Changes to the game should be for everyone’s benefit

SOME might argue Celtic have done a good job of blocking their own access to the Champions League without any outside interference. But talks over a Super League and the restructuring of European football could soon make the task impossible. And the Parkhead club are mad. In Scottish football, this is all the reason some need to hope it happens sooner rather than later. Celtic earning £16million a year from Europe while the rest feed off a £200,000 solidarity bonus is hardly a force for the greater good. But Scottish football has witnessed more petty small-mindedness than you’d find at a Donald Trump rally. Let’s not hate ourselves to death. In the art of self-interest, the SPFL is a market leader. The irony of chief executive Neil Doncaster going to war with the carpet baggers of European football is lost on no one. But if the Champions League is closed off to Celtic, Aberdeen, Rangers or whoever, payments of £300,000 for the other clubs will be gone. A ramped up, second-rate Europa League will be as good as it gets. And there would be one less place for Inverness, St Johnstone or Motherwell to go for. No one denies the Champions League is a busted flush. It’s boring. The same teams playing the same fixtures year after year. But if change is coming, let it be all-encompassing and for the right reasons. A cynical stitch-up by a small coterie of European oligarchs with a misplaced sense of entitlement is not the answer. In 2006, Celtic were rated as the 16th-richest club in Europe by the Deloitte Football Money League. Real Madrid were top, AC Milan third, Juventus fourth and Barcelona and Bayern sixth and seventh. Now? By the time a £5billion broadcasting deal kicks in, 18 of the continent’s 20 richest clubs will come from the Barclays Premier League. The Bayerns and AC Milans want to address the fact Stoke City can outbid them for players by securing guaranteed access to the Champions League. Even if it means slamming the door on the champions of Scotland, Holland, Portugal, Belgium and most of Europe. If or when that happens, Scottish football’s slide into obscurity is complete. Let’s set aside depressing petty local rivalries. What’s proposed here is obscene. And very much everything that’s wrong with modern professional football.