UEFA needs to agree and probably change the Champions League and Europa League format earlier than expected. The main reason behind this is to prevent an uprising of the stature of the Super League again. However, the financial angle and remodelling of European football are also necessary at this point.
There is a lot of tension between the different clubs that were involved in the project. Florentino Perez said on El Chiringuito that they couldn’t pull out of the project because a contract bound them, and 24 hours later, they did.
It was anticipated that the situation would go on for weeks but died in days. While it was a terrible project from some sides, the real terrible thing was with the fans’ timing and communication. They had to prepare the fans for such a shocking announcement, and they didn’t do so, which is one of the blunders they committed.
Employing an impartial point of view, all they said isn’t wrong. But as outlined by Fabrizio Romano on the Here, We Go podcast; you have to talk before announcing and not after. It takes years to talk and prepare the fans for a change of such stature, and a better approach would have been working with UEFA and FIFA and not going to war with the boards.
From the communication point of view, it was the biggest mistake by the big football clubs. The project was destroyed in twenty-four hours which made the interviews useless. Ed Woodward and Andrea Agnelli talked with Aleksander Ceferin earlier last week. Then they signed the contract on Sunday, which is something incredible, and Ceferin didn’t hold back from pointing that out.
It will be interesting to see how Perez, Agnelli and Woodward deal with UEFA. They will talk with UEFA, who need the Champions League and vice versa. They can try to save the situation, but right now, it’s time to save the Champions League. Perez said it isn’t the best idea to have 36 and that we need to help some clubs get back in the Champions League.
How UEFA plan to revamp the tournament is still not clear, but hopefully, we fans will have a better idea of how things are going in the months to come.
