It has been a dramatic week in the world of European soccer. On Sunday twelve of the biggest clubs announced a breakaway league, but the adverse reaction from fans and everybody else led their plan to collapse by Wednesday.
The background is evergreen tension between the wishes of the biggest clubs and the various governing bodies. Fans and governments tend to prefer stability and tradition, and also have to ensure that the game is nurtured at grass roots level. The big clubs and star players want money; an entertaining competitive product for TV with familiar teams is the recipe to maximize revenue.
This has always been a messy compromise. National leagues have so far been sacrosanct. Rules and marketing practices have evolved slowly. The European dimension beloved of the biggest has been addressed via a midweek tournament called the Champions League, which is neither a league nor for exclusively for champions. The result has been too many matches, jeopardising player health and squeezing international schedules and domestic cups.
The big clubs have been angling for more, and a long negotiation has been reaching a unsatisfactory conclusion through a further expansion of the Champions League. The big clubs, considering themselves untouchable, were using brinkmanship to get the best deal. At the last minute somebody stood up to them and that caused them to injudiciously play their nuclear card. It blew up in their faces. Billionaires have been humiliated for ridiculous comments such as that they were “saving football”.
Interestingly, the part of the plan that riled everybody else was that the new league would be a closed shop with limited promotion and relegation. It is no coincidence that Americans now own many of the big clubs, a place where the practice of franchises without relegation is normal. Owners argue that they cannot invest for long-term development without certainty of their place. This is poppycock. Did Nokia and Blackberry have guaranteed positions in the mobile phone industry? Would there have been more investment and innovation if that had been the case? Of course not.
As a keen watcher of sports on both sides of the Atlantic, I can see advantages in both sets of practices. It is shame that neither seems to learn from the other. American sports benefit from rules to create parity and from innovative ways to make games more entertaining such as playoffs and a bias for offence. The young do like shorter games with more click bait highlights. The European practice of promotion and relegation is its strongest aspect, because it gives everybody hope and fear and because it makes more games meaningful. In Europe we do not see the ugly practice of “tanking”.
I think soccer has the opportunity to embrace most of these good practices without sacrificing its core. Rather than bastardising the Champions League further, I think the time has come to make the top primary weekend leagues European. At the same time the game can embrace rule changes and structures to add entertainment.
My European structure would create three leagues of eighteen teams to be played on a home and away basis on weekends from September until April. Those fifty-four teams would no longer play in domestic leagues, which would become like lower divisions. Extensive play offs in April and May would allow a second champion to be crowned (and more high profile games for television), but also engineer promotion and relegation between the European league division and between the third European division and national leagues.
The midweek schedule immediately becomes lighter, giving space for winter breaks, rest and international matches, as well as national and European knockout cup tournaments like a revived FA Cup and the former European Cup.
The big boys would have high profile and meaningful games every week, but without guarantees against relegation. TV would happily pay for an attractive slate of games but should be forced to cover the lower European leagues as well, just as they now agree to cover women’s leagues.
For the strong countries like England, more than half of the current premier league would usually qualify for one of the three European leagues, and the top national league would be an upgraded version of today’s Championship. For lower profile countries like Belgium or Romania, only the top few teams would qualify and the national leagues would look much as they do today, but with an extra incentive at the top end, helpful for teams like Celtic or Porto, who currently play in leagues with little competition.
The only downside that I see is that fans will have to travel further for matches, but with Ryanair and Easyjet perhaps that is not an issue. An alternative would be to split European leagues two and three as 2A and 2B on a regional basis to reduce long distance travel.
Then the new European leagues should embrace the idea of entertainment over tradition. One reason this does not happen is that traditionalists like to compare statistics historically. Baseball is so obsessed with this that it changes more slowly than other US games, and its audience has diminished as a result. For baseball the pandemic was a godsend: it enabled smart changes such as shortening extra innings games and seven innings double headers. Only the diehard would relish games of six hours and 18 innings, and thankfully they don’t happen any more.
I would fractionally increase the size of goals to favour the offence: the goalless draw is the single biggest impediment to the take up of soccer in the USA. I would have a shortened penalty shoot out at the end of each draw too and bonus points for goals. An example could be: six for a win plus a bonus for three goals; two for a draw plus one for winning the shootout plus one each for two or more goals; one point for scoring a goal in a loss.
Next I would have a stopping clock to reduce time wasting, and even a rule stipulating that there must be a shot after a full two minutes in possession. Four quarters of thirty minutes each would please the TV companies anxious to show advertisements.
In a different innovation, I would introduce a salary cap. Currently in the English premier league the top teams have a wage bill that is 8-10 times that of the minnows: it is no wonder so many games are mismatches. As well as parachute payments to cushion the blow for relegated teams, I would have “expansion” subsidies for promoted ones, to ensure some sort of parity.
Fewer games, more quality, more meaningful games between closely matched teams, more match ups between giants, fewer injuries, more goals, less passing for minutes on end around the half way line, the excitement of shoot outs and play offs, retention of hope for the smallest and fear for the largest. Who could complain at that delightful menu? It might even be enough to “save football”, and wouldn’t it be wonderful to see Real Madrid relegated every so often?
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