FootBiz newsletter #143: European football's establishment just got a lot stronger

“No-one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it.”

George Orwell’s quote came to mind as Aleksander Ceferin’s latest manoeuvre began to play out more publicly, paving the way for him to confirm what had been whispered about for months now, his wish to stay on as UEFA president.

UEFA presidents are (theoretically, in case you couldn’t guess where this was heading) limited to just three terms of four years, but Ceferin has already managed to circumvent that with a sleight-of-hand amendment that judged his first term — when he took over from the deposed Michel Platini — as not constituting a full term of presidency.

Ceferin will celebrate 10 years as European football’s most powerful man this year but had stated very, very clearly in 2024 that he would not run again in the March 2027 election (for which candidates must declare by November this year) despite having managed to make himself eligible… but that stance appears to be softening.

The Slovenian had originally claimed he was “tired” from a presidency that had taken in a pandemic, the breakout of war in Eastern Europe and an attempt at a rival ‘Super League’ that had threatened the fabric of UEFA competitions.

That would be enough crises to fatigue even the greediest of executives, but with the final nail being hammered into the coffin of the zombie breakaway competition last week, Ceferin has apparently got his energy back. Though from what FootBiz sources have told us, Ceferin’s team has been gauging the level of support he could count on if he were to run again (which he will) long before Real Madrid signalled their intention to return to the fold.

And people are still wondering what was promised to the Spanish giants to seal the deal.

Ceferin, a 58-year-old former lawyer, let slip to media in his homeland last week that those conversations had been encouraging, positively begging the man to make another run.

“Of course, I would never talk about this to the public,” he said before talking to the public.

“But I will first talk to my colleagues from the national associations. We'll see. A lot of people are interested in this.

“I have to say that out of the 55 associations, at least 50 of them have come to me and said that they want me to run. But in my opinion, there is still time for this final decision.”

The European football establishment is in a phase of consolidating its power. FootBiz sources tell us that Ceferin and Gianni Infantino’s long-running tussle is in something of a cease fire right now as both focus on re-election. Infantino knows that if the World Cup goes off without a hitch, the eye-watering revenues can guarantee him another term, while Ceferin removed a major thorn from his side with Real Madrid’s re-admission to Europe’s biggest country club last week.

Florentino Perez's decision to bring Madrid back into the establishment is of such interest partly because Madrid return to a very different-looking establishment to the one they left to great fanfare amid the almost immediate collapse of 2021’s Super League.

What was previously the G14 lobby group for Europe’s elite clubs, of which Madrid were a founding member, became the ECA, which is now (since October) EFC. PSG chairman Nasser al-Khelaifi truly seized the moment when the Parisians were one of the few mega-rich clubs to not take up the invitation to join the Super League, a move that would have been personally very difficult anyway for al-Khelaifi, not only a UEFA board member but also the chairman of BeIn Sports, a major UEFA broadcasting partner. The decision has panned out significantly in his favour.

Nasser now runs the EFC and has successfully expanded its power and influence, creating a joint venture with UEFA called EC3 which effectively runs the continental competitions.

The EFC takes around €25m a year from European clubs’ competition revenues with seemingly no transparency, not even needing to give clubs votes in return for eating into that prize money. (The richest clubs, of course, have votes.)

Clubs playing in European competition which aren’t members of the EFC manage to somehow therefore still be paying for its operations and lavish parties. Rome in October was apparently a blast.

Only really The Independent has covered this story of the major news outlets, and they even asked European football’s governing body how the €25m was calculated and whether they could see the formula.

Response from UEFA: “the amount of funding is not calculated but yearly requested by EFC, as approved by their Board and General Assembly”.

So the EFC just says a number and UEFA wires it over?

Curiously that figure is not put in front of UEFA’s ExCo. Why?

Via EC3, the EFC now has evolved from being simply a lobbying group (under previous acronyms) to part of the governing structure of European football. So when we talk about Florentino Perez coming back to a different world, that is to say that Nasser and his allies have commandeered the sort of power over continental competitions that Perez always craved and fought for. The battle has been won, it just wasn’t Florentino that won it… though he did contribute in his own unique way (by being on the other team).

But it is important to preserve egos in all this, and while the battle has been won, Miguel Delaney reports that one of the most important things at last week’s meeting was that Perez was not seen to have been defeated.

“For many, this was obviously presented as an unprecedented Florentino Perez climbdown, the ultimate defeat of the Super League. Al-Khelaifi even felt the need to add that, if anyone thought Perez “lost”, “they are stupid and know absolutely nothing about football”.”

He didn’t lose, he was just on the other team when UEFA won.

Perez has returned to the establishment fold for the same reason that Ceferin can’t step away: they really do have all of the power now.

It is getting increasingly hard to envisage a world where they don’t have it for the foreseeable future.

Table of Contents

• Boston World Cup stand-off intensifies

• Earle leads Wimbledon investment group

• UEFA propose scaling back of VAR

• Scottish title race tightens 

• PL set for June vote on new ad strategy

• Villa set for back-to-back UEFA spending fines

• New Newcastle CEO ends WFH policy

• Overmars in talks to return

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