Fresh from the saga that was the ill-fated and closed shop idea of a European Super League, UEFA made considerable changes to the Champions League and Europa League set up in the hopes of placating the bigger European sides and ensuring that such an idea was never floated again.
It now seems they are going one step further in their panicked efforts to ‘improve’ the beautiful game and could effectively be introducing a form of the European Super League via the back door after discussions were held at last weeks Executive Committee meeting about bringing in wildcards for historically successful clubs, and making the first ever step away from qualifying for European competition being based solely on the finishing position of last season’s exploits.
A vote to ratify this monumental change away from sporting integrity is expected to be held at the UEFA Congress in Vienna on May 10 – and unsurprisingly there are many clubs unhappy with this proposed suggestion.
If the vote goes UEFA’s way which would be like betting on the house to win at onlinecasino-southafrica.co.za, it would mean that from 2024 there would be two extra places reserved in the Champions League for European clubs who did not qualify via their domestic league, but have historically fared well in the European Cup/Champions League competition.
To put this into practice, hypothetically speaking, it would mean reigning European Champions Chelsea could finish fifth in the Premier League this season, but they would still have a very good chance of qualifying for the Champions League in 2022/23 as they rank fourth in UEFA’s 10-year club coefficient table. Whereas, if say West Ham United were to finish in fifth place, they would miss out on a Champions League spot because of their historical coefficient rating – there are 89 clubs rated higher than David Moyes’ side at this moment in time and that’s almost as many options that are available to you on Online casino games india.
To put it bluntly, UEFA would be introducing a two tier system of qualification that would for the first time in the history of the game, deliberately and by design, favour and protect the biggest European teams of the last decade, whilst also making it harder for them to be challenged by the rest of football as the growth that can be gained by a club through the riches of European competition would now effectively be out of reach and ring fenced around those clubs who have already gained and grown on the back of European success.
As was rightly pointed out by one Premier League executive, what is also then stopping UEFA from further tweaking this two tier system to be even more favourable in future years.
“It’s almost like this is ‘European Super League Lite’, and the fear is that two might become four, might become eight – with the Champions League becoming more and more of a closed shop.”
Such a move could also see the bizarre situation where a club finishing in fifth place would automatically go into the Europa League, but a team finishing below them in sixth spot would get bumped into the more profitable Champions League.
Given the reaction by fans to the ESL idea, UEFA would be wise to ensure that whatever changes they do plan to make, don’t give rise to a similar reaction from fans again but in their direction this time. With social media, sites like FootballFanCast.com and similar all available for fans to vociferously make their feelings known in this day and age, UEFA might find that pandering too far to the wishes of the big boys, could see the presumed smaller boys in the game take their proverbial ball back home and work out a system that would be far fairer to them and far fairer to fans given the switch to the game only being about money now.
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