, no different to Manchester City and Paris Saint-Germain and all the other pariahs who did not have the luck to get their overspending done at a time when it was known by another name: investment.
Ludogorets are the newest of nouveau riche, really, because the current club did not even exist until 2001, starting as Ludogorie FC and then Razgrad 2000. When the original Ludogorets Razgrad gave up the ghost in 2006 after 45 years in Bulgaria’s Group B, they took the name and began working towards promotion. And then, in 2010, along came Kiril Domuschiev, a very wealthy man through animal feed and pharmaceutical companies Biovet and Huvepharma: suddenly, Ludogorets were jet-propelled. They won promotion, they did the treble in their first year in Group A and have retained the league three seasons in succession now. The old club had never even made it into the top division. Ludogorets used 14 players to defeat Steaua Bucharest last week: five were Bulgarian.
So what are they? Fairytale or Frankenstein’s monster? Is it fair that they should simply buy their way in? Let’s put it another way: is it less fair than what went before? There have been 88 domestic titles won in Bulgaria and 57 of them have been shared between two clubs: CSKA Sofia and Levski Sofia. Indeed, between 1946 and 1997, those two won the league 45 out of 52 times.
This is what happens in an authoritarian regime when the government and military run one football club, CSKA Sofia, and the interior ministry runs another, Levski Sofia, even allowing it to absorb rivals such as Spartak Sofia in 1969. Was this system preferable to a rich man buying Ludogorets and launching it to unimagined heights, on average attendances of 3,100 and limited commercial revenue?
To put Bulgarian football into perspective, the current television deal, including all domestic football, is worth around £6m over three years. Last season, of the Group A clubs, Ludogorets did best, collecting £197,749; Neftochimic Burgas made the least with £63,279. Cardiff City, by comparison, received just over £62m for finishing bottom in our Premier League.
Now let’s say that, this year, Ludogorets receive what Viktoria Plzen, the worst-paid team in last season’s Champions League group stage, collected at the end of 2013-14: £8.8m. In a league in which television revenue is measured in tens of thousands, what is that going to do to domestic competition? Potentially, Group A is over.
Manchester United went to Turf Moor on Saturday with one player, Angel di Maria, who cost more than Burnley’s total transfer outlay since 1882. There will always be teams that earn more, and spend more. Ludogorets receive three times the television revenue of Burgas, and that is a huge advantage. Yet the difference is £134,470, which is not insurmountable. It is only when UEFA, the guardians of financial fair play, arrive and add another £8.8m to the pot that competition dies.
Next season, UEFA will address the unjust seeding of the Champions League groups — you’re welcome — but Michel Platini’s to-do list does not end there. Wealth distribution is the elephant in the room. It remains the single biggest corrupting force in the European game. Anyone who sees Ludogorets as the monster is forgetting the true identity of Dr Frankenstein.