Pressure is growing on UEFA to keep the Champions League open to all clubs.
UEFA have recently been working on proposals to further limit entry to their top competition from 2024 which seems to revolve around ensuring more matches for the leading teams from the most successful leagues.
The upshot of that is that the champions of Scotland, Holland and other mid-ranking nations will find it more and more difficult to take part in the group stage.
Qualification for next season’s group stage can give Celtic a 40% boost to turnover while the value of players with Champions League experience can double as the recent examples of Moussa Dembele, Virgin Van Dijk and Fraser Forster demonstrate.
Van der Sar: “We won the league, we won the cup, and we were very close to the final of the Champions League. Yet we still have to play 2 qualification rounds to qualify for the CL. This can’t be good. Someone needs to explain why number 4 of La Liga does qualify.”
Spot on. pic.twitter.com/rO8RlNrFMS
— AFC Ajax ???? (@TheEuropeanLad) June 8, 2019
Ajax’s run to the semi-final this season, knocking out Juventus and Real Madrid, couldn’t have been better timed, sending out a reminder of life outside the top four divisions and of an era when the champions of Holland went into the tournament on a level footing with other champion teams.
Next Tuesday Celtic will go into the draw for the first qualifying round of the Champions League knowing that they must succeed over eight midweeks to reach the group stage, Atalanta will be in the group phase after finishing fourth in Serie A.
The European Leagues, representing the national league in 28 different countries, has issued a number of statements criticising the proposed reforms which would provide 14 midweek match days and make Champions League performance rather through domestic leagues.
Andrea Agnelli has been viewed as one of the drivers for a more elite tournament but in his capacity as an executive member of the ECA he told their Special General Assembly:
ECA’s fundamental belief is that clubs in all European countries who are good enough to develop and play regularly in European competitions should have the chance to do so.
Every club of this kind – from big, medium or small leagues – should have access to a system where performance on the pitch in Europe outweighs the relative financial strength of their domestic league.
The current system does not deliver this; it entrenches the existing financial and competitive inequality between clubs from the wealthiest leagues and the rest, and so denying clubs from these other leagues the financial stability they need to develop on and off the pitch. This is why we are advocating for reform.
