European Restructuring Part One: The Wealth of Nations

By: Dan | May 23rd, 2009

European competition used to be relatively straightforward. There was the European cup, for domestic champions, the Cup Winners’ Cup, for domestic cup winners and the UEFA Cup, to reward teams that completed a successful league campaign. All three competitions paired teams from an open draw into knock out ties against each other all the way through. This model worked for decades. From a sporting point of view, no one seemed to have a problem with the legitimacy of the various winners, and all three cups were viewed as prestigious events that anyone would be proud to win.

From the larger clubs’ point of view, the primary flaw in this format was risk. As everyone knows, a knock out cup tournament is incredibly unpredictable compared to a league season. One bad day in a cup can spell disaster. Few rational people are prepared to argue that Grasshoppers Zurich would be able to defeat Real Madrid on a regular basis, but in the 1978-79 season, a 2-0 victory in Switzerland proved sufficient to knock Madrid out of Europe on away goals. The open draw only compounded this problem, as a big club could be drawn against a difficult opponent very early in the competition, the fate that befell Liverpool when they were knocked out of the European Cup in the first round for two consecutive seasons, by Nottingham Forest and Dinamo Tbilisi, respectively.

Crazy, unexpected things happen in sports, so when sport remained the primary function of playing all these football matches, there was relatively little complaint. The influx of big money into the game, especially television money, in the early 1990s was the impetus towards a rapid shift in priorities. To lose a cup tie was no longer just heartbreak, it was terrible for business. It would be naïve in the extreme to assume that before 1990, European football was as pure as the ancient Olympics, but I maintain that the sheer amount of money that was now involved distorted any sense of proportion. New money combined with the old format created a combination of high stakes gambling and long term business planning. Predictable outcomes are preferable to risk, so any prudent businessman would work to reduce the risk.

The proposed solution is a specter that has remained with us ever since: the breakaway super league. Though this proposal has undergone myriad mutations throughout the years, its early form consisted of a new competition, independent of UEFA and the member clubs’ national associations. The league would also be a closed off structure, free of relegation. An adequate explanation regarding how the prospect of a mid-table super league match between say, Arsenal and Bayern Munich, with nothing whatsoever at stake would be made appealing to viewers or sponsors has never really been offered. The very prospect constituted enough of a menace for UEFA to cave in and institute group play for the final season under the European Cup format.

It should be noted that the format changes were not solely responsible for the state of European competition that we are familiar with today. The initial introduction of the group stage occurred while the financial disparity between the large and small was not as severe. Events were unfolding that would, unfortunately, severely unbalance the playing field in favor of the largest clubs.

The large amounts of television and sponsorship money that poured into the game had the immediate effect of widening the gulf between the big and small leagues. Barcelona and Manchester United were always wealthier than FC Sion and Club Brugge, but the amount of money it was possible to earn in a larger league created an astronomical difference. Combined with the Bosman ruling and the eventual loosened restrictions on foreign players, conditions were ideal for an ever smaller number of clubs to stockpile players with unprecedented voraciousness. In a happy coincidence for the large clubs, the collapse of communism essentially eliminated Eastern European clubs as a competitive danger while making all of their best players available for purchase.

For brevity’s sake, it will suffice to say that Europe’s richest clubs and Europe’s most successful clubs were now one and the same. They felt brazen enough to form the G-14 (expanded to 18 in 2002), a coalition to advance their agenda. By the time they actually got around to forming an official organization, their top priority, the expansion of the Champions League had already been achieved. Things would be rather different from now on.