The reform of the Champions League that divides UEFA clubs: the positions of some teams | Football

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Archive | Gabriel Bouys | Agence France Presse

A new Champions League from 2024? The issue of the controversial reform of the Champions League will stir up the general assembly of the European Club Association (ECA) on Monday and Tuesday in Geneva.

UEFA's headquarters in neighboring Nyon was to be the scene on September 11 of another meeting, but that meeting was postponed ‘sine die’.

UEFA president, Aleksander Ceferin, He gave his explanations in this regard in mid-August: his organization is "gathering the contributions" of the national federations and a new discussion "would be premature" since the proposals must first be analyzed well.

Different voices believe that these words really mean that discontent is so important to the reform project presented a few months ago that the Slovenian UEFA employer has decided to save time.

The postponement of the meeting that was scheduled for Wednesday “Reveals a strong opposition,” estimates Bernard Caiazzo, President of the French Saint-Etienne, one of the most mobilized clubs against reform.

For him, "it is a first official sign (of great discontent) since it was the meeting that although he was not going to decide on the reform of the Champions League he was going to give a clear orientation."

The UEFA project was presented in May and contemplates that the Champions League, starting in 2024, will be played with four groups of eight teams, offering more games and thus more income for the participants. 24 teams of the 32 would be automatically classified from one season to the next, which for the opponents of the project would generate a “closed” league.

The English Premier League is also against the project. According to the detractors, the new Champions League designed by UEFA would reduce the interest of the national leagues, since the classification of clubs for the Champions League would no longer depend on those domestic competitions.

“When you close the supreme tournament by 90%, you kill a medium team's dream of accessing it ”, underlines Caiazzo.

To support his words he cites the example of Lille, runner-up of the last French league, which as of 2024 "could no longer live the fairy tale that involves moving from the 17th place of Ligue 1 to the Champions League in fourteen months" .

Those in favor of reform

According to a source close to the negotiations, the reform project is especially due to the Italian Giorgio Marchetti, UEFA competition director, in direct collaboration with his ECA counterpart, the Belgian Diederik Dewaele

"Five or six major European clubs influential within the ECA have great weight in the reform proposal, but each one tries to endorse it to the other so as not to lose credibility," estimates a source close to the matter.

Among those clubs would be the Juventus from Turin, whose president is also the ECA, but also other relevant names such as FC Barcelona and Real Madrid, According to the press.

The ECA continued presenting in the last weeks the same exit scheme (a Champions of 32 teams with 28 directly classified), despite the numerous hostile reactions. In a statement published on August 16, the association notes that "the current structure of European club competitions are not in the interest of most clubs, especially those that do not belong to the big championships."

Several federations have formulated their counterproposals, which especially suggest classification quotas not by countries, but based on a club's UEFA index, as well as a better redistribution of income.

The theme will be present on Monday and Tuesday at the ECA meeting in Geneva.

"The question will obviously be on the agenda, if it were not it would be very surprising," says Caiazzo, who says that among the 246 member clubs of the ECA "the percentage of clubs unfavorable to the project or undecided is higher than the percentage of clubs which are favorable. "