After some horse-trading towards the end of last week, involving a reluctant Spartak Moscow, a huge step was taken on Monday towards establishing a Unified Football Championship across former-Soviet countries. 14 Russian clubs met a representative club from the Ukrainian league in Moscow, with Ukrainian clubs now due a corresponding meeting.
The event was hosted by Gazprom deputy chairman, Alexei Miller, an ally of Vladimir Putin, who afterwards briefed Russian media and indicated Uefa were aware of their plans.
Miller said, “We think it is realistic to hold the championship from the autumn of 2014 to the spring of 2015, but if the time to reach agreements drags on, we plan to hold the championship from autumn 2015 to spring 2016.
“Since a championship like this is a complicated diplomatic matter, we have decided to initiate the championship initially with Ukraine only.
“In the future, if everything works out, we will be able to co-opt clubs from the other countries in the post-Soviet territories, but that’s the next step. All former-Soviet countries would be eligible to join.”
Show me the money
Gazprom sponsor the Uefa Champions League and are keen to sponsor the new league. Miller was clear that money would drive the change, promising annual sponsorship of €1 billion, which in world football is (a close) second only to the value of the next FA Premier League TV contract.
Uefa Financial Fair Play requirements make change, of some sort, inevitable in Russia and Ukraine. Leading clubs there are heavily subsidised by benefactors and, unless they manage to considerably improve their income, they will have to either get rid of all their expensive players, or forgo European competition.
As things stand, the sums don’t add up but money from a Unified Football Championship would allow clubs in Russia and Ukraine to meet Uefa Financial Fair Play requirements and compete with major leagues in the west. Gazprom have the seed cash and political influence, both domestically and at Uefa, to oil the wheels.
In 2005 Uefa sanctioned the Royal League in Scandinavia between the top four clubs from Denmark, Sweden and Norway, but the initiative was poorly organised and perished three years later due to a lack of a TV deal.
After this experiment several clubs across Europe started lobbying to extend the strategy to other leagues which were disenfranchised by a lack of competition or TV income. The principle was further confirmed by Michel Platini and the Uefa Executive Committee in March last year, when they approved a three year probationary period for the BeNe League, which combined top women’s teams from Belgium and the Netherlands, the first season of which is now underway.
The Committee stated at the time that, subject to a satisfactory outcome of the BeNe experiment, other cross-border leagues would be considered by the Executive Committee if all stakeholders (national associations, leagues and clubs) came to agreement on a way forward.
The former-Soviet countries are now motivated to regionalise. The Scandinavians have understood the potential of regionalisation for years but didn’t get it right (they retained national leagues which determined European qualification, the Royal League was effectively a friendly competition). The Belgians and Dutch have a pan-national league already underway, while the former-Yugoslav countries have discussed implementing the same for a couple of years now.
Wales and England have the longest-established regionalised league system in the world.
Meanwhile…………. at a national stadium near you, the only change on the agenda is whether to have three lower leagues or two.
Scottish football is fully aware the viability of many clubs is at a critical level, but have singularly failed to present the vision evident elsewhere in Europe. Whatever world-class technical, stadium and coaching resources we have is being squandered by unambitious leadership.
Months into deliberations Scottish football is only addressing how to slice up an ever-smaller pie. The enormous increase in income possible from regionalisation to SPL clubs, and what trickles-down to the lower leagues, dos not seem to have registered.
Hard cash can focus minds..
Spartak Moscow owner, Leonid Fedun, was highly critical of plans for the new league and insisted he would not attend Monday’s meeting but after doing so he said, “When I heard the budget per year was €1 billion I changed my mind and decided to attend. You can’t miss a chance to be the part of that game.”
Football across Europe is set for change, a fact a great deal of the UK media seem to have missed.
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Barry Smith sacked at Dundee.
SSN saying Calderwood & McPherson interested.
Obviously to much open fitba in the SPL this season.
Brogan Rogan (22:24)… Barca have only failed to score three at home ONCE since Celtic prevented them from doing so way back in October!
It’s the clean sheet they’re likely to struggle with!
brogan rogan trevino and hogan supports kano 1000
22:24 on
20 February, 2013
Barca may score 3, but Milan may well score too, given there will be space to play behind Barca.
A nice wide open competition.
Brogan Rogan Trevino and Hogan supports Kano 1000
22:24 on 20 February, 2013
Well if we don’t Juve might! German teams don’t mess about in knock out tournaments though. I fancy Dortmund or Bayern.
BRTH – I’ve said since the CL final last year that Bayern or Dortmund would win it in 2013. Both teams have the strength, guile, discipline, skill and artistry to beat the usual suspects. German football on a high at the moment and I reckon they’ll be dominating Europe for next few years – Guardiola isn’t going there for the paycheck alone. He wants to ensure he isn’t seen as a one-team wonder and he’s picked the team that he thinks will best deliver.
Brogan…etc
You have obviously been on the illegal substances………Us!!!! aye in our dreams, when the TV audience is big enough, then we will be in the hat….PSG, they are in the mix……
HH….>}
Deniabhoy
I suspect (very strongly) that Mark Daly has more evidence which could feature in a documentary— the question is evidence of what?
Once the Lord NS report is out and the tax case appeal has worked its way through the system, you may see further information appear which could be deemed relevant and of interest to the footballing public.
Allow me a wee bit of self- indulgence here, there must be tons of these stories…but this one’s mine.
Right, this is a story about a man named Joe. Before I get into his story I need to go back and tell you about his father and uncle. Two brothers from the wild and desolate landscape of county Tyrone in the late 1800’s. Although they were uneducated men they were in fact educators of a sort themselves. They were a kind of latter day seanchai or storytellers who travelled around performing stories and poems, keeping tradition alive as a form of entertainment in the days before X-factor. However they must have been driven to despair at some point at seeing the condition the country and the people were in.
So eventually through desperation they set out on a murderous road, to kill the hated tax collector. As far as freedom fighters go, they made good poets! Unfortunately the tax collector, who’s body had been dispatched down a well, made a full recovery and three days later was able to identify his would be assassins.
On hearing the news the brothers knew they were for the long jump with a short rope so a long horrendous boat trip to America was hastily arranged. What happened next is lost to history but somewhere down the line things never went as planned.
The boat arrived first in Glasgow. Now whether still full of the drink and thinking he was in New York, or whether he just couldn’t handle the boat, one brother got off. The boat left for America before the mistake was realised and the two brothers would never hear from, or see each other again.
Glasgow must have been a bit of a culture shock to its latest refugee and maybe being used to the countryside he couldn’t find any comfort in such an alien environment. Eventually he found his way to Lanarkshire and got work as a miner’s labourer. Anyone who has been to Summerlee museum will have seen the miner’s rows and the conditions that were available to that type of community. So that was him, he settled into another harsh existence, getting paid by a miner who in turn was paid a pittance based on the weight of coal he produced.
He married and started a family. As soon as each child was able, they were also put to work because survival was the only show in town. Well apparently not, the story goes that this man was a bit more than a miner’s labourer. He was known to run amateur dramatic classes (he ran other things as well… but anyway) shows would be performed to keep a sense of community spirit, history (and sanity I presume) as an escape from the world of social injustice above and extreme hardship below in the ground. Anyway by 1910 the eighth and last child would be born, Joe.
Another amazing thing about this father and his offspring was that at some point they all came to an agreement. Each of them had enough awareness and courage to accept that for them, this was there lot. Living hand to mouth in what was a brutally dangerous and unrelenting cycle, survival was the only reward. But not for Joe, no matter how little they would ever have they all agreed that something, however small would be put aside each week to ensure that Joe received an education. He was their hope. Getting him out would be enough reward for them all.
So Joe became educated. He qualified as a school teacher and by the 1930s he was ready to start. Now as fate would have it, his graduation coincided with the Great Depression. We call it Austerity now ‘cos it’s a far nicer word. There were no jobs for Joe. In fact, heavy industry was hit hardest by the depression and there were no jobs for his brothers either. He joined them in their daily walks (sometimes up to twenty miles) every day looking for work, casual or otherwise on farms or railways or mines.
By the late Thirties he did manage to get a job as a rookie teacher and things were looking up for a change. Then Adolf chapped his door. Not literally, it was actually the postman with a letter inviting him (cough) to join in the great battle to maintain civilisation against the brutal Nazi threat to his altogether more decent way of life. A life he had been so accustomed to.
Anyway, being in the first wave of conscripts and being educated had its perks. He wouldn’t be sent to the front line, he would be resourced to intelligence. This didn’t prevent him losing an eye and all his teeth right enough. Riding pillion on a bike in Scappa Flow at midnight saw to that. By the tail end of the war he would be in France, just behind the front line when news came of victory. There must have been a lot of joy and relief at the thought of de-mobbing and a return to civvy street. But then he got another letter. ‘Report to Dachau and carry out an inventory’. No one would ever find out what that entailed because even years later, asking Joe what that meant would be met with the same steely answer…’I was sent to do an inventory’. The only thing people knew about Joe and Dachau was that he was a different man from that day on. Having witnessed the horror of that place for an additional six months at the end of the war, it might seem churlish to complain about anything ever again. Perhaps churlish would be coming home to find the job you had been promised back was actually gone, on account of you being late back from the war?
So another fight for employment was eventually successful and in the meantime Joe married and started a family. He would eventually have three daughters but the third birth sadly claimed the life of his wife. So that meant the hardest part of his life was only just beginning!
I never knew any of this till long after Joe had died. I only remember him as an old man, a retired headmaster in a camel coat and trilby sitting in area B of the old main stand of Celtic Park. Aye, remember all those wee dapper old men? I would turn and head up the stairs and he was there. Beside him on the next seat was a pair of leather driving gloves and a packet of crisps. They were there to keep my seat, the only seat at the stairs with nothing in front so a small grandson could see the game without the obstruction of anyone directly in front. We sat together and watched big Roy Aitken and Tommy Burns do their stuff and he always thought Charlie Nic was a bit too flashy for his liking.
Anyway, is there a point to this? Yes there is (At last! I hear you say)
My son got a message this morning. He has been accepted into Glasgow University to study medicine. So this story is just a big kind of a toast I suppose….to my Granda, his Da and their family. To my mother and to the sacrifices they all made to make today a reality. From the blighted lands of Tyrone to the hellish Lanarkshires mines, from the ravages of war and economic collapse but eventually to the gates of Glasgow University School of Medicine. From desperation came celebration as the song goes.
So there ye have it….. another cinderella story
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_-u_cmEWqU
P.S. Oliver Cromwell GIRFUY :)
Gonnae be some return leg…….that’s fer shoor!
monteblanco
Congratulations mate,keep him oot the student union.
monteblanco
Simply brilliant story, thanks for sharing that, and many congratulations to your son.
Monte
Cracking story fella.
Just in and catching up.
Surprise result – Inter Milanda had Barca on toast (should be good odds for Barca @-2 in the return leg).
Noticed a few posts on Zonal Marking – has anyone discussed Twighlight Zonal Marking down Govan way?
TET/ Jobo – my 93p profit (from last night) is safe – too late to bet!
Monteblanco
That was excellent– I enjoyed that.
I also had a Grandfather called Joe– maybe that is a story I should tell sometime.
He had a pal called Duncan– a really nice man— who was an ex Royal Forces type all Queen and Country– but a nice fella nonetheless,
My grandad was a great man for synchronising slides with music and he had a real talent for that and he put on great shows.
One of the funniest was when he and the bold Duncan had had a few halves and suddenly Grandad Joe suggested to Duncan that they should stand for the National Anthem– which brought Duncan to his feet in a guardsmanlike pose with stiff upper lip.
The look on his face when it wasn’t the national anthem he was expecting was priceless!!!
I have always taken the view that there never was ” An ordinary Joe”.
HH
MONTEBLANCO
Nice story . Great heritage and may he enjoy the uni life but stay clear of the ” Quimby’s”..
Ha , bet they re not on now & to think that was the bench mark in the 80’s..
Monteblanco – brilliant news. The tale of the boat trip sounds a bit like Voguepunter and G64 making their way home from Paradise…….
A funny from KDShttp://i.imgur.com/TDwNiAJ.jpg
kelvinbhoy
Cheeky bass,we are sober at that point ,hence the quickstep back to pub.HH
Monteblanco
That ranks with the best posts I’ve read on here. A magical tale.
http://i.imgur.com/TDwNiAJ.jpg
Evnin all. Any word from Lord Nimmo yet?
Monteblanco, what a wonderfully uplifting story! Amazing. HH!
Great tale Monteblanco. You´re right to feel proud.
Diabolical (non) decision by Grey Thompson in San Siro. Bloody Feyenoord!
Monte – a wee glass raised to Joe and to your son’s excellent news. You should be very proud of both of them.
HH
TTTT
Duncan can make the grass grow. <:o)
VP – I know but didnae want the facts getting in the way of having a dig. Hope things go well with the new job. Awra best
kelvinbhoy
cheers mhate .
monteblanco
Nice tale – maybe you inherited their ability to tell a good story
I liked it
Well done Monte’s Bhoy. Whats up Doc??
jude2005
That’s original;-)
LNS, still rumoured for 28th, bloke in a pub rumour.
Celtic shattered the myth of Barca invincibility. In the Nou Camp.
And Barca knew the game was up.
We got Wim Jansen and Henrik Larsson from Feyenoord.
Celtic’s history is all the better for them.
leftclicktic
22:19 on
20 February, 2013
The last tweet will be john that posts on Paul mc convinles blog.
A hurting hun.:-))
Monteblanco – Just raised a glass to you and yours. magical.
Great story Monteblanco
Just one thing.
What if the bhoy inherited his brains from his mammy’s side :-)
Ntassoolla
23:04 on
20 February, 2013
Are you sure?
Monte Ignore sftb thers always one!!
Monte.
You’re grandad Joe will be smiling down.hh