The Champions League semi-finals next week are expected to
go ahead, UEFA President Aleksander Ceferin said, after a plan by some top
clubs to create a Super League caused chaos.
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"There is relatively little chance that
next week's matches will not be played..," Ceferin told Slovenian
television Pop TV late Wednesday.
"The key thing is that the season has
already started. If we cancelled the matches, television stations would have
compensation demands," added Ceferin.
Football's most powerful clubs faced
mounting calls on Thursday for reprisals over the European Super League fiasco,
as the rebel competition's boss insisted it was merely "on standby"
despite nine of the 12 founding teams pulling out.
The breakaway league folded just 48 hours
after its unveiling following blanket opposition from fans and officials.
Just Barcelona and Real Madrid, along with
Italian champions Juventus — who admitted the lucrative project could not now
go ahead — are left after top British clubs and others withdrew.
"There is 244 clubs on our side out of
the 247 in Europe... We expect they (Super League clubs) will realize their
mistakes and suffer the consequences," Ceferin said.
"It's been a while since I last saw
such a conspiracy... From time to time I would hear rumors that something was
being prepared, but I naively could not believe that the people who were
talking with me on a daily basis about our future were, in fact, preparing a
different thing behind our backs," he said.
Ceferin further slammed Juventus president
Andrea Agnelli, one of the key figures behind the Super League project, for his
"greed".
"For me it is plainly horrible to see
greed can be so powerful that it makes you care nothing about the sport we all
love, about European culture and tradition, about fans and, ultimately, about
personal friendships," said Ceferin — a family friend of Agnelli.
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