Hibs of Malta, not Edinburgh, face Montenegro’s FK Mogren in the first leg of the Champions League’s first qualifying round tonight for the right to play FC Copenhagen in the middl e of July – just a couple of days before the Open golf championship starts at Turnberry.
It might be the middle of summer, but football’s commercial wheels rarely stop turning.
The Champions League is to undergo a series of significant changes, although nothing will disturb the comfortable arrangements made with Europe’s largest and richest leagues in mind. If anything, they reaffirm European football’s status quo.
The most obvious amendment relates to what Uefa calls its access list. Next season’s has been changed to ensure the qualification of 22 teams – up from 16 – directly to the group phase.
In addition, the three national associations with the highest Uefa coefficient ranking – England, Spain and Italy – each have three teams gaining automatic entry to the group stage.
Perhaps the only other amendment worthy of note is that next season’s final will, for the first time, be played on a Saturday – at Real Madrid’s Bernabeu stadium.
Neither Malta’s Hibs nor Montenegro’s Mogren will play in next May’s final – primarily because they are not good enough but also because a much more controlled, even contrived, group qualification system reduces the likelihood of any shock Champions League results.
Last season, 50% of Europe’s leading teams were allocated a place in the group phase. The percentage has risen to more than 68% for the 2009-10 campaign.
Some observers believe the tournament has become too predictable and that Uefa’s incessant tinkering makes it worse. But such accusations are unlikely to bother the eventual 32 clubs making the group stage, not least because they will share an estimated £679million distributed by Uefa. Around half of this is given on merit, with the balance based on market share.
The gap between the Champions League elite and domestic rivals across Europe will widen markedly next season as Uefa aims to secure a colossal £260million increase in the competition’s annual revenue.
Uefa is anticipating a 35% increase in Champions League commercial and broadcast income between 2009 and 2012, thus boosting gross revenues to more than £934million.
The impact of this increase in revenues will be dramatic. After Barcelona cruised to Champions League victory in Rome in May, they collected a cheque for more than £37million.
Next season, clubs making the last eight are expected to earn almost £33million apiece, while victory could add a further £20million to the total.
Clubs generating such enormous sums of money from a closed competition enjoy an obvious competitive advantage on their domestic rivals – as an examination of Europe’s main leagues over the past five seasons proves.
During that period, only once has the Barcelona and Real Madrid duopoly at the top of La Liga been disturbed – in 2007-08 when Villarreal finished second, relegating Barcelona to third.
It is a similar tale in Italy, where Inter Milan finished in the top three of Serie A in each of the past five seasons, while Juventus have registered four top-three finishes and AC Milan have managed three.
England’s Big Four have become a predictable feature of the EPL, with no other team getting a look in, while up until the 2008-09 season, when Bordeaux won the title, no side for almost a decade had come close to challenging the hegemony that Lyon enjoyed in France.
The concern among their domestic competitors is that European success becomes self-perpetuating, because it provides leading football clubs with a sufficient financial armoury to counter their domestic rivals’ challenges.
Uefa president Michelle Platini frequently criticises top clubs which get into phenomenal levels of debt – but the irony is that his organisation’s flagship competition enables them to both service the cost of that debt and then add to it.
Short of issuing licences to play in the Champions League only to clubs deemed solvent by Uefa, there is, however, little Europe’s governing body can do.
The licensing idea has been discussed at regular intervals over the past decade, but Uefa has shown little appetite for the inevitable and no doubt protracted legal battle which would ensue were it to introduce rules affecting the operation of independent, multi-million pound commercial organisations.
Instead, Platini has sought to redress the balance by increasing the solidarity payments made to those clubs which do not qualify for the Champions League.
From next season, Uefa will distribute approximately £84million to national associations and a number of clubs – although when measured against the money it will pay to the continent’s elite outfits, the impact is hardly likely to create financial equality.
Indeed, Uefa’s decision to make direct payments to domestic champions who fail to qualify for the Champions League group phase will succeed in giving them a distinct advantage on their rivals.
The enormity of Uefa’s golden goose – the Champions League – and the power wielded by the continent’s leading football clubs means there’s absolutely no likelihood of any near-term change in the majority of the competition’s runners and riders for the foreseeable future.
Milan and Inter will continue to dominate in Italy, Barcelona and Real Madrid will be in La Liga’s leading two next season, while only Liverpool, Manchester United and Chelsea will contest the Premier League’s outcome next term.
Uefa has created an incredibly lucrative framework within which Europe’s biggest clubs operate on an almost exclusive basis and, because they generate enormous public interest each time they play in the competition, the situation will not change – however much Platini would like it to.
So tonight, Hibs and FK Mogren will become one of a series of warm-up acts that perform until the leading players arrive on stage in September amid a blaze of publicity, flashing lights and relentless media scrutiny.
It will be the same next season – and the one after that and the one after that until Uefa calls a halt to football’s richest gravy train.