FootBiz newsletter #98: UEFA D-day is coming for qualifying clubs

European competitions don’t get underway properly until after next month’s international break, but the big fork in the road comes into view this week for many clubs.

Qualifiers for the Champions League, Europa League and Conference League are reaching their final phase, which represent something of a financial crossroads for many of them.

For the likes of Club Brugge and Rangers (who face off in their first leg tonight in Glasgow) or Benfica and Fenerbahce (who meet in Istanbul on Wednesday) missing out on the Champions League will not be the end of days. It would still obviously represent a significant financial blow, the sort of revenue gap that could force someone like Brugge to cash in on in-demand forward Christos Tzolis, for whom they rejected a bid of €32m from Crystal Palace last week, but these clubs have learnt not to budget for Champions League football, particularly as the ‘League Path’ (how runners-up/third-placed teams from mid-sized leagues have to qualify) is now much harder than before.

In the Champions Path, we see a lot more teams for whom qualification would be transformative given the minimum expected payout is close to €40m:

• Ferencvaros vs Qarabag

• Crvena Zvezda vs Pafos

• Bodo/Glimt vs Sturm Graz

• Celtic vs Kairat

• Basel vs Copenhagen

Five of those will be playing in the Champions League proper, but the transformative money that comes with that would not just be transformative for them.

An unintended consequence of changes to European football in recent seasons has been the financial stratification of these mid-to-smaller leagues due to UEFA prize money. Or perhaps, given these domestic big boys are the only clubs from their countries with a real voice at the ECA, terming it unintended doesn’t give them enough credit.

The result is a distortion that deeply concerns owners and fans of the other clubs in these leagues.

Dinamo Zagreb have won the Croatian top flight in 18 of the last 20 seasons (their worst finish is 2nd). You may know Crvena Zvezda better as Red Star Belgrade, and they have dominated Serbian football alongside city rivals Partizan to the extent that since the country founded its Superliga in 2006, nobody else has won a title. In fact, since the second world war ended, only three titles (Vojvodina 1966, 1989; Obilic 1998) have been won by other teams. An already concentrated elite is now being further entrenched by the riches on offer from the Champions League.

These teams would all earn different amounts based on UEFA’s variable criteria, but you don’t need to be an Eliteserien enthusiast to know that Bodo/Glimt earning an estimated €30m from Champions League participation (before prize money for wins/draw/progress) would have a distortive effect on the Norwegian league, where some clubs have a total annual budget of less than 10% of that.

Similarly in the cases of Pafos, Qarabag or Kairat, how would domestic rivals have any hope of competing with teams that make 30-40x their annual budget from one Champions League campaign? And what if they qualify again next year?

It’s an absolutely understandable and unimpeachable joy for these teams, their players and their fans if they can beat the final hurdle and reach the Champions League, with its pot of gold that can prove utterly transformative (and has proven so) for mid-sized clubs who are run well. And there undoubtedly should be prize money on offer for clubs who succeed.

But we must also acknowledge the transformative effect it has elsewhere, specifically its second and third-order consequences which entrench the established hierarchy and what longer term damage this could (and will) cause European football as a whole.

After all, isn’t that what European football’s governing body should be doing? Just a thought.

Table of Contents

• UEFA considers expanded Super Cup

• Landmark Diarra case rolls on

• Palace go free-to-air

• No such luck for Rayo Vallecano

• Barca’s women team pay the price

• Ukraine’s plight

• Relegation wage cuts pt. 2

• Qualifying draw from Hel(vetica)

• Last-ditch sale saves Morecambe

• Canelo clash

• Trivia answers

UEFA considers expanded Super Cup

UEFA have looked at the Club World Cup and decided they fancy a bit of that pie.

How? Well, according to the Daily Telegraph there are discussions over turning the UEFA Super Cup into a four-team tournament staged before the start of each European season, with the United States or the Middle East the most likely venues.

Italian club Udinese were the only bidders to host this season’s Super Cup final, with Champions League winners Paris Saint Germain beating Europa League winners Tottenham Hotspur on penalties at the Stadio Friuli in Udine last week.

UEFA has decided it wants to expand the pre-season showcase into a four-team competition in time for the next TV rights cycle, which will be managed by Relevent, their new US-based media rights sales partner.

Relevent won the contract ahead of UEFA’s long-term partner, Swiss-based company TEAM Marketing, and have been primarily tasked with growing UEFA’s media rights and commercial income in the United States. 

An expanded Super Cup may help given the increasing push for competitive matches to be staged in the US, with Barcelona and Villarreal last week gaining permission from the Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) to move a La Liga game to Miami in December. 

While a Champions League final in New York or Miami has long seemed inevitable, a soft launch by sending four of the continent’s best Stateside for a pre-season competition would pave the way.

Landmark Diarra case rolls on

Former France midfielder Lassana Diarra has relaunched his legal action against Fifa and the Royal Belgian Football Association, seeking £56m in compensation.

The dispute stems from his 2014 contract termination at Lokomotiv Moscow, after which Fifa blocked a move to Belgian club Charleroi by refusing an international transfer certificate. In a landmark ruling last October, the Court of Justice of the EU ruled that such transfer rules violate European law.

Diarra, previously ordered to pay £8.4m to Lokomotiv for breach of contract, says he had hoped for an amicable settlement but has now resumed proceedings in Belgium. The 40-year-old, who played for Chelsea, Arsenal, and Portsmouth, is backed by FifPro, FifPro Europe, and France’s UNFP union.

"I have been forced to fight this legal battle since August 2014. That's more than 11 years," Diarra said in a statement.

"I am doing this for myself - but I have also done it for all the up-and-coming, lesser-known players who do not have the financial and psychological means to challenge Fifa before real judges."

FIFA has since amended its regulations regarding transfers, but Diarra claims those changes are insufficient and "do not comply with the strict requirements imposed by the CJEU judgement".

Palace go free-to-air

Crystal Palace's first European fixture for 27 years will be broadcast live on free-to-air television in the UK, as reported by The i Paper yesterday. 

Palace’s demotion to the Europa Conference League and need to play a two-legged play-off against Norwegian side Fredrikstad, with the first taking place at Selhurst Park on Thursday, has resulted in an anomaly with the fixtures not covered by TNT Sports’ rights package with UEFA for all their European competitions.

Terrestrial broadcaster 5, who are owned by American conglomerate Paramount Skydance, have stepped into the breach and bought both matches for what has been described as a "low six-figure sum".

5 have shown shrewdness and dexterity to pick up a number of live sports rights recently, sub-licensing 23 Club World Cup matches from global rights holders DAZN this summer, as well as buying Chelsea’s pre-season friendlies against Bayer Leverkusen and AC Milan.

TNT Sports will broadcast 529 European matches live this season across the Champions League, Europa League and UEFA Conference League, but not the start of Palace’s first European campaign since a single InterToto Cup tie against Turkish club Samsunspor in 1998.

No such luck for Rayo Vallecano

Rayo Vallecano, the plucky underdogs from a working class suburb of Madrid, are excited about their first European campaign in 25 years as they prepare to take on Belarus’ Neman Grodno (that’s a club not a person) in the qualifiers this week.

They, however, will not be able to watch it on TV.

Unlike Palace, nobody has scooped up the rights for the game and — as in England — the primary broadcaster does not have the rights for the preliminary rounds.

So with rightsholder Movistar deciding against further outlay to broadcast Rayo, they currently don’t have anyone showing the game in Spain.

Which is a shame, because their opponents are an interesting story.

48 teams started their incredibly unlikely path to potential league phase qualification in the first round of Conference League qualifying, and Neman Grodno are the only one that remains.

They have got past Urartu, Kosice and KI Klaksvik to earn their two-legged tie against La Liga opponents.

And trivia fans, see if you know (or can work out) which countries the three teams come from that were vanquished by Neman Grodno.

Answer will be at the bottom of the newsletter.

Barca’s women team pay the price

Barcelona’s financial problems appear to have eased slightly in the short-term at least, with new signings Marcus Rashford and Joan Garcia both registered for their opening game of the season against Real Mallorca last weekend.

La Liga belatedly approved their registrations following the decision of former Barcelona captain Marc-Andre Ter Stegen to sign a document approved by the league’s medical committee stating that he will not be fit for the first five months of the season. Long-term injured players are exempt from La Liga’s wage cap creating space for two new players in Hansi Flick’s squad for the first half of the season.

In another dramatic move, several of Barcelona’s executives have put their own personal wealth at risk by offering bank guarantees worth a total of €7m, a financial lever they also pulled two years ago.

Barcelona have debts of over €1bn, with one intriguing by-product appearing to be significant cuts in the budget of their all-conquering women’s team, who have won six successive Liga F titles and reached six Champions League finals over the last decade, winning the trophy three times. 

A fascinating piece by Laia Cervello Herrero last weekend is well worth a read for its analysis of the six senior players that have left Barcelona this summer, leaving manager Pere Romeu with just 17 registered players.

Unlike the men’s team Barcelona Femini actually make money, creating the impression that the trailblazers of women’s football are being used to subsidise failings elsewhere in the club.

Ukraine’s plight

Unsurprisingly, being invaded by your neighbour has a significant, negative effect on football.

This season, for the first time in 20 years, there won’t be a Ukrainian team in the Champions League league/group stage as the country continues to suffer amid the Russian invasion.

Despite Gianni Infantino claiming Ukrainian football would be supported, Shakhtar Donetsk went as far as launching legal action against FIFA and detailed how “FIFA’s door is always closed” on Ukraine.

Relegation wage cuts pt. 2

A fascinating insight on relegation-induced wage cuts was provided by FootBiz contributor Kieran Maguire on The Price of Football Podcast over the weekend. 

Following the news discussed here last week that Serie A players have agreed to a mandatory 25 per cent salary reduction if relegated in a collective bargaining agreement struck by the league, the Italian FA and the Italian Footballers’ Association, Maguire has crunched the numbers to assess the situation in England. 

Over the last ten years the wage bills of clubs relegated to the Championship have fallen by 33 per cent, a figure which rises to over 40 per cent for clubs who are not immediately promoted back to the Premier League the following year.

While there is no prospect of the Professional Footballers’ Association agreeing to a similar mandatory wage cuts the data suggests they do not have to, with most Premier League clubs seemingly capable of managing the situation themselves.

Qualifying draw from Hel(vetica)

A great spot from the excellent Football Meets Data account, who highlighted back in May that, due to a quirk in how UEFA had allocated its places to Swiss Super League teams, that the team that finished second in Switzerland was not guaranteed league phase European football but the team that finished third would be.

Of course, for that to happen we’d need a bunch of weird stars to align, but align they have…

Servette FC were the runners-up, but have already lost their Champions League qualifier (to Viktoria Plzen) and their Europa League qualifier (to FC Utrecht).

Les Grenats now have the not insignificant task of getting past Shakhtar Donetsk in the final round of Conference League qualifying if they want to be playing European football this autumn.

Young Boys, who finished third in the Swiss top flight, have had a relaxed pre-season and now face Slovan Bratislava over two legs for access to the Europa League league phase. Even if they lose, they’re guaranteed Conference League action until December — which is more than can be said for the team that finished above them in the league.

Last-ditch sale saves Morecambe

National League club Morecambe have been saved from bankruptcy by after a last-minute takeover from investment group Panjab Warriors.

The National League confirmed the takeover has been approved on Sunday and the club’s suspension from the competition will be lifted, enabling them to their first league game of the season against Altrincham this weekend, after their first three fixtures were postponed.

Morecambe will remain under a transfer embargo, however, until all of their debts to players, staff and HMRC have been paid. The club were at risk of going bust with outgoing owner Jason Whittingham no longer providing any funding, yet seemingly reluctant to complete a sale that had been agreed in principle two months ago.

Canelo clash

Saturday September 13 will prove a big test of where Mexican passions lie after one of the country’s biggest football clashes — Club America vs Chivas — was scheduled at the same time as Canelo Alvarez’s next fight.

A Mexican icon, Alvarez is considered to be one of the best pound-for-pound fighters of his generation and parlayed his huge popularity in Mexico and Latin America into becoming one of the highest-paid athletes on Earth. Canelo is estimated to be worth nearly half a billion dollars and is Mexican sporting royalty.

Chivas vs America is known as Mexico’s Superclasico, a meeting between its two most successful (and popular) teams, and will be shown on linear television in Mexico (as well as the USA) while Canelo’s fight will be live on Netflix.

Trivia answers

• Ururtu - Armenia

• Kosice - Slovakia

• Klaksvik - Iceland