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The continent’s richest clubs are attempting to wrestle wealth and influence from more traditional places, reports Alan Tomlinson
In the context of Sepp Blatter’s stated intention to push through reform of FIFA practices, various groups have been claiming to be the true voice of football, none more robustly than the European Club Association (ECA). This is the self-proclaimed “nuclear family of the football society”, the successor to the elite G-14 group established in 2000, which was expanded to 18 in 2002 and disbanded six years later.
Only recently formed, the ECA already faces the daunting task of taking on football’s leading organisations in an attempt to increase fairness across the board. Steve Menary reports
When is enough really enough? For Europe’s biggest clubs, seemingly never. The formation of the European Clubs Association (ECA) was supposed to end the selfish lobbying of the big clubs but, having turned European football into a cash cow, the continent’s leading sides are now targeting the money FIFA makes from the World Cup and distributes to member associations.
If you believe the leaks there is a new European Super League on the horizon. Ben Lyttleton searches for the clubs’ real motives
Lyon president Jean-Michel Aulas blamed his team’s Champions League elimination by Barcelona on fundamental flaws in the structure of French football; AC Milan managing director Adriano Galliani has asked UEFA to consider a salary cap as “a wind of crisis” blows across the European game; and Spain’s professional clubs have a combined debt of over €700 million. Reason enough, apparently, for all three to be accused of leaking plans of a new European Super League to sports papers across the continent. They all denied the claims, but the reasons behind the leak are as interesting as the plans themselves.
Graham Dunbar reports on the formation of the European Club Association
Eight years after its creation, the G-14 is dead: long live the European Club Association. It was created at UEFA headquarters in January and hailed by its elected chairman, Karl-Heinz Rummenigge of Bayern Munich, as nothing less than the “reunification of the football family”.