How the Champions League ate the world - the story behind European football's behemoth
As the Champions League returns this week those involved in setting up the competition tell Julian Bennetts how they did so, how far it has deviated from their original blueprint - and why further change is now needed.
“This is not modern thinking” - Silvio Berlusconi
It makes sense that the founding father of the modern Champions League - brash, entertaining, - was Silvio Berlusconi, one of the ultimate showmen.
Thirty years ago, Berlusconi's goal wasn’t improving football, it was finding new income streams for two key investments - AC Milan and satellite television station Canale5. Key to making both companies profitable lay in overhauling the European Cup.
He approached Saatchi and Saatchi, who gave the job to one of their English executives, Alex Fynn. Months previously, at the launch of the Rothmans Football Yearbook, Fynn had given a speech entitled ‘A 10-point plan for football’ that advocated a European Super League.
Now he was asked to make that plan a reality. “I got a call from the head of our Italian agency,” recalls Fynn. “He said to me: ‘Alex, I’ve got the job you’ve always wanted - design a Super League for Silvio Berlusconi’.”
Fynn quickly realised Berlusconi’s desire for change was based on maximising viewing figures and television rights. Berlusconi had been horrified when the champions of Italy and Spain, Napoli and Real Madrid, met in the first round of the 1987/88 competition, describing it as “not modern thinking”.
Having the European Cup as straight knockout competition was exciting, but it made no commercial sense. “On any given day, David could beat Goliath - and Berlusconi felt this should be stopped,” says Fynn. “He came to me and I did his bidding. But I have to say I gave him what I thought he wanted, not what I thought he needed.”
Fynn envisaged a Super League of between 30 to 40 clubs in four divisions. But Berlusconi wanted more games for the big teams from Europe’s biggest leagues - England, Italy, Spain and Germany. The best way to guarantee this was a league format, without knockout rounds, to guarantee a steady income. So over the course of 1988, Fynn drew up plans for an 18-team Super League - consisting of two or three clubs from each of the four biggest leagues, plus representatives from Scotland, France, Portugal, Holland and Belgium.
“The key” says Fynn, was “more event games between the big clubs in the big television markets”.
Rangers lead the charge
Berlusconi was not alone in questioning the future of the European Cup in the late 1980s. Glasgow Rangers, who at the time were arguably the most influential club in Britain, also believed that change was needed.
“Domestically, there was a ceiling,” says Campbell Ogilvie, who was club secretary at the time, and went on to become President of the Scottish FA. “And in Europe, you could be out after one round. I remember we played Osasuna in 1985/86 and went out. That spurred on discussion for all clubs of our size - how do we take this forward? Can we get European football into some sort of structure where we could at least be guaranteed six games, three of them at home? That was where it started from.”
Ogilvie drew up his own plans for a competition that involved a Group System, followed by knockout rounds. He found there was a groundswell of support for change.
“I spoke to various people in the game,” he says. “We were all asking how to take things forward. And I remember then speaking to Roger Vanden Stock of Anderlecht at a game. He agreed it was worth having a go and we decided we would. But at that time change was difficult to bring about.”
The two join forces
At this point Fynn was lobbying UEFA for change on behalf of Berlusconi, while Ogilvie was doing the same from inside the organisation as representative of a major club.
UEFA twice rejected Ogilvie’s plan, but the mood inside the governing body was shifting. General Secretary Gerhard Aigner and President Lennart Johansson realised that change was inevitable, and without action they ran the risk that clubs would break away to form their own league.
“UEFA realised they might lose control of their own clubs, and that there was an awful lot of value in television,” says Fynn.
Ogilvie proposed his plan for a third time in 1989. Preferring his format to Berlusconi’s proposed Super League, UEFA adopted it for use from the 1992/93 season.
Berlusconi was pleased. Fynn believes it was the outcome he ultimately wanted, and the threat of a breakaway Super League had merely been a negotiating tactic to achieve it.
“I was naiive,” he says. “I thought he would push it [the idea of a Super League] forward but instead he used it as a threat to get the old-style European Cup changed. This huge threat of a breakaway league meant it was changed to a group format. I believe he used the Super League idea as a stalking horse.”
The competition becomes a monster
UEFA had successfully seen off the threat of a breakaway but now they needed to ensure the new competition was a success. This task fell to a company called TEAM Marketing, who believed the potential was unlimited, and were happy to put their money on the table. With the backing of Deutsche Bank they gave UEFA a guarantee of 150million Swiss Francs (around £118.5million today) and were given free reign to rebrand the competition.
After a difficult opening year – “we couldn’t even wear our sponsor’s logo on our shirts,” recalls Ogilvie - TEAM took complete control. They proceeded to complete what has perhaps been the most successful rebranding of a competition in sporting history, commissioning English composer Tony Britten to adapt Handel’s “Zadok the Priest” for the competition’s anthem, introducing the ‘star-ball’ logo, and ensuring standardised branding at every ground.
“I just did not not envisage the impact TEAM would have,” agrees Ogilvie. “They brought it to a whole new level.”
An uncertain future
Both Fynn and Ogilvie admit to having mixed feelings about their roles in the formation of the Champions League, with both lamenting that only a select few clubs are contenders to win it.
“Mine was a football model,” says Ogilvie. “I was of the view it was a champions’ competition. I never for one moment thought four teams from the same country would be playing in it. Things evolve and it became obvious that to get the higher TV revenues it was going to need more teams from the big countries that command the TV rights. But we have created super-clubs. There are a limited number of teams that are going to win the Champions League.
“It needs to be addressed. The one thing you have to have in football is competition. It’s a matter being discussed at the moment and it needs to be.”
Fynn is equally certain the current system needs improvement.
“What we have now is a hybrid system - neither league nor cup,” says Fynn. “The beneficiaries are the broadcasters, the sponsors, the players and their agents. The fans always pick up the cost in the end.
“It’s fine if you are a member of this select group of clubs but otherwise it’s not healthy.”
Neither are sure what steps can be taken but both agree with a growing sense that, as in the late 1980s, it is time for change.
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