IT’S BACK again, the threat of a European Super League involving 15 fixed clubs and five lucky qualifiers. We can easily name the likely 15: there’s six from the Premier League; three from La Liga; three from Serie A; two from the Bundesliga and one from Ligue 1. It’s almost certainly the usual suspects, the […]
Tag: UEFA
Euro 2020: Reformat or cancel
WITH much of Europe still in the mire when it comes to Covid-19 and the task of mass vaccination likely to stretch across the year, the time may have come to assess whether the European Championship needs to take place or not in 2021. UEFA may yet have to concede that hosting a pan-European competition […]
The Europa evolution and the danger of quantity over quality
WITH THE Europa League about to undergo drastic change, culminating in the creation of the Europa Conference League, UEFA’s lesser competitions may continue to lead an uncomfortable existence. The Champions League, for all its excitement and glamour, has already eradicated the European Cup-Winners Cup and devalued the Europa League. It is difficult not to feel there […]
Benfica: Competing without the wealth of nations
WHEN Benfica hosted Glasgow Rangers in Lisbon on matchday three of the Europa League, it sounded like a game carved out of a distant, glorious past, twice-winners of the old European Cup against one of Britain’s greatest footballing names. If they had met in the 1960s or 1970s, it would have been one of the […]
It’s 1960, and there’s a European Super League
THE SUBJECT of a European Super League has been mooted on a number of occasions down the decades. After world war two, football became something of an emollient, a universal language that could unite nations and put aside old differences. To some extent, the creation of pan-European bodies, industrially, culturally or socially, was a way […]
Great Reputations: Slovan Bratislava 1969 – just a touch of irony
IN the late summer of 1968, Russian troops rolled into Czechoslovakia in response to the so-called “Prague Spring” that took place between January and August of that year. The Cold War was raging and the sight of tanks in the picturesque capital city raised fears that the world was on the brink of a global […]
Ajax 1971 – men of their time
AMSTERDAM was a “cool” place in 1970. It was one of the last cities to dispense with hippy culture, the hair was long, the clothes bright and the mood upbeat. It was liberated and easy and the Dutch were among the most mellow folk in Europe. It was no coincidence that Amsterdam was where John […]
Dynamo Kiev 1975 – the Soviet school of science
YOU ONLY need see pictures of Chernobyl to understand what happens when science goes wrong. The world’s greatest nuclear disaster took place 150km from Kiev, the capital of the Ukraine and in 1986, part of the USSR. Science and the Soviets went hand-in-hand and a scientific approach, needless to say, was also applied to its […]
Systemic clubs – who would we save to preserve football?
SINCE the world locked down, there has been an upswing of interest in dystopian novels, films and radical theories from desert-dwelling hermits predicting the downfall of the human race from their caravans as they polish their weapons and count their tinned tomatoes. But what of the football industry? How is this going to look when […]