The system that we have been seeing for thirty years is a complete swing through.
There is nobody in football who looks at the overall structure.
The huge visions are mainly just for some market, but absolutely nothing where whatever is thought about.
It’s fascinating.
Possibly it’s too hard, however sometimes-I don’t wish to be rude-it seems unpleasant to me.
When the UEFA presented the Champions League for the 1992/93 season, that was the very same.
And quickly the next severe changes are already in a competition that has actually long considering that affected the smallest leagues.
How did that occur?
Where should that lead?
What should alter?
Christoph Riemann, popular football reporter and two-time winner of the Football Book of the Year award, offers intensively with the development of
Champions League.
After thirty years, the Champions League is demonized by some fans, loved by others.
How is her relationship with her, Mr. Riemann?
My relationship is similar.
On the one hand, the Champions League is now the very best sporty football competitors that is in the world.
You do not see much better football anywhere.
The other fact is: The Champions League has actually contributed exceptionally to entirely misshape competitors in numerous nations, including Germany.
For the 1992/93 season, the European champs officially ended up being the Champions League.
In what condition was the highest European cup before?
At that time, football remained in crisis.
Numerous stadiums were in a lousy state, violence was a huge problem.
In this situation, a brand-new gamer appeared: private television, which was extremely hot for football from the start, regardless of all the problems.
And when the clubs noticed that something could go, they were really quickly disappointed with how the UEFA marketed the championship game cup-in completion not.
Actually, each and every single club sold their television rights for each single game.
In addition, there were situations that are barely imaginable from today’s perspective: in 1987 the Italian champion Naples flew out with Diego Maradona in the first round of the championship game Cup versus Genuine Madrid.
This appeared to lots of people as an enormous waste of money.
Even then, the UEFA was simply as hot from the development of a super League-The-Die-under pressure, started by Milan manager and media entrepreneur Silvio Berlusconi.
And under this threatening backdrop, the Champions League was invented-interesting by the German Klaus Hempen and Jürgen Lens.
Even the ties of the mediators were included.
Christoph Riemann
Who were the 2?
These were two people who had actually revealed a past as marketer and also worked in sports, to name a few at Adidas and who have actually become self-employed for the very first time.
And her first huge project was the Champions League.
They had a various background and brought in completely originates.
Because of Hempen and Lens, the Champions League is not just a German development.
In order to satisfy the UEFA financial assurances, they received help from the difficult German entrepreneurs Arena Other and Otto Wolff of Androgen.
You can see that football suddenly showed up in circles that hadn’t dealt with football at all, perhaps even discovered him a bit gift and all of a sudden saw economic opportunities.
Rightly so you have to say afterwards.
In their book, they compose that Hempen and Lens had transformed the European champion European Cup into commercial kryptonite.
What was so brand-new about your design?
Above all, marketing as a total competitor: Those who purchased the transfer rights were now required to show a game in every round, even if the individual had actually currently left their nation.
That was an entire originality.
Prior to that, one idea: Why should someone in Germany look at the game in between an Italian and an English team?
But that was an excellent success from the start.
On the other hand, they created a deliberately high-quality competition.
There was currently everything you can see today: the hymn, the star banner.
They recommended the television channels how their show had to look.
And the clubs had to hand over a Tidy Stadium, that is, a clean stadium in which nothing was marketed for nothing so that they might then take control of with their advertising partners.
I can still remember: In the early years, even the lettering on the TV in journalism room in Leverkusen was taped off due to the fact that they had another manufacturer.
Hempen and Lens revolutionized the competitors on lots of levels, however something remained the very same for years: just champs were permitted to participate.
This only changed again in 1999 in reaction to a Super League threat.
I spoke with Lens a few years ago, he did not settle on how the story developed.
They had the discussion of an exceptional competition, in which just the champions were permitted to participate, which was then softened by train.
No one is interested in real tension.
Christoph Riemann
The reforms always worked together with a changed cash distribution, which clearly preferred the top clubs.
Numerous call this greed, for them, it is likewise expression of a fainting.
In what method?
It is both.
It is a distribution in favor of the abundant, as we likewise experience in other social areas.
If a single club in a single nation would do without its economic benefits to achieve more open competition, it would be instantly disadvantage in worldwide contrast.
To be able to maintain, you need to create a world in which you are not only guaranteed in the Champions League, but also get relatively far.
That is why the clubs are in restraints that you can understand, even if you are frustrated.
Distinguished football book author: Christoph Riemann.
Norman Possess
One effect is that the clubs from the leading leagues are typically currently in the quarter-finals.
It wasn’t simply the space between the leagues.
They reveal that the enormous sales in the premier class likewise affect much smaller leagues.
We have the crazy truth that groups in the Champions League get various premiums, depending on which country they are.
When one from Switzerland or Greece reaches the round of 16, it gets less than a group from Germany or England.
The logic behind it is that these clubs originate from TV markets that transfer less into the pot.
Now one could believe that these clubs absolutely rebel, however they do refrain from doing them due to the fact that they give them such a huge benefit in their league that top positions, sometimes champions, are almost ensured.
The next Champions League reform has actually now been chosen versus the background of brand-new Super League strategies.
The trenches you described in European football should just grow with her.
How do you feel about the reform?
We have actually currently learned: No one is interested in real stress (laughs).
The new mode only brings a little more pseudo tension.
We have a story of the consistent modification of the distribution.
There is when this and that screw, however in fact it is constantly about the preservation of acquisitions of the big clubs.
It is likewise about the worry of falling out and then no longer coming behind in the rat race.
Example Juventus Turin: In Some Way it is of course great to have her with you, even if you are a catastrophe and sporty a disaster-half of Italy is a June fan.
This indicates that if they are not there, there is a danger that half of Italy will no longer be interested in these competitors.
These are methods of thinking that do not have much to do with sport, but shape all the considerations.
And by all of this you can see what type of processed cheese.
Perhaps you have to put the huge clubs from Bavaria into an extreme league and then turn them into a kind of NBA.
Christoph Riemann
Do you see a back from this rat race in which expert football has entered?
I don’t see a back anyway, I am not a sentimental who desires the 1991 state.
Rather, it has to do with a forward.
The issue is that the things we have talked about are so crazy complex and interlocked that it would require something like an extreme system modification, but nobody has the strength because everybody is in this combination.
Everyone can only move a little.
That’s why I see no method to reform.
It is certainly commendable that the UEFA attempted once again to get a Financial Airplay on the way.
Then we look at the Chelsea transfers this winter break…
Perhaps maybe have to put the big huge from Bavaria to Manchester into a super incredibly and then transform them into a kind of NBA as a global entertainment home entertainment well as these clubs also disappear vanish their national leagues.
With such a cut one would have the chance to put the entire beneath.
Since I already think that a more powerful sporting competition is needed than now to remain attractive in the long term.
Although one would have to make sure that the very same does not establish once again, just with other clubs.