By Andrew Warshaw
August 16 – A crucial meeting next month between the main stakeholders aimed at reaching agreement to overhaul the Champions League from 2024 has been postponed by UEFA.
The talks with the heads of European clubs and leagues was scheduled for September 11 during international week but has now been called off because, according to UEFA, it is too premature.
Both European Club Association chairman Andrea Agnelli, who has been advocating a mainly closed Champions League, and European Leagues president Lars-Christer Olsson, whose takes a very different view, were due to jointly meet UEFA President Aleksander Ceferin.
“At the beginning of June I called for a joint meeting of your respective boards with the UEFA executive committee on September 11 2019 to pursue the discussions started earlier this year on the future of European club competitions,” Ceferin wrote to Agnelli and Olsson in a letter obtained by agencies.
“I have decided to postpone the meeting. I will send a new invitation as soon as I think that we are ready for a meaningful discussion.”
“We are currently in the process of gathering feedback from our national associations,” Ceferin wrote, “and I feel – more generally – that a new discussion now would be premature as we are analysing feedback and proposals coming from different parties.”
The ECA, via Agnelli, have long argued that its members support radically changing the format of European competitions with more matches between elite clubs in what would be the most widescale shake-up for a generation. But the leagues want to make sure more domestic winners can have direct access to the Champions League instead of having to go through more qualifying rounds with fewer chances to reach the lucrative group stage.
The ECA has been calling for eight-team groups in the Champions League instead of the current four and a proposal presented earlier this year by UEFA would guarantee 24 of 32 Champions League group teams return the following season, and would introduce promotion and relegation with the Europa League. Only four qualifying places would be left for national champions competing in preliminary rounds.
The new structure would see eight Champions League teams relegated each season into the following year’s Europa League.
“As you know very well, UEFA deliberately kicked off the review process for the 2024/27 competition cycle much ahead of our regular schedule and we are therefore in no hurry,” Ceferin told Agnelli and Olsson. “We do not, in any case, expect to make a decision this year.”
Earlier this summer Agnelli called for patience on all sides. “We don’t have all the answers, nothing is set in stone and it’s going to be a long process, maybe a matter of months,” before it is established exactly how the various UEFA competitions will look, he said.
“We have time ahead of us. All the clubs have now seen our vision, understand what is being debated and that we are committed to an open and honest consultation process.”
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