Report: G14 and UEFA kiss and make up

By: Bob | November 7th, 2007

Just when we thought that the G14 group of rich football clubs was heading for a showdown with UEFA boss Michel Platini over the future of the Champions League, along comes news from The Guardian that the two sides have reached a compromise, and a surprising one at that.

According the paper, the G14 has been outmaneuvered by UEFA and as a result it has been forced into a new mandate.

Platini is thought to have backed down on his proposal to have domestic cup winners enter the Champions League and will instead allow national associations to decide whether entrants should come from league or cup competitions. As a result the top three teams in the Premier League will go directly into the group stage and the fourth-placed side will play two qualifying rounds.

In return the clubs will rebrand the G14 as a new, independent and international clubs organisation, pledged to work more closely with Uefa. The G14 approach has been to threaten breakaway competitions and to back litigation by clubs against governing bodies.

Uefa has effectively outflanked the G14 by inviting leading clubs, including Chelsea who are not G14 members, to join the Uefa Strategy Forum. The forum will discuss the Champions League proposals on Monday.

Now there is a pretty novel concept. The biggest clubs in Europe working directly with the football governing body instead of against it. If the report is true, I imagine that both sides will claim success. The G14 will say that they got UEFA to bend and UEFA will say that the big clubs are part of their big happy family. Then they will go outside, have a picnic, marvel at the wonders of nature, yadda, yadda…

Crap, compromise isn’t nearly as fun to write about as conflict even if this could end up being a good thing for the Champions League and the sport in general.

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Category: Champions League, World Football

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Ian

Having the leagues decide which finishing places deserve which European spots makes sense to me. Then, if the FA is worried about the decline of the FA Cup, for example, they can make the final worth the first-ranked UEFA Cup spot or even a CL spot. I don't generally agree with Cup winners going to CL, just because I think it tends to put weaker teams there than going just by league finishes. Part of me likes that the big teams sometimes are less dedicated to domestic cups - that means smaller teams have a chance to shine there, teams that have no chance of winning their leagues.
Jan

I like the compromise. The domestic cup competitions will most likely remain untouched, unless a particular league really wants to award the CL spot to it. But the small qualifying competition among the best leagues remains, so clubs from the smaller leagues get more CL play.
Matt

Who needs Chelsea?