Crystal Palace chairman Steve Parish had some harsh words for Uefa at last week's Financial Times Football Business summit.
“If you were to ask pretty much any club in Europe outside the gilded 20 that run the ECA, most people would tell you that UEFA are the greatest enemy to domestic leagues that exist,” said Parish.
“You’ve got a completely opaque ExCo, with people on it from individual clubs with far too much say, you’ve the ECA [European Clubs Association] in there, you’ve got new Champions League proposals that look so much like a Super League that you can’t tell the difference. In fact, in some regards, they’re worse.
“There’s one area where Mr Agnelli [Juventus supremo] and I would agree: the clubs should run tournaments and the governing body should govern. While we have this situation where UEFA, FIFA and the people who run the game are fighting the leagues for control of the calendar, we’re in trouble.
“We’re sleep-walking into it while UEFA picks our pockets. Mr Ceferin [Uefa president] uses the Super League as this nasty terrible thing that he was able to stop but, frankly, he was part of making something else happen, with its coefficient places and 40 per cent of your money depending on your last five years’ history — he was already pulling the drawbridge up.
“He talks about extending the tournament from 32 to 36 teams but is he including the teams that I saw in the Champions League when I was a youngster? No. He’s trying to give two more places to people he thinks will provide the most media revenue in any given year.
“All of these competitions have an element of being gerrymandered in a way that only certain clubs can take part. At least with the Super League, they didn’t try to hide it. With UEFA it’s happening by stealth.”
The remark about drawbridges is significant as Palace have generally been a mid-table Premier League club in recent seasons and may justifiably feel that there is a glass ceiling above them.
Total agreement. Bang on and very perceptive.
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