With the meeting of the UEFA Executive Committee on (today) Tuesday and the Congress on Wednesday, Vienna is the location of groundbreaking decisions in European football. The Executive Committee will not only set the schedule for the EM 2024 in Germany, but – according to international media reports – also discuss the details of the reform of the European Cup competitions decided last year.
For the Austrian Football Association, the fourth edition of the congress in Vienna after the premiere in 1955, 1994 and 2015 is also a matter of prestige. “We are very happy,” said ÖFB General Secretary Thomas Hollerer, whose association does not appear as the organizer, but “helps a little” to handle the event with an estimated 300 participants.
Austria is not represented in the 17-strong Executive Committee (UEFA President Aleksander Ceferin and 16 others). The local top officials, President Gerhard Milletich, Bundesliga representative Philip Thonhauser and Hollerer will only “intervene” on Wednesday at the Vienna Exhibition Center at the 55-country congress. Last but not least, Hollerer emphasized the changed conditions under which the meeting is taking place: “It’s the first post-Covid congress, you can finally see each other face to face again.”
The 2024 “final round fixture list” is officially on the Executive Committee’s agenda, and the stadiums will also be assigned to the games. But it should also be about a much hotter iron, the Champions League reform from 2024. Accordingly, it should no longer be played with 32 teams in eight preliminary round groups as usual, but with 36 teams in a league system in which not everyone plays against every start. In total, 100 more games would be kicked off. Recently, however, this was also criticized by the merger of the European leagues.
It is currently being debated whether two of the additional places should be awarded on the basis of previous results in the European Cup and not the performance in the previous season of the national league. That would be a kind of safety net for big clubs that are having a bad season. From the point of view of the merger of the leagues, which also includes the Austrian Bundesliga, only “sporting criteria” should decide on qualification.
–
