Former Celtic striker Chris Sutton has entered the Super League/UEFA debate, and spoiler alert: he’s bang on.
Celtic fans will have watched events unfold this week with a wry smile. For all the talk of a European Super League, it’s been ignored that UEFA have had an elitist competition working for years. The Champions League is a misnomer, with Champions like ourselves over recent years having to negotiate endless qualifiers.
Meanwhile, up to 4 English teams and runners-up in other ‘Big 5’ leagues swan in. It’s rank hypocrisy, especially given the UEFA Chief’s comments this week.
Aleksander Ceferin was full of it in an impassioned speech to UEFA. He said:
“UEFA competitions needs Atalanta, Celtic, Rangers, Dinamo Zagreb and Galatasaray. People to know everyone has a chance. We need to keep the dream alive. Big clubs now were not necessarily big clubs in past and no guarantee there will be big in future.”
We already have a Super League, says Chris Sutton in UEFA blast
He was technically right, but the mixed messages Celtic are getting are incredibly frustrating. In his most recent column for the Daily Record, Chris Sutton has reflected that sentiment exactly. He wrote [Daily Record]:
“We already have a European Super League. It’s called the Champions League.
“The minute it stopped being only the champions from each country which got into it and major nations started getting more than one place, that was it started right there and then.
“UEFA don’t want fair competition. They don’t want Barcelona playing the champions of Andorra. It used to happen with big guns drawing minnows in the first round of the European Cup, but they scrapped that to create their own little Super League which just gets bigger.
“I like the current format, but I don’t like hypocrisy and that’s what Ceferin was guilty of.
“Fairness and sporting competition? Even the groups are seeded in line with coefficients to make sure none of the big guns get drawn in the same section of the groups. Keep them apart.”
Typically fiery stuff from Celtic hero
Chris Sutton can blow hot or cold in terms of his Celtic takes, but this one’s right. For all we want to stop talking about a Super League, the questions emerging from this week tangibly effect us. Champions League qualification is the difference between a good financial year, and having to sell our best players.
So, Sutton’s right. Of course he is, on this issue. He knows first-hand that the Champions League is no longer fair, that it’s weighted heavily in favour of elite clubs with deep pockets. So, for all this talk about reform, and the death of the Super League, surely there’s a mechanism to reconsider overhauling the tournament entirely.
Whether UEFA are listening to the reasonable criticism from the football world is another issue. Quite probably, they’ll be basking in the “win” that is the Super League’s speedy demise.
But if anything became obvious this week, it’s this:
The status quo in European football is going to change, and soon.
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