I'll get into this more later when I have time but the emotionalism needs to be discarded when discussing the future of Euro football. The emerging decision makers primarily view the clubs as assets. The proposed revisions to the CL structure threatens the value of those assets. The owners of the assets possess the ability to eliminate that threat by establishing their own rules and game. They will do so sooner than later. The naivety of UEFA would be amusing were it not so inevitably disastrous.
Don´t knock UEFA that easily... The G-18 is a joke, in Germany for example no G-18 member is even involved in the title race. In Italy no one is interested in European games at all unless it´s at least a semifinal..Juve vs Ajax a couple of years ago 7.000 spectators. In England the league is all important financially..The European games are just a window to market the club. And Spain, well..the fans of the topclubs are rather blasé about Europe and with a few exceptions like Sevilla the rest are not that eager either.
Football should not be based around armchair plastic fans. In which case, they can be thrown out of their domestic leagues, and their players banned from international football. In which case, the G14 would die. Most of the teams in the G14 aren't even that 'big', but just rode the recent TV/CL gravy train by being successful at the right time. If they disappeared, other teams would replace them. Current G-14 Italy Inter Juventus Milan England United Liverpool Arsenal Germany Bayern Dortmund Leverkusen France Lyon PSG Marseille Netherlands Ajax PSV Spain Madrid Barcelona Valencia Portugal Porto[/QUOTE]
Doubt it. Uefa eliminated the second CL group stage without consulting the G14. What did the G14 do in retaliation? ******** all. Two G14 members, Marseille and Dortmund, regularly miss out on CL football. What do the G14 do about it? Nothing. If G14 teams boycotted the CL, other teams would take their place, would take the revenue and sign the players, and would become bigger. Many G14 team aren't that big. I'd say there are only five truly 'big' teams in Europe: Man United, Real Madrid, Barcelona, AC Milan and Juventus. Four of those make most of their income from domestic TV deals, with CL money being just the icing on the cake. Seven G14 teams, Bayern Munich, Borussia Dortmund, Marseille, Juventus, Benfica, Valencia and Ajax could all miss out on CL football next season. What will the G14 do about it? ******** all, same as usual.
I think you are talking a lot of crap in this post. Barca had one match with attendance under 90.000 and that was the match against Levski Sofia at 65k. However i can understand that some of the big clubs dont allways get a sellout against the smaller less attractive clubs in the group stages. From the the first knockout stage there have been pretty much sellouts in all games exept Roma-Lyon and Inter-Valencia wich was right after the cop was killed in Italy. And Juve have allways been something special.
every league should take care of their big guns in european competition...seems only fair right? After all they represent you, and bring in money....(to the top heads of the league)
They bring in money to themselves, giving them a further advantage over the rest of the league. In fact it's in the best interests of the 16 English teams outside of the CL if every team English in the CL lost every game.
Hate to say it but that's true. As I mentioned earlier, the more money the big 4 make, the bigger the disparity between the top tier and the 2nd tier. Soon, you won't have any competition for those top four spots because the same teams will continue to place in them year in and year out.
I dont think there will allways be the same teams in the top four. There are other teams that are able to take one of those spots with the right owner, manager and players. Teams like Tottenham, Everton, Newcastle, Aston Villa and maybe others are teams that could be among the top 4 in the future. If Chelsea could do it so could these teams. You only need another Abramowitch type owner for another team.
What a load of rubbish there is in this post. In England, the European Cup is held in tremendously high esteem, partially because of the ban and partially because it in an area we are being increasingly successful. To Mourinho and Ferguson, a second European Cup has the significance of a holy grail. In Spain, teams like Real Madrid define themselves by the European Cup. Barcelona yearned for that second triumph of last year with a fervour few other big clubs around Europe could match. It's true that in Italy the Scudetto is often viewed as being the pre-eminent objective for all the big clubs at a season's outset, but you only have to look at the response to Milan's advance into the final to understand that the ultimate prize in world club football means a tremendous amount in that country too. And in Germany? You only have to listen in to the regular commentary from pundits, players and managers alike about how German clubs need to turn domestic success into European significance to understand how much Europe, as "der naechste Schritt" means there.
I know you're getting criticised for this but I agree with you to some extent. The gap between say the top 20 richest European clubs and the rest is widening every season and as a result there's a whole group of football fans who really aren't that interested in the champions league because it is miles removed from their own personal experiences of football. The champions league seems to cater for the needs of a) sponsors b) the media c) the club's financial needs and d) a television audience. How many of the people who post on the boards of top premiership sides actually go to CL games? How many families can afford (season) tickets? I've said it elsewhere on this forum but the way it's going now with the commercialisation process, 'television football' is alienating traditional football fans. The problem with that is that it's precisely those traditional football fans that clubs are built on. Alienate them and football becomes a sport that people watch on television only.
Sadly, that's not going to bother your average UEFA exec, or anyone working with them or their TV partners. Even in footballing mad nations like the UK, an average of around 250,000 people go to see European games in person on each matchday. By contrast, the televised audiences are vast. The 2006 Champions' League final, for example, had a total audience in excess of 200m and an average of 89m. A significant proportion of these will have paid to watch the footage, either directly through their own satellite package or indirectly by taking their custom to a pub that pays for the coverage. Compared to that, the 60,000 odd that attended the game are small banana. Writ large, that naked fact means 'traditional football fans' aren't actually that significant. Serie A has been getting by for years on fat TV contracts and shit figures in their crumbling stadia. Those of us fortunate enough to be able to go to matches and experience football properly may not enjoy the thought, but it's already fact that the majority of people who now feel they can legitimately call themselves football fans and/or fans of a given club have only indirect contact with the sport or the club, via the TV and the Internet.
Of course its going to bother the people at the top of football, because full stadiums with great atmosphere makes a better TV product, and a better TV-product gives you bigger TV-deals. And dont blame the UEFA for huge prices for a ticket, you should rather blame the clubs. Especially the english clubs are in the front on outpricing their hardcore fans.
I believe that traditional fans are significant for football. An interesting development in that regard is that smaller clubs and smaller leagues are increasing in popularity. The Dutch league for example has set record attendance figures year over year in the past three years; and it’s not like the Dutch league is in the most successful stage of its history from an international perspective. This is an interesting phenomenon in my view, i.e. the fact that Dutch football fans are becoming more and more passionate about their local club regardless of how well that club is doing and regardless of how much ‘top quality’ football is shown to them on their televisions. Where media and investors in football go wrong is it seems is that they assume that the fans are the most interested in the highest level of football; they’re not. Just like people are more likely to look up information about their own city on the internet than about a land far away, the internationalisation of football has not led to (European) fans becoming less interested in their local club. What this development does create like I said earlier is that there is a widening gap about two different classes of football. It’ll be interesting to see what it all leads to.
Interestingly, several clubs are freezing or cutting their ticket prices for next season. Clubs like Bolton, Wigan and Blackburn haven't been selling out all their tickets, so there's a commercial imperative their to get more people into the ground, but my club, Arsenal, sell out pretty much every game and have frozen prices for the second season running (ticket prices were frozen last year when we moved ground). Maybe a late realisation that clubs have pushed fans as far as they can on ticket prices?
That's hugely debatable. A large number of CL games already play themselves out in front of half-empty stadia, particularly in Italy. And the extent to which the average media exec at UEFA "gets" the formula 'crowd+passion=value' is also there to be queried. Most of these people have probably never been in a football stadium without the thick glass of an executive box between them and the crowd. I don't think I mentioned ticket prices at all, but whatever. You're right - the clubs are to blame for pricing which, particularly in England, is often outrageous.
EPL hamstring english teams in Europe? What the fook does that mean? But I understand the context anyway, Liverpools fans hold the European Champions League in high esteem because they're been unable to win the English league for the past 18 years. But the league surely is the most important thing to win. Man United are this years best team in England, if Liverpool win the CL, they will be considered the 3rd best because thats where they finished in the league. end of. As for the Champions League itself, it should just include the Champions. 2nd place go into the UEFA Cup and they should bring back the European Cup Winners Cup. Now we have a system were most probably the same teams will get into the latter stages of the CL. the UEFA Cup used to be a good cup to win, now it's viewed as a hindrance and a headache, just ask Steve Coppell.