The European Championship that is about to begin in Germany, with the opening game scheduled for Friday 14 June, will be the last to see Aleksandar Ceferin as UEFA president.
Ceferin himself spoke about this and much more to the German news agency DPA.
“If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my 56 years: never talk too much about the future! Life is wonderful and offers many interesting things. Everything is possible. Anything! But now my attention is focused on the European Championship”admitted the UEFA number one about his future.
But, as Ceferin stated, the last years as president of UEFA (his term began in 2016 and ends in 2027), will be full of challenges that have certainly not been lacking in recent years, from the danger of the Super League to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The last major concern for European football is the interference of certain States in decisions in the world of sport, whose autonomy is particularly important for both UEFA and FIFA. The issue concerns many important countries in Europe, such as Spain and Italy.
“I don’t want to comment on individual court decisions”Ceferin commented. “But it is really a problem that more and more governments in Europe want to intervene in sport”.
As he said, “These decisions will backfire. Football is so strong because of our system. You can rise from the fourth division to the first and then qualify for all European competitions. If this is only for the elite, then football It doesn’t exist anymore. And that’s why I say: the sports system has been working for 100 years.”.
And he added: “Everyone always says: you have a lot of money. But we redistribute 97% of our football revenues. Sport promotes health and teaches children values. Therefore, it must be treated separately. And as a lawyer I believe that sports law and European law are compatible. Europe is not in a great state right now. European governments have so many problems to solve and shouldn’t govern sport either.”.
Referring to the comparison between politics and sport, Ceferin said he hopes that politicians have learned not to interfere in football matters.
“If, as in 2021, we are asked to protest against the government of a member of the European Union, then clearly we are being asked to influence a political situation. On the contrary, we will never interfere in political matters and we humbly ask politicians not to do so, even when it comes to sport. When it comes to dealing with teams or players, our position is clear: we will never intervene as captains or anything like that. We allow everything, we will not punish anything. We respect freedom of expression, as long as it is not offensive”.
Regarding the future of European football, Ceferin said: “I keep hearing that the younger generation obviously doesn’t follow football anymore. But more and more young people are playing and watching football. More people watched the Euro 2021 final between England and Italy in the United States than the NBA finals. So I’m not worried about football. We must never allow big money to buy and destroy it.”.
In conclusion, the president of the European Confederation referred to the risk of funds with unspecified origin.
“The biggest challenge is protecting clubs from acquisitions by conglomerates or hedge funds that do not have a transparent shareholding structure. Furthermore, ownership of multiple clubs makes the application of Financial Fair Play more difficult. And we still haven’t found a definitive solution for that.”he said.
“As investment interest in football continues to grow and these investments are essential to the growth of the sport, the question is: how can we be smart enough to enable these investments in the first place? Investors must respect the rules, but the issue is complicated. We have no law enforcement. We can ask clubs for documents, but we cannot seize their computers to investigate their activities.”.
naftemporiki.gr