The Premier League’s Big Six are likely to suffer a further blow as negotiations restart on the new format of the Champions League from 2024, with a fresh impetus to ensure no club qualify purely on the basis of their historical record.
Europe’s elite clubs, pushed by the Premier League’s Big Six, had managed to include two extra places in the new Champions League format based on the past five years of a club’s UEFA coefficient — before they decided that wasn’t sufficient security and attempted to impose permanent membership of a tournament, regardless of performance, with their failed Super League.
The new Champions League rule would mean clubs such as Liverpool and Juventus who are struggling to qualify by normal means this season, would still get into the tournament based on historic achievement.
But, after UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin held a historic meeting with a European fans’ group last week, including the English supporters who helped to destroy the Super League, that distortion of fair competition looks set to be removed when the new Champions League proposals are framed.
‘We have made it absolutely crystal clear to UEFA and Aleksander Ceferin that allowing clubs to qualify for Europe based on anything other than sporting merit is completely unacceptable and fans oppose expansion of the Champions league,’ said Kevin Miles, chief executive of the Football Supporters’ Association.
‘Any format which allows clubs to compete based on prestige or historic performance is a capitulation to the same greedy owners who tried to form the breakaway European Super League. We won’t accept a bad option just because there is a worse one.’
A majority of Premier League clubs are opposed to the reforms as they say they would dilute the excitement of domestic football.
For the first time, fans will have a say in the new format with Ceferin promising fans’ groups that they would be consulted once the European Clubs’ Association and UEFA have agreed a new format.
UEFA had agreed to a 36-team Champions League with 10 initial games based on the Swiss system used in chess, where you play appropriately ranked competitors rather than every team in the league.
But the English fan groups don’t want the extra games, even though clubs such as Arsenal, Tottenham and Liverpool could potentially benefit from the two historical places.
UEFA chiefs, meanwhile, are still pursuing disciplinary action against Juventus, Real Madrid and Barcelona, who have yet to withdraw from the ESL.