European leagues open hostilities over Champions League changes

Author: app/afp

ZURICH: European football leagues on Friday suspended an accord with UEFA in protest at reforms to the Champions League which gives greater power to major clubs.

By freezing the memorandum of understanding the 25 championships can now organise their own league games on the same day as Champions League matches. The European Professional Football Leagues (EPFL) is furious at UEFA’s reforms agreed in September which guaranteed four Champions League places to England, Spain, Italy and Germany from 2018. It also changed the prize money shareout.

“There is no other option but to terminate the currant MOU,” EPFL president Lars-Christer Olsson told a press conference after a meeting of the body. Twenty-two of the 23 leagues present at the meeting voted for the suspension which will last until March 15 next year, Olsson, head of Sweden’s professional league, said. Italy’s Serie A voted against.

“This will give us and UEFA sufficient time to negotiate,” Olsson added. Olsson said that he was to meet the new UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin in the second half of November. No league has yet announced that it will hold matches on Champions League days, but EPFL officials said each country was free to decide its own action.

Many European leagues complain that the Champions League has been turned into a “closed party” and that the prize changes will increase the wealth gap between the continent’s major clubs and the rest. “It is about preserving the basic values that football fans love,” said Claus Thomsen, chief executive of Denmark’s league.

“Some clubs are making so much money that you don’t have a competitive balance anymore in your own championship,” said Claudius Schafer, chief executive of the Swiss Football League.

Share
Leave a Comment

Recent Posts

  • Business

SI Global Solutions becomes first Pakistani company to get membership of IALA

KARACHI: SI Global Solutions, a leading maritime and fastest-growing ICT system integrator and consultancy company,…

12 mins ago
  • Op-Ed

The Alarming Rise of Urban Pollution in Lahore

  In recent years, Lahore has been in the grp of a growing crisis that…

14 mins ago
  • Pakistan

PTI urges mass movement for judicial independence

The PTI has urged the public to unite beyond political divides and launch a movement…

17 mins ago
  • Top Stories

Pakistan congratulates Donald Trump for winning ‘second term’ as US president

Donald Trump was elected as the 47th US president on Wednesday, marking a notable comeback…

21 mins ago
  • Pakistan
  • Top Stories

PIA Denies Allegations Raised by Aircraft Engineers’ Society

  The recent accusations by the newly elected body of the Society of Aircraft Engineers…

28 mins ago
  • Cartoons

TODAY’S CARTOON

7 hours ago