Hypocrisy regarding ESL?

[DPDPDPDP]

Many players, managers, pundits and fans have strongly and rightly condemned the completely closed shop nature and the lack of promotion and relegation.

However, I haven’t seen any condemnation at all from any of these involved in English clubs regarding the partly closed shop nature of European competitions, especially the CL, but also the EL, and from which the English do very well from arguably favourable treatment. For example, the top 4 English clubs will go straight into the CL group stages, all 4 without the need to play any qualifiers whatsoever. The same, or similar, applies to the other “big” European leagues, eg, Spain, Germany, Italy and France. UEFA also ‘rewards” clubs who finish third in their CL group by parachuting them into the latter stages of the EL, effectively a reward for failure. At the end of the season, UEFA will financially reward CL extremely handsomely (and EL to a lesser extent, but still relatively handsomely), thus making it extremely difficult for any teams from the so called lesser leagues to compete against teams from the “big”leagues.

Thoughts. Ok, let me put my tin hat on.

[Nocturnal Submission]

I don't think that any sort of protective headwear will be necessary, DP4. Your views are widely held on OTF.

[caja-dglh]

I am not sure anyone minds the idea of jettisoning UEFA. It is whether you are going to make it worse or not.

[ursus arctos]

By affiliating directly with FIFA, for instance

It will be interesting to see if UEFA backs up some of its recent rhetoric by making life less comfortable for the "big" clubs and leagues.

Narrator voice . . .

[Snake Plissken]

You want hypocrisy? Look at Project Big Picture or the changes to the distribution of overseas TV money.

[Belhaven]

UEFA will financially reward CL extremely handsomely (and EL to a lesser extent, but still relatively handsomely), thus making it extremely difficult for any teams from the so called lesser leagues to compete against teams from the “big”leagues.

It is still dwarfed by the differences in revenue from domestic leagues. Clubs like, say, Ajax or Porto can only dream of competing financially with f.ex Burnley and Brighton due to the money the latter get from playing in the Premier League.

[Satchmo Distel]

Parachuting into the EL needs to stop, but I'm also not happy that Arsenal can finish anywhere in the ECL and still get into the CL at the expense of a clearly better side.

There needs to be a radical redistribution of income from the competition and maybe a spending and salary cap as a condition of entry.