January 30 – UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin insists a European Super League is dead in the water despite last December’s ruling by the European Court of Justice that UEFA and FIFA broke EU competition rules by attempting to block the seemingly doomed breakaway league.
The surprise judgement theoretically breathed new life into the project and was seen as a blow to the authority of UEFA and FIFA and how they govern the game.
But Ceferin insists it has made little difference to the landscape of European football.
“The decision is better for UEFA than for the other side,” Ceferin told The Guardian newspaper.
“All A22 [the company set up to keep the Super League concept alive) are doing is going around, filming themselves, trying to give interviews. In the meantime we are governing football. We are building pitches, we deal with many problems, so lobbying is probably their main work but it’s not ours.”
“This is a non-project, a thing that will never happen, because nobody wants it. No court, no police and no army can force people to accept something that is such a nonsense.”
“If they have enough resources to travel around and do this Monty Python show, it’s fine. I don’t care and the football community doesn’t care.”
A22 claims a number of clubs have signed up but Ceferin charged: “They speak about creating something and then they are the first ones to apply to play in our competition. I would ask them not to play in our competition and start working on theirs together with whatever number of clubs they have. I don’t understand what is holding them back.”
Ceferin said UEFA would soon be stepping up its communication network in terms of explaining the revamped Champions League format coming into play next season. Not for the first time he also took a swipe at FIFA’s new 32-team Club World Cup, insisting it would not devalue the Champions League.
“It will never be the Champions League because the Champions League is unique. I don’t think it will be a very interesting competition personally (because) the Europeans will win everything. But this is up to FIFA and the clubs from around the world.”
“The Club World Cup will be tiring. I can’t imagine how you play the final of the Champions League and then, a couple of days later, you travel to some other continent and play a one‑month tournament.”
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