By J Hutcherson – WASHINGTON, DC (Feb 26, 2013) US Soccer Players – Even in the era of blanket television coverage of multiple European leagues in the United States, American fans don’t see the Russian Premier League on television. The same is true for the topflights of the other former Eastern Bloc countries. Even as some of their teams reinvent themselves at Champions League and Europa League level, the domestic leagues are a bit of a mystery. Checking a league table, the occasional highlight, and seeing how those teams do against clubs from other European countries doesn’t give anybody a working knowledge of a league.
That makes it difficult to consider the ramifications of Russia’s proposal to merge clubs from several of those leagues into the Unified Football League. The UFL proposal in theory isn’t new. The countries that make up the Commonwealth of Independent States have a long-term issue with putting together separate domestic leagues that can compete with the rest of Europe. Merger as an answer is problematic for any confederation, regardless of whether or not FIFA decides to allow it.
Over the weekend, a Welsh club won England’s league cup. New Zealand’s top clubs play in Australia’s A-League. We all know that Canada’s first division is the same as the USA’s, with Major League Soccer a cross-border league as well. There’s significant precedent for North American pro leagues that include the USA and Canada. The former Soviet Union countries can argue the same.
What that means for the rest of Europe is part of the issue UEFA faces. Again, UEFA have said nothing more than that they’ll consider an official request with the backing of all the domestic leagues involved. The UFL remains at the proposal stage, but it has the backing from the major clubs and the financing to create something we haven’t seen in Europe. A true breakaway league involving multiple countries that will leave numerous current topflight clubs looking for alternatives.
Considering the capital involved, this isn’t a return to an earlier setup. It’s heavily financed clubs already capable of pushing into the knockout stage of Europe’s two club competitions looking for a better domestic setup. The goal is to produce European contenders, keeping the type of oligarch spending local rather than trying for trophies with clubs in other leagues. ‘Local’ is of course relative to the largest geographical area in Europe, but it’s a pointed attempt to create a new major league within European soccer.
With that in mind, the successful creation of the UFL changes things across Europe. That doesn’t have to mean other domestic leagues deciding that mergers are the only way forward, but it certainly increases the pressure across Europe. It’s also hard to believe that the merged league schemes from some of the smaller European countries wouldn’t reappear. Though there’s not the shared heritage of a former country, there’s certainly the motivation to setup a league capable of increasing the level of competition, increasing the appeal to elite players to sign with those clubs, and, of course, making more money.
It’s not like the rest of Europe will see an example of a merged league and consider it a necessary one-off in the same way Welsh clubs compete in England. It will be a new template of what might be possible should a group of domestic leagues agree that a merged league is the best way forward.
Again, UEFA haven’t played their hand. Consideration is hardly approval, but the basic concept of a merged league points to something that UEFA went to great lengths to avoid over the last decade. In one of the better moves from a governing body perspective in the annals of sports business, UEFA defused a potential breakaway super league featuring the best clubs in Europe. By doing that, they salvaged their own European competitions as well as the ideal of the domestic league within domestic borders. That move put an end to what at the time were serious discussions of a breakaway. Though rumors continue to persist of potential European-wide leagues, they lack the intensity of the early 2000s.
Now, once again, that ideal of a domestic league is in question. How UEFA choose to consider a formal proposal for the Unified Football League could become the next major story in European soccer.
J Hutcherson started covering soccer in 1999 and has worked as the general manager of the US National Soccer Team Players Association since 2002. Contact him atjhutcherson@usnstpa.com.
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