UEFA has built football’s apartheid system—now it wants to play savior

Since the UEFA Champions League was launched in 1992, only two sides outside of the ‘Big-5’ leagues (England, Germany, France, Spain, Italy) have won. Ajax in 1995 and Porto of Portugal in 2004. The ‘Champions’ league is actually a misnomer. It’s a league for the winners, runners-up, third, and fourth placed clubs from the ‘Big-5’, with the actual champions from Greece, Ireland, Scotland, Romania, and dozens of other nations having to qualify to be in the money-making league stage. UEFA has gamed the system to keep the wealth and power at the top, leaving ‘minnows’ from Albania, Hungary, and Poland not even dreaming of winning the whole thing.

UEFA created this cabal to ensure that the ‘big clubs’ from the ‘Big-5’ don’t create their own super league, the latest threat being just five years ago. To survive, in 2022 UEFA changed the competition format to give more money to the ‘big clubs’ and relied on FIFA intervention and support to make sure that they remained relevant.

Yet just four years later, they threatened to boycott FIFA competitions due to that organization proposing to increase investment in global football by selling off 20% of its World Cup commercial operations to private investors. As one German football writer said on Sport1 last week, “FIFA saved UEFA by stopping the Super League, UEFA pays back by stopping super money.”

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