Last week on FanHouse, I wrote about the G-14, an elite group of European football clubs that’s billed as “the first international club organization in world football,” and its fight with UEFA president Michel Platini over his proposed reforms for the Champions League.
Basically, the G-14 likes the current Champions League format just the way it is and wants nothing to do with giving Champions League spots to domestic cup winners, which is what Platini is proposing. So the G-14 has decided that if Platini gets his way, its member clubs will boycott the Champions League and create its own European Super League — words that are the Association football equivalent of “nuclear deterrent,” because nobody wants a Champions League filled with UEFA Cup teams.
At first, I thought that a European Super League might mean that the G-14 clubs would pull out of their domestic leagues and create their own league, but that probably wouldn’t be the case — especially in England, where the top clubs rake in tons of money from both the Premier League and Champions League. Those clubs don’t want to cut themselves off from domestic competition, but they would certainly welcome a new European competition in which they could collect stupid TV money without having to win their way in every year.
On the other hand, a home-and-away season in a separate league would be far too many games for the number of clubs they want to include. So how about modeling the Super League after, say, the NFL?
After all, the current Champions League format consists of 8 groups of 4 teams, just like the current National Football League structure. Teams within groups play home-and-away games against each other, just like the NFL’s division rivals do, though each NFL team also plays four games each against opponents in two other divisions.
The G-14 could set up for the Super League in similar fashion, creating a fourteen-match season where intra-group opponents play home-and-away games, while each group draws to play one game each against two other groups. Plus, in a Super League where all the clubs are set, you could create divisions that exploit national rivalries. After all, the G-14′s 40 members and invitees include 4 English clubs, 4 Spanish clubs, 4 Italian clubs, 4 French clubs and 4 German clubs. There are your first five divisions right there.
Unfortunately, because the G-14 has 40 clubs rather than 32, that’s where it all breaks down, because your divisions would look something like this:
CONFERENCE 1 CONFERENCE 2 English Division Western Division ---------------- ---------------- Arsenal Ajax Chelsea Benfica Liverpool FC Porto Manchester United PSV Eindhoven Spanish Division Northern Division ---------------- ----------------- Barcelona Anderlecht Real Madrid Celtic Sevilla FC Copenhagen Valencia Rosenberg Italian Division Central Division ---------------- ----------------- A.C. Milan Austria Vienna Inter Milan Basel Juventus Red Star Belgrade Roma Sparta Prague French Division Southern Division --------------- ----------------- Lyon Fenerbache Marseille Levski Sofia Monaco Maccabi Haifa Paris Saint Germain Olympiacos German Division Eastern Division --------------- ---------------- Bayer Leverkusen CSKA Moscow Bayern Munich Dynamo Kiev Borussia Dortmund Steaua Bucharest Werder Bremen Wisla Krakow
Some of those division rivalries would be hard to sell to an international TV audience. What’s Celtic without Rangers? Does Fenerbache v. Levski Sofia excite anyone nearly as much as Arsenal v. Chelsea or Milan v. Inter? Sure, it puts some lesser-known clubs on the map, but it can’t do all that much for ratings.
Furthermore, how do you determine inter-division pairings? If you put England against Spain and France against Germany, whom does Italy play? Are they stuck playing two divisions in the opposing conference? Mathematically, it doesn’t seem to add it.
Perhaps that’s why any Super League will probably end up looking a lot like the Champions League — 40 clubs drawn randomly into 8 groups of 5, each group playing an 8-match home-and-away season from August to December, with 16 clubs making the knockout stage starting in February. There wouldn’t be any natural rivalries in the group stage, but hey, that’s why we have domestic leagues, right?
The only real question, then, is whether the G-14 and Platini would let the current standoff get to that point. If they do, you can be sure that the Super League would become the next big global brand, and the European Cup will lose its value faster than an XFL franchise.
7 responses so far ↓
1 Brian // Nov 6, 2007 at 7:47 pm
I think the question now, as you say, is whether Platini will back down before the stare-down reaches a crisis. (I think it’s safe to assume that the G-14 won’t offer much of a compromise.) I get the sense that Platini (with his imaginary son at Millwall) is a true believer when it comes to promoting the interests of the smaller clubs. But it also seems to be the case that his candidacy for the presidency of UEFA was successful largely due to the support of the smaller clubs whose interest he pledged to promote. So it’s probably safe to assume that his current hue and cry has something to do with his political debt to the Rosenborgs and Maccabi Haifas of the world.
If that’s the case, then it seems like that, since it’s not in the smaller clubs’ interest to see a superleague formed from which they will largely be excluded, and it’s not in Platini’s interest to see UEFA fall apart, he’ll gracefully cave in in order to keep the union together, right? Or is there some sign that this standoff is more than political theater?
Actually, there is a sign, which is the G-14′s genuine interest in breaking away from the Champions League and forming a league they can control. But I can’t see them going ahead with that dream yet, particularly if Platini gives way on the current points of contention.
2 joejoejoe // Nov 6, 2007 at 9:10 pm
I’m not going to devote any brainpower towards figuring out how to make the G-14 work. I’d rather spend the time figuring out how to monkeywrench the awful thing at every turn. It’s a greedy disaster.
Country federations could pull all kinds of maneuvers with international dates, domestic club cups, and international call-ups to make the G-14 much less marketable. UEFA Champions League at least promotes the sport in Europe. The G-14 is simply about extracting money from the continent with zero motivation to promote the sport.
Platini needs only to get a few country federations on his side. Germany and France both get 3 sides into CL and historically they are not the same 3 teams every year. These national federations would have incentive to work AGAINST the G-14. A strong G-14 hurts the Italian, Spanish, and English leagues and there would be an opening for France and Germany to regain a bit of their luster on the world club scene.
G-14 runs the same risk as big programs in major college US football. Big programs like Notre Dame get so concerned with hype and their “unique” product that they end up just not being very good at their sport.
I know this is a bit of a ramble but I really am rooting hard against the G-14.
3 Brian // Nov 7, 2007 at 7:46 am
If this Guardian report is true, it appears Platini has indeed backed down in the standoff with the G-14 and will now allow national associations to decide for themselves whether their Champions League places will come from league or cup competitions. But it’s also being reported that he has dealt a major blow to the G-14 by giving more influence within UEFA to that big group of G-14 “invitees”, and thus convincing some of them to think twice about joining the G-14. Peter Kenyon has now openly said that Chelsea will refuse any offer to sign on with the G-14. joejoejoe, it looks like you’re getting your wish. Who would have thought that Chelsea would lead the way against an organization devoted to the power of money in football?
http://football.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,,2206514,00.html
4 joejoejoe // Nov 7, 2007 at 6:34 pm
Investing Russian oligarch money in democratic football initiatives since 2007. Liberté, égalité, Chelsea!
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7 joel // Nov 13, 2007 at 11:48 am
Argh. Don’t get me started on how Europe needs a league like the NFL! You’re assuming that there’s not a huge gap between fans in Europe and the U.S., but there is.
European fans are way, way, way more politically opposed to the influence of money on the game than American fans are. There would be massive opposition to anything that undermines 1) The domestic leagues 2) Relagation/promotion 3)UEFA 4) International football and FIFA itself.
That’s a lot of bathwater you’re throwing out just to get more Real Madrid v. Man U matches on the calendar. And while those G-14 clubs have huge fan bases, the federations, confederations and FIFA are pretty big constituencies themselves.
And most of all: The NFL model sucks! No relegation/promotion. A draft that gives the best young players to the worst teams. Complete inability to spread the game to new markets. I don’t see how this is a winning recipe for anyone. Possibly UEFA can “borrow” some NFL concepts, but they should stay away from the whole formula.