AKeen observers of international football diplomacy may have an inkling of what will likely be decided in April. Most football enthusiasts in Germany, however, will exclaim in astonishment: What’s going on here? Behind the scenes, officials are working feverishly on a new model of the Champions League. It will have more games, more participants and should create greater revenue opportunities. The commercialization of football, felt by many to be rampant, is being taken to a new extreme with these serious changes.
Instead of the preliminary round introduced in 1991, during which the field for the knockout phase after Christmas is determined in groups of four, there should be only one league. The plan is to expand the number of participants from 32 to 36 clubs. The teams no longer play six group games, but at least ten games before the round of 16. Instead of the 125 matches that are held per year in the old system, a total of 225 duels could be marketed from 2024. “The idea is to increase the attractiveness of the competition through a model with more interesting games and at the same time to meet the general desire for higher income,” says Fernando Carro, the managing director of the Bundesliga club Bayer Leverkusen.
Carro sits on the Club Competitions Committee (CCC) of the European Football Union (Uefa) as well as on a committee of the same name of the powerful European Club Association (ECA), which designed the intervention in the competition. He knows about the unease that such events cause in Germany.
The former executive board member of Bertelsmann AG says he is “not a fan” of the reform model, but believes “that it is a good compromise” because: “We are operating on an international scale. None of that takes place in our German bubble. ”The concept to be decided at the UEFA Executive Committee meeting at the end of April is a reaction to the threat that some of the biggest clubs on the planet have created: the super league.
The Uefa is threatened by a disaster
A good two years ago, a plan was announced according to which the brightest football brands in Europe wanted to play among themselves, with participation guaranteed. Today’s usual qualification via the national competitions, which makes all European leagues more attractive, was no longer planned. Among others, the German Carro, the managing director of Borussia Dortmund, Hans-Joachim Watzke, and Bayern Munich’s legal advisor Michael Gerlinger successfully defended themselves on the board of the ECA against the more radical forces from Italy and Spain.
They even wanted to play on many of the weekends previously reserved for national competitions. Even now, the American bank JP Morgan is said to be interested in replacing Uefa as the organizer of such a noble tournament. Each participant would supposedly get 300 million euros, the winner could take up to a billion.
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