I usually don’t take a big interest in the politics of football. To me, it seems like ten overweight, balding men sitting in a top-of-the-range conference centre eating and drinking. Every now and again, they might possibly talk about football.
The recent appointment of Michel Platini as UEFA president still didn’t catch too much of my attention.
But that changed after I read Jonathan Wilson’s excellent book Behind The Curtain: Travels in Eastern European Football. After reading the book, I suddenly took a great interest in Platini’s ideas. In particular, the proposed move to reduce the maximum number of teams per country in the Champions League to three, and also the proposal to increase the number of teams in the European Championships from 16 to 24.
In Behind The Curtain, Wilson charts the freefall of Eastern European football, and cites one of the main reasons for the decline as the gulf between clubs in the ‘big four’ (England, Spain, Italy, Germany) and the rest of Europe. He states: “How can Eastern clubs compete? How can they build facilities for the modern development of players? How can they stop their best players leaving? How can they ever build a side when they know any player who shows any talent will be tempted away? The answer is simple: without the help of a wealthy financial backer, they can’t”
In essence, it all comes down to money. Money attained by the big clubs, the majority of it through television money. Television money fuelled by the glitz and glamour of the Champions League. The only likely contenders for the Champions League title come from England, Spain, Germany and Italy.
Of course, there are other factors that have been pivotal in the downfall of Eastern European football. The end of the Cold War and the division of the USSR and Yugoslavia have had a massive bearing on it, as well as war in the Balkans, but the hogging of the limelight and the income from bigger clubs has probably been the biggest factor.
Ever since the advent of the Champions League as we know it today, with a group stage and then a knockout stage, no Eastern European club has even come close to winning it.
In the last year of the old European Cup in 1991, when it was just a knockout stage, it was won by Yugoslavian side Red Star Belgrade. Five years before that in 1986, Steaua Bucharest of Romania won the European Cup and were runners up in 1989.
Since the turn of the century, only Dynamo Kiev and Spartak Moscow have managed to qualify for the group stages on a regular basis.
It certainly says something about the exclusion of Eastern European clubs in the current Champions League format. Is it really right that the champions of a country should have to go through two or three qualifying rounds, while the fourth best team of another country can qualify by playing one qualifying round?
Michel Platini’s proposals, however, offer a ray of hope to Eastern European clubs.
Reducing the amount of entries from the big leagues is not suddenly going to create an influx of Eastern European clubs into the Champions League, but it will at least give them a much better chance of progressing through to the group stages and collecting a handsome sum of money to help them rebuild. Not only that, but it will hopefully shift some of the limelight away from the big powers and towards Eastern Europe.
Another problem is that the people of, for instance, Bucharest, would much rather watch a Premiership game on the television than go and watch their local team. If an Eastern European side were to put on a decent showing in European competition then it would whip up some interest and hopefully we would see the fans flocking back to grounds.
Without changes to the current format though, I don’t think we will ever see the likes of Red Star Belgrade in 1991 or Steaua Bucharest in 1986 ever again, which will be a damn right shame.
Scrap that, it’ll be a damn right tragedy if an Eastern European club were never to lift the European Cup ever again.
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