The Champions’ League following as it did the fall of the Iron Curtain has also contributed to the
The Champions’ League, following as it did the fall of the Iron Curtain, has also contributed to the diminution of once powerful clubs such as Dinamo Bucharest and Red Star Belgrade. Last year 32 clubs participated in the group stages but a huge swathe of the continent, from Poland’s Baltic coast to the Serbian Adriatic, went unrepresented. East European clubs, with their crumbling grounds, poor gates and miniscule television deals can only survive by selling but, like Football League clubs, the collapse in the transfer market has wounded them.Impoverishment can lead to corruption, as in Poland where Garbania were relegated and six players from opponents Swit given life bans after Garbania bribed their way to a play-off victory. Stricken Monaco were to have been ‘rescued’ by Fedcominvest, a Russian company, before it was revealed that the French secret service portrayed Fedcominvest as a “shop window of Russian organised crime”.Rinat Akhmetov preferred to invest closer to home.
Maybe Lyon, who have won the last two titles, will break this trend. It would give the French club game a higher profile, but at the cost of competitiveness.The riches available in the Champions’ League have also attracted investors from unexpected quarters. Roman Abramovich at Chelsea may be the most high-profile but he is not alone. In Greece, a Saudi-Spanish partnership have taken over at Aris Salonika. In Switzerland, FC Wil are now run by a Ukranian company led by Igor Belanov, the former Russian international and European Footballer of the Year who made a subsequent fortune in steel.Not all investors are welcome.
This is hardly surprising as most leading French internationals play elsewhere. It is not just the crippling taxes and low gates which limit resources, it is the inability of any French team to string together income-generating Champions’ League campaigns. They have built on this, fuelled by the annual windfall of Champions’ League participation, and are heading for their 12th successive title. The lack of competition has led Aage Hareide, the coach, to call for a Nordic league.This may fall on snowy ground as the Swedish, Finnish and Danish leagues do not suffer such a monopoly. In the decade from 1992, eight different clubs won Le Championnat. Only Marseille, their success based on the backhander as much as the back four, and to a lesser extent Monaco, made any impression in Europe. The downside of a competitive domestic game, they have found, is a lack of club success in Europe This is most evident in France.
