Post by Salem6 on Apr 3, 2007 9:18:45 GMT
Matt Scott
Monday April 2, 2007
The Guardian
football.guardian.co.uk/News_Story/0,,2047991,00.html
Secret talks have taken place between Europe's leading
football clubs and Brussels politicians that could
lead to a breakaway super league. Sources involved in
the discussions, held at the PSV Eindhoven-Arsenal
Champions League match in February, state that a
breakaway is the "ultimate threat" that could be
exercised if Uefa and Fifa "run wild" in their
governance of the game.
The talks were prompted by clubs' concerns over the
findings of the Independent European Sport Review, a
report commissioned by the sports minister, Richard
Caborn, during the UK's presidency of the European
Union last year. The review set in train a process
that will come to an end when the commissioner Jan
Figel, who attended the Eindhoven meeting, delivers a
white paper for sport to the European Commission later
this year.
Among the politicians present were Toine Manders, a
Dutch MEP who is a long-standing advocate of
free-market principles for football, and Ivo Belet,
the Belgian MEP who drafted the European parliament's
input into the white paper. Speaking on the BBC
Parliament channel's Record Europe, Belet said: "We
could have in five or 10 years a European Union super
league; combined with collective selling of television
rights that would be the perfect solution."
Manders explained on the same programme: "If we have a
real internal market for the economic activities of
professional football clubs, at the end you can have
an EU league. If you have an internal market, that is
feasible."
It is not known exactly what form such a league would
take. However, the Guardian revealed 12 months ago a
G14 strategy document drawing up a mechanism for a
breakaway. That "Vision Europe" document envisaged "a
detachment of the top professional level from all
remaining levels underneath, if this was agreed upon
by the clubs".
Those clubs would, according to that blueprint, then
seek to run their own competition. This could
effectively mean that the top clubs in each country
would no longer compete in their home leagues.
For now there remains a strong commitment among the
clubs to the Champions League and to domestic
football. However, they are seeking to retain control
over their own commercial activities and feel the
politicians who joined them in Eindhoven have been
sympathetic to their position.
One insider present at the talks said that the
politicians were "particularly comfortable with having
people around the table who their work will directly
affect".
There is real concern about the independent sport
review's demands for players to be released for
international football without entitlement to
compensation, the rule that suggests clubs would have
to field a majority of home-grown players and a clause
demanding collective selling of television rights and
the sharing of revenue with smaller clubs.
This final issue will be analysed by Figel and the EC
in their white-paper deliberations. Although in
England the Premiership rights are sold collectively
already, in many countries where clubs sell TV rights
individually there is strong opposition. Milan earn
more than £85m a year from their television deal while
Real Madrid's seven-year deal with Mediapro, coming on
stream from 2008-9, is worth about £110m each year.
Moves to force them to share that cash could
precipitate the exercise of their "ultimate threat" of
a breakaway.