Gamma Gamma 14 Is No Longer

By: chris | January 15th, 2008

The football fraternity - or more like secret society - has disbanded after coming to an accord with The Man and The Other Man on points which lie near and dear to their big moneyed hearts. So the off campus fraternity will now get their wish of getting an on-campus house where some of their demands are met, and they get to party Euro style all they want. uefa.com is calling this “historic“, I’m calling it “already?”.

The biggest development is clearly regarding the incessant row between club and country, which will now see clubs reimbursed for the participation of their players in international competitions, meaning the European Championships and World Cup. We’d like to affectionately call this “The Michael Owen Clause”. There is little in detail regarding the actual contributions, whether it has to do with injured players, as has been the big hullabaloo the last few years, or all participants in general - I suspect the former. And it also appears as though it will be down to each of the respective football associations, which I suppose means instead of looking at one big war, we’ll get to look at many little battles for the next few months.

* - Even the official pdf they’re giving us is being very, very vague. Sounds like a drunken handshake agreement, and everyone will wake up in the morning pretending like it never happened.

All of these decisions which have been made will be given their voice in a new European Club Association, which appears as though it will be less restrictive and set the entrance bar at “how many beers can you chug?” as opposed to “how big is daddy’s bank account?”, as it will include delegates from more than 100 clubs. We/I give Michel Platini enough guff for being a nincompoop (he is), but give him credit for doing what he set out to do for the voters which spearheaded his drive to the UEFA presidency: giving the little guy a louder voice.

More over, all those court cases which G14 was levying against the football giants will magically vanish into thin air. So it appears everyone just sat down at the table, got the booze flowing, hugged and made up, then completely wiped the slate clean. Everybody wins, and a lot sooner than many people thought.

“The demands of the clubs to be heard and to be associated, also financially, are well-founded,” he said. “The letter of intent signed today is not a political step, but a logical one.”

Platini & Blatter using logic? Scratch that, this is historic.