PARIS — The new CEO of the company promoting the Super
League, German businessman Bernd Reichart, says
European football must hold
talks to reshape its future and warns it is “becoming unsustainable” under the
current system.
اضافة اعلان
Reichart, the 48-year-old former boss of the RTL
media group in Germany, was on Wednesday appointed head of A22 Sports
Management.
“European football needs an open and honest dialogue
about its future,” Reichart told AFP, 18 months on from the botched attempt at
a breakaway 12-team Super League, designed to supplant the UEFA Champions
League.
“Football is
facing problems which, won’t resolve on their own,” he said.
“European football is losing its undisputed
leadership in global sports. European club football is not living up to its
potential by not offering week after week the best sport on a global stage,”
Reichart said. “Young audiences have turned more and more to other
entertainment alternatives.”
Reichart plans to reach out to an extensive range of
football stakeholders including clubs, players, coaches, fans, media, and
policy makers.
“I think dialogue can take place, it’s good there is
consciousness that the (status quo) can change and clubs should be prepared to
shape their own future and to consider what the new landscape could look like,”
he said.
“Football can do better, clubs should be able to
lead such a dialogue and be entitled to propose new alternatives, free from
threats, sanctions, or exclusion (from) competition as happened in the past.”
“The football ecosystem is becoming unsustainable,
the pandemic has accelerated this trend, the system is broken,” he added.
Launched by some of Europe’s top clubs in April
2021, the Super League’s plan to shake up European football fizzled out amid
the fury of many supporters and the threat of political action.
The prospect of a closed competition for Europe’s
elite angered fans in particular, but Reichart said a new approach meant that
would no longer be the case.
“One of our key messages is permanent membership is
off the table, and we want to discuss on the basis of an open competition based
on sporting merit,” he noted.
Three of the clubs —
Real Madrid, Barcelona, and
Juventus — continue to campaign for the Super League. A dispute over an alleged
abuse of a dominant position by UEFA is to be settled in early 2023 by the
European Court of Justice.
UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin defiantly claimed
in May that the Super League project was “over once and for all, or at least
for 20 years”, but Reichart remains confident.
“You might get suspicious if somebody tells you
again and again something is dead,” said Reichart, a specialist in media and
sports rights who also previously worked for the Spanish media group
Atresmedia. “Today we prove that the initiative is not dead, it’s evolving,
it’s reshaping, it has reassessed, and it’s reaching out to stakeholders and
the football family.”
In response to the Super League threat,
UEFA launched a major reform of the Champions League for 2024, with 36 teams instead
of 32, and an eight-day mini-league instead of the traditional group stage.
“That is not going in the
right direction,” said Reichart. “I’m pretty convinced fans will not like the
2024-2027 format, which has clear weaknesses, a huge number of additional
matches, and the same old last 16 where the Champions League is getting really
interesting and exciting, when we are in spring.”
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