Well the result’s in and Michael Platini, one of the greatest footballers the world has seen, is the new President of UEFA. In a close vote he usurped longtime head Lennart Johansson by 4 votes.

His campaign was partly based on a promise to reduce the representation of clubs from the top ranked countries (currently Italy, Spain and England) in the Champions League, and give these places to the smaller countries such as those from the former Yugoslavia and Soviet Union. This clearly attracted votes and it all sounds great in principal.

Redistributing the places in the Champions League towards the smaller countries is fairer, but will mean sod all unless the whole basis on which the prize money is distributed is revamped. The TV rights aren’t shared equally, with the largest countries getting the share paid by their broadcasters. The rich clubs in the rich countries getting richer by the year.

On a domestic level those clubs entering the Champions League have far too big a financial advantage over non-participants, and as seasons have slipped by this has built and built so new entrants become less likely. How can you compete for one of the qualification places when your “rivals” have had an in-built advantage of 20m to 30m a year over a number of years?

In fact Platini’s proposal as it currently stands will probably mean the biggest clubs in each league getting even more money. The same large Chanpions League TV pool will be shared 3 ways rather than 4 in England, Spain and Italy thus reducing domestic competivity across Europe in the largest leagues whilst at the same time locking out the chance of a club from a smaller country winning the big eared cup.

Beware the midfield maestro bearing gifts.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 26th, 2007 at 2:30 pm and is filed under Miscellaneous. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.