The last scruples are gone

Actually, the Champions League doesn’t need a lot of advertising. The premier class has long been a self-marketing product with global appeal. At the same time, the European Football Union (Uefa) is now powerfully staging two of the most formative figures in its most valuable competition via its channels: Kylian Mbappé (Paris St. Germain) and Kevin De Bruyne (Manchester City) are the focus of a documentary that is featured in the The knockout phase of the previous season arose – and at the end of which neither one nor the other won the pot. It is not without a certain piquancy that the two clubs drawn in a group with RB Leipzig are now the declared favorites; two externally financed structures, pumped full of money from a sovereign wealth fund from Qatar or from owners from the United Arab Emirates, who act like driven hunters after a lost treasure. Even in the midst of the pandemic, investments are made according to the motto: cost what it will!

With the signing of the aging icon Lionel Messi and the refused release for the young phenomenon Mbappé, a world selection is competing in Paris that is reminiscent of the Galactic from Madrid at the beginning of the millennium, when Zinedine Zidane, David Beckham and Luis Figo wore the jersey of Reals. It doesn’t matter whether that went together. It’s similar now with Mbappé, Messi and Neymar. The main thing is that the highest glamor factor encompasses the favorite toy of Nasser Al-Khelaifi, who as PSG president managed to officially gain immense influence within Uefa, even though his construct tramples on the regulations on financial fair play. How the proceedings against Paris and Manchester before the Cas sports court failed spoke volumes. Regulation did not seem to be wanted if clubs were able to have a say in the composition of the judges.

Ergo: A sporting competition that is beyond any doubt continues to promote an unhealthy economic arms race from which there is apparently no more escape. As the current Champions League winner, Chelsea FC is also not a shining example because the investments made regardless of the corona crisis – including in the German national players Kai Havertz and Timo Werner – have been rewarded so quickly.

The absurd performance of the laboriously averted Super League showed one thing above all: The greedy big clubs hardly know any scruples. Even the most well-known English representatives wanted to participate in this closed circle of twelve at first before they felt the displeasure of the fan base. It is absurd that Madrid, Barcelona and Turin with the string puller Andrea Agnelli – who became the boss of the club association ECA with the spectacular revolt in the spring – still do not renounce the Super League monster.

“These guys tried to kill football,” said Uefa President Aleksander Čeferin in the “Spiegel”. Some clubs have “simply incompetent bosses.” Real’s boss Florentino Perez had »lamented that the club could only survive if there was a Super League. And now he’s tried to buy Kylian Mbappe for 180 million euros! “

But what is Čeferin’s Uefa doing against the wild growth? There was no real punishment for the trio. And: It was not the Uefa regulations that stopped Messi’s excessively expensive continued employment at FC Barcelona, ​​but an agreement between the clubs in the Spanish league. The Catalans, burdened with 1.35 billion euros in debt, needed some stars around Gerard Pique to waive their wages so that personnel costs did not exceed 100 percent of the income – and new players such as Memphis Depay could be registered. Uefa would have let everything go without giving up.

With such framework conditions in mind, it is almost courageous that Bayern Munich’s President Herbert Hainer announced at the Spobis sports business fair that it wanted to be among the top three in Europe for the next few years: “That is the claim.” To participate in poker, as demonstrated by the free transfer loss of his leading player David Alaba, for whom Real Madrid then put together a princely 115 million package of cash, commissions and salaries for players and advisors. But the stars don’t live badly at Bayern either: In the 2019/2020 season, the balance sheet showed a turnover of 664 million euros and personnel costs of 340 million euros – it’s easy to work out what the main actors get.

Nevertheless, the Bundesliga is still in good financial shape, but fears that Uefa will liberalize the rules for investing. That would fuel even more uncontrolled growth in a sick system, where sheikhs and oligarchs not only drive the competition in front of them, but also force the Uefa into ever new contortions. Actually, the current form with 32 teams, this time coming from 15 countries, is accepted by everyone, otherwise, thanks to the sponsors and television companies, almost exactly two billion euros would not be distributed to the participants again.

The controversial next reform of a competition, which began in 1992 with two knockout rounds and then two groups of four, is causally due to the urge for even more revenue. From 2024, believe it or not, 225 encounters will be necessary to choose the new champion. 100 more encounters than before. The new expansion, with which all clubs are guaranteed eight or ten games, was the concession to those brands that are running out of costs for the top players. And Uefa also heroically stages them.