UEFA Could Be Considering Third European Club Competition

The head honchos of European soccer are meeting in Monaco for the 2018/19 Champions’ League draw on Thursday and the Europa League draw on Friday. At the same time, UEFA will present its award for the player of the season to one of Luka Modrić, Cristiano Ronaldo, or Mohamed Salah.

But on the sidelines of the draw are a series of issues involving the politics and business of the game.

Likely to be discussed in Monaco are the UEFA presidential elections, which take place in February next year, along with lobbying for the right to host of the 2024 European Championships and other issues like transfer market reform.

But according to German newspaper Sportbild, the people who run European soccer will also discuss reforming the structure of the Champions’ League and Europa League, which may involve the creation of a third European competition below the Europa League.

There have been just two pan-European club competitions since the Cup Winners’ Cup was abolished after 1999, but this may be about to change.

It was reportedly originally proposed that the Europa League would be expanded to 64 teams so that it could involve more teams from smaller nations, but Sportbild’s report suggests that UEFA are planning to go in the other direction.

Sportbild claims the Europa League will be shrunk from 48 teams to 32 teams, making it more palatable to clubs who often struggle to balance the demands of the Europa League and their domestic league matches. This will also make it more attractive to advertisers due to the higher sporting quality.

Below that, a third European competition would be created with 32 teams in it, allowing smaller teams to play European matches. The new competition could come into effect as early as 2021 if the plans come to fruition.

The Champions’ League is already dominated by Europe’s top five leagues, who take up 19 of the 32 teams in this year’s competition and made up all of last season’s quarterfinalists. The old European Cup used to throw up winners from all over the continent, from Steaua Bucharest and Red Star Belgrade to Celtic and PSV Eindhoven. But since Jose Mourinho’s Porto won the Champions’ League in 2004, Europe’s top club competition has remained in the hands of Spanish, English, German and Italian clubs.

The Europa League has started to go the same way as the Champions’ League too. While Zenit St. Petersburg and Shakhtar Donetsk won the Europa League around a decade ago, the last seven tournaments have been won by just four different clubs from England and Spain.

If UEFA wants to serve the whole of Europe, rather than just the Premier League and La Liga, then some kind of reform is needed.  And with UEFA unwilling to kill the goose that lays the golden egg by making the Champions’ League more balanced between different nations, a third UEFA competition seems a likely compromise.