UEFA to elect new presidentThe European football governing body will be choosing a new president tomorrow. New chief to stop threat of European football split 0 UEFA elects a new president tomorrow whose main task will be to stop what European officials say is an inevitable slide towards a breakaway Super League open only to wealthy clubs such as Real Madrid and Manchester City.Aleksander Ceferin, a lawyer from Slovenia, and Dutchman Michael van Praag, an experienced football administrator, are the only candidates for a job which will essentially involve keeping European football intact in its current form.
The election, which will be held in Athens, has been called after former president Michel Platini was banned last October as FIFA's ethics committee investigated allegations of unethical conduct.
Platini, banned for four years, finally resigned in May after exhausting the appeal process and the power vacuum allowed the big clubs to negotiate changes to the flagship Champions League in their favour.
Those were finalised last month when UEFA opened up more places to teams from Europe's biggest four leagues - effectively Spain, England, Germany and Italy - in the competition's lucrative group stage and cut those allocated to the rest.
Faced with the possibility of the big clubs forming their own Super League, UEFA said it had managed to " keep it in the family" but the move infuriated many clubs and leagues from outside the main countries.
Both candidates criticised the way in which the Champions League changes were made.
However, as so often happens in the secretive world of football politics where officials like to keep their options close to their chests, they were cagey on whether they would try to reverse the changes if elected.
" There needs to be a far stronger balance between sporting merit and commercial pressures, otherwise we risk an inexorable slide towards an NFL-style closed-shop system," said Neil Doncaster, CEO of the Scottish league.
" UEFA has a duty to act on behalf of the entire game, not just a few, select clubs and leagues and it must take that duty far more seriously if it is not to risk presiding over a harmful fragmentation of the game."
Dutch league director Jacco Swart even predicted a worldwide league in the next few years, driven by " TV markets, huge sponsors, branding and marketing" .
The gap between the richest clubs and the rest has continued to grow over the last few years, fuelled by a revenue distribution system which dishes out larger sums to the bigger clubs and creates a snowball effect.
During the last European transfer window, Manchester United spent more on midfielder Paul Pogba (N$1.6 billion) than the combined transfer expenditure of Portugal's 16 first division clubs.
NAMPA/REUTERS