Post by QPR Report on Aug 19, 2009 6:35:08 GMT
David Conn/The Guardian
Arsène Wenger exposes Premier League's greatest fear to public gazeThe Arsenal manager's prophetic vision of a European league will have sent an icy breeze blowing through Premier League HQ
Football fans inclined to dismiss Arsène Wenger's prediction of a European league as a soufflé of incoherent pre-match rambling would be well-advised to take it a lot more seriously than that. The idea of a European league, in some form, involving the continent's biggest clubs – or self-appointed biggest clubs – motivated, above all else, by the hunger to make yet more money from the game, is not a mere fantasy. It is a real possibility, constantly discussed in football's corporate corridors, here and in Europe.
The Premier League's chief executive, Richard Scudamore, recognises that his greatest threat is for the big four clubs to strike, finally, for pan-European riches. At Uefa too, in the pine and glass headquarters designed for deep thinking on the shores of Lake Geneva, they know that if the Champions League does not deliver booming revenues to Europe's top clubs, those clubs will consider breaking away.
That reality is informed by memories of 1998, when Manchester United, Arsenal, Milan and Internazionale, Juventus, Ajax, Paris St Germain, Marseille and Borussia Dortmund went a long way into discussions about a breakaway European Super League with consultants Media Partners.
Uefa headed off that move by expanding the Champions League to deliver more money to the clubs, and that left football's administrators in no doubt: the big clubs have to be pacified, well-rewarded, to keep them in what the Uefa president Michel Platini still loves to believe is a football "family".
Wenger, whose team's 6-1 evisceration of Everton on Saturday sang of his purist football vision, has now exposed that these more calculating discussions continue. The most pertinent part of what he said was not his speculation about the form the league might take – a great deal of detail would have to be worked out if a league were to actually happen.
Instead Wenger was revealing a truth when he said: "The way we are going, the money coming in from the Champions League, for some clubs, will not be enough any more ... I feel there are some voices behind the scenes in our game aiming to do something about a European league."
Senior football people are indeed talking about this, all the time, but very rarely in public, because of the threat a European league poses to domestic traditions, and because the idea casts the big clubs as greedy, never satisfied, however much cash is rolling in.
Wenger's calm public contemplation of a European league within a decade exposes the private talk to daylight and will prompt dread within the Premier League in the first week of another bumper season. He said he would not want "to kill the national leagues", and so put forward the idea of clubs like his hoarding enormous squads to play both in Europe and the Premier League.
That, though, would still devastate national leagues. The Premier League complains already that the big four's income from the Champions League gives them too great a financial advantage over the other clubs. That gulf would be stretched vastly wider by a European league making fortunes from selling TV rights for a full season's fixtures.
The clubs that participate in Europe would make much more money than those that do not, and the Premier League's "brand", to TV and fans, would be fatally undermined if it constituted matches between, say, Wigan Athletic, Hull City and Stoke City, and Manchester United, Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool's second string.
The clubs have felt relatively sated since the Champions League was expanded and it now delivers around £40m in TV income alone to the winners, £25m to a semi-finalist (the strong Euro recently has meant a nice earner for our clubs). That, on top of a flourishing Premier League, helped Manchester United to £256m income last year, Arsenal to £223m, Chelsea to £214m and Liverpool £164m.
United say they are happy with the current structure and are not known as agitators for a European league. Chelsea – and Arsenal, clearly – are more alive to the possibility, as are the big Spanish and Italian clubs. A European league would also answer the prayers of the few clubs which persistently dominate smaller leagues, in Scotland, Holland, Belgium and Portugal. Wenger, after all, made his remarks in answer to a question about whether want-away Celtic, Arsenal's Champions League opponents tonight, could be accepted into the English Premier League.
Commercial logic dictates that financially-driven football clubs are always looking to the next expansion, as Scudamore himself, architect of Game 39 and the Premier League's overseas TV colonisation, knows very well. Yet the most attractive expansion to his top clubs is the greatest threat to him and to national leagues – a season-long European league, promising a crock of gold as wide as a continent.
Wenger is a professor of football, so his view that this is the way the game is going should be studied very seriously, not dismissed for the thinness of his detail. He has now confirmed, in public, that many people have been discussing this in private, for years.
www.guardian.co.uk/sport/david-conn-inside-sport-blog/2009/aug/18/european-league-premier-league-arsenal
Arsène Wenger exposes Premier League's greatest fear to public gazeThe Arsenal manager's prophetic vision of a European league will have sent an icy breeze blowing through Premier League HQ
Football fans inclined to dismiss Arsène Wenger's prediction of a European league as a soufflé of incoherent pre-match rambling would be well-advised to take it a lot more seriously than that. The idea of a European league, in some form, involving the continent's biggest clubs – or self-appointed biggest clubs – motivated, above all else, by the hunger to make yet more money from the game, is not a mere fantasy. It is a real possibility, constantly discussed in football's corporate corridors, here and in Europe.
The Premier League's chief executive, Richard Scudamore, recognises that his greatest threat is for the big four clubs to strike, finally, for pan-European riches. At Uefa too, in the pine and glass headquarters designed for deep thinking on the shores of Lake Geneva, they know that if the Champions League does not deliver booming revenues to Europe's top clubs, those clubs will consider breaking away.
That reality is informed by memories of 1998, when Manchester United, Arsenal, Milan and Internazionale, Juventus, Ajax, Paris St Germain, Marseille and Borussia Dortmund went a long way into discussions about a breakaway European Super League with consultants Media Partners.
Uefa headed off that move by expanding the Champions League to deliver more money to the clubs, and that left football's administrators in no doubt: the big clubs have to be pacified, well-rewarded, to keep them in what the Uefa president Michel Platini still loves to believe is a football "family".
Wenger, whose team's 6-1 evisceration of Everton on Saturday sang of his purist football vision, has now exposed that these more calculating discussions continue. The most pertinent part of what he said was not his speculation about the form the league might take – a great deal of detail would have to be worked out if a league were to actually happen.
Instead Wenger was revealing a truth when he said: "The way we are going, the money coming in from the Champions League, for some clubs, will not be enough any more ... I feel there are some voices behind the scenes in our game aiming to do something about a European league."
Senior football people are indeed talking about this, all the time, but very rarely in public, because of the threat a European league poses to domestic traditions, and because the idea casts the big clubs as greedy, never satisfied, however much cash is rolling in.
Wenger's calm public contemplation of a European league within a decade exposes the private talk to daylight and will prompt dread within the Premier League in the first week of another bumper season. He said he would not want "to kill the national leagues", and so put forward the idea of clubs like his hoarding enormous squads to play both in Europe and the Premier League.
That, though, would still devastate national leagues. The Premier League complains already that the big four's income from the Champions League gives them too great a financial advantage over the other clubs. That gulf would be stretched vastly wider by a European league making fortunes from selling TV rights for a full season's fixtures.
The clubs that participate in Europe would make much more money than those that do not, and the Premier League's "brand", to TV and fans, would be fatally undermined if it constituted matches between, say, Wigan Athletic, Hull City and Stoke City, and Manchester United, Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool's second string.
The clubs have felt relatively sated since the Champions League was expanded and it now delivers around £40m in TV income alone to the winners, £25m to a semi-finalist (the strong Euro recently has meant a nice earner for our clubs). That, on top of a flourishing Premier League, helped Manchester United to £256m income last year, Arsenal to £223m, Chelsea to £214m and Liverpool £164m.
United say they are happy with the current structure and are not known as agitators for a European league. Chelsea – and Arsenal, clearly – are more alive to the possibility, as are the big Spanish and Italian clubs. A European league would also answer the prayers of the few clubs which persistently dominate smaller leagues, in Scotland, Holland, Belgium and Portugal. Wenger, after all, made his remarks in answer to a question about whether want-away Celtic, Arsenal's Champions League opponents tonight, could be accepted into the English Premier League.
Commercial logic dictates that financially-driven football clubs are always looking to the next expansion, as Scudamore himself, architect of Game 39 and the Premier League's overseas TV colonisation, knows very well. Yet the most attractive expansion to his top clubs is the greatest threat to him and to national leagues – a season-long European league, promising a crock of gold as wide as a continent.
Wenger is a professor of football, so his view that this is the way the game is going should be studied very seriously, not dismissed for the thinness of his detail. He has now confirmed, in public, that many people have been discussing this in private, for years.
www.guardian.co.uk/sport/david-conn-inside-sport-blog/2009/aug/18/european-league-premier-league-arsenal