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The Guardian
a day ago
- Sport
- The Guardian
As Club World Cup gifts its riches a proper plan is needed for those left behind
While a dozen of Europe's elite clubs were chasing the American dream, 170 of their less garlanded peers gathered for a barbecue next to Lake Geneva. They had converged on Uefa's headquarters to attend the qualifying round draws for next season's continental competitions; Tuesday night was time to get together, perhaps to speed-date representatives of the team you had been paired with or simply to cut loose before a labyrinthine summer spent journeying in search of league-phase football. Borussia Dortmund were slugging out a goalless draw with Fluminense while the meat hit the grills, but 'Club World Cup' is a dirty formulation in Nyon's corridors of power. Any available screens showed action from Uefa's own Under-21 Championship and alternative sources of entertainment roamed the pastel green lawns. A caricature artist did the rounds, stopping at the table occupied by Aleksander Ceferin and putting his pencil to work. The picture for these smaller clubs may be similarly distorted, but the humorous aspect is lacking. Uefa were correct to trumpet the event's symbolism in their pre-draw publicity: a vibrant collage of European football life was present, from the storied names of Red Star Belgrade and Rangers to Iberia 1999 of Georgia and Estonia's Paide Linnameeskond. However, beneath the collegiality it is impossible to escape the sense of a majority being left far behind, with ideas to redress the balance painfully few and largely inadequate. Most of Europe's clubs stand no chance of keeping pace with a top-level juggernaut that has unhitched itself and careered away. Some occupy an untenable half-space, unable to seriously challenge those in the big five leagues while crushing domestic opposition with the money on offer from the Champions League, Europa League or Conference League. Nobody is squarely to blame for trends that owe much to late-stage capitalism and geopolitical forces but there may be a less charitable outlook towards those who fail to act. There is particular concern that the revamped Champions League, for all the triumphalism around its 36-team group format, will have the variety squeezed from it. Nineteen of its slots will be filled by English, German, Spanish and Italian clubs in 2025-26, six from the Premier League alone. For proud institutions such as Malmö, Dynamo Kyiv and Panathinaikos the hopes of tracing a path to one of the seven playoff qualifying berths are achingly remote. European football's top-heaviness is little secret but alarm bells ring louder when consequences begin to rear up lower down. In this season's qualifying rounds only the Armenian club Noah and Pafos, from Cyprus, are debutants in the Champions League. That is the lowest figure for 14 years, according to research carried out for the Union of European Clubs (UEC), and indicates that the monotony felt closer to the summit is becoming a consistent theme domestically. Should that be exacerbated the fear is that, as one figure at a leading club suggests, national leagues in their current form will be living on borrowed time. The example of Serbia is instructive. Red Star, who have won eight consecutive titles, will earn a basic £16m if they follow projections and reach the league phase this summer. If the qualifying rounds proceed as expected their three compatriots in the Europa League and Conference League will fail to get that far. Novi Pazar or Radnicki 1923, their representatives in the latter, would take no more than £1m from that best-case scenario of elimination at the playoff stage. The pattern would only be reinforced. There will always be clubs of wildly varying size but the disparity in funding has never been starker. For Red Star's part, they and their equivalents can only gawp at the bare minimum $12.81m (£9.6m) European sides will receive from appearing at the Club World Cup. In most cases that figure will be multiplied several times over by its conclusion. The clear danger is that three strata are emerging in Europe, separated by financial chasms that have become impossible to mitigate. Solidarity payments, a subject of fierce bargaining annually, are one of Uefa's ways to soften the divide. Clubs absent from European competition receive 7% of the annual £3.7bn revenue from those flagship events, a further 3% being allocated to those eliminated in the qualifying phase. It is certainly well meant, and has increased markedly for the current three-year cycle, but will not unseat the status quo. Creative solutions are needed and it caught the attention last month when the UEC, formed in 2023 to represent non-elite clubs, unveiled its plan for a 'player development reward'. Under that scheme, a further 5% of revenue from club competitions would be redistributed to the teams whose academies developed those competing in them. It has been taken seriously enough for European Leagues to have discuss it in depth last week. Sign up to Football Daily Kick off your evenings with the Guardian's take on the world of football after newsletter promotion Any European club not playing in the Champions League proper could benefit. UEC's formula, devised with Transfermarkt, takes into account the on-pitch time each player has spent and the prize money they have helped generate. The Italian fourth-tier club Pavia, where Federico Acerbi came through the ranks, would have earned £275,000 through his playing 670 minutes en route to last month's final with Inter. In 2023-24 nearly 1,500 clubs would have benefited from this kind of payment. Jude Bellingham's success with Real Madrid would have handed Birmingham City £827,000; Vorskla Poltava, struggling in Ukraine, would have received £679,000 for their club's successes; MSK Zilina, trailing behind Slovan Bratislava's Champions League earnings in Slovakia, would have taken £1.3m. At the top end Ajax's remarkable production line, picked off so frequently, would have earned them £4.6m. Neither UEC's plan nor any other, including Uefa's welcome £200m pot for clubs with players at the past two European Championships, will mend things alone. But it would be a step in the right direction, perhaps helping narrow the gap between those two layers under the elite. Football beneath the ultra-privileged minority will only thrive with integrated incentives that reward clubs for their contributions to the ecosystem. Maybe that, even more than the prospect of a Champions League winner from those clubs assembled by the lake, is a pipedream. In greeting the new European season Ceferin rightly hailed the diversity of the scene he oversees; perhaps Uefa's appointed artist could have warned him what happens when, for all anyone's good intentions, a work of beauty is defaced for ever.
New Straits Times
04-06-2025
- General
- New Straits Times
Australia target easier path to World Cup ahead of Japan clash
SYDNEY: Australia's Milos Degenek said he has been impressing on younger teammates how tough it is to get to the World Cup through intercontinental playoffs as they prepare for their last two matches in the third round of Asian qualifying. A first win over Japan in 16 years in Perth on Thursday would put Australia well on their way to the finals in North America in 2026, but will not get them over the line if Saudi Arabia beat Bahrain in a later match. The Socceroos have a three-point edge and a healthy goal difference advantage over the Saudis, their main rivals for second place in Group C and their opponents in their final qualifier in Jeddah next Tuesday. The expansion of the World Cup means Australia still have room for error but Degenek, a veteran of the 2018 and 2022 World Cup campaigns that were secured by playoff wins over Honduras and Peru, is loathe to take any chances. "It's never easy when you go to those knockout games (and) it's a lot easier if you qualify through the group stage directly," the former Red Star Belgrade defender told reporters in Perth this week. "It's been hammered home and I think the boys ... are well aware of the situation, that there are two games that are separating us from going to a World Cup." If Australia do beat the Samurai Blue on Thursday, they still face a long wait to find out if they have secured a berth at a sixth straight World Cup finals. The Saudis kick off in Bahrain some five hours after Australia and Japan, potentially leaving the Socceroos players on tenterhooks well into the early hours of Friday morning. "If we do get the win, hopefully we will, we are obviously almost there," Degenek added. "The most important thing is that we win. We can obviously be happy inside and celebrate a little bit, but nothing too major because if Saudi win against Bahrain ... we'll still have to go there and get a result." With Japan already qualified, Hajime Moriyasu has rested several of his best players and brought in a handful of uncapped youngsters for Thursday's game. Degenek, who played club football in Japan for Yokohama F. Marinos, did not think that would make Australia's task any easier. "I think it's even harder for us that those so-called stars are out, because the boys that are coming in ... are going to want to prove to the boss that they should be there at the World Cup," he said. "So it's not going to be a walk in the park, and they're going to take this as serious, if not more serious, than any other game."--REUTERS
Straits Times
04-06-2025
- General
- Straits Times
Australia target easier path to World Cup ahead of Japan clash
Australia's Milos Degenek is hoping to avoid the play-offs to make it to the 2026 World Cup. SYDNEY – Australia's Milos Degenek said he has been impressing on younger teammates how tough it is to get to the World Cup through intercontinental play-offs, as they prepare for their last two matches in the third round of Asian qualifying. A first win over Japan in 16 years in Perth on June 5 would put Australia well on their way to the Finals in North America in 2026, but will not get them over the line if Saudi Arabia beat Bahrain in a later match. The Socceroos have a three-point edge and a healthy goal difference advantage over the Saudis, their main rivals for second place in Group C and their opponents in their final qualifier in Jeddah on June 10. The expansion of the World Cup means Australia still have room for error but Degenek, a veteran of the 2018 and 2022 World Cup campaigns that were secured by play-off wins over Honduras and Peru, is loathe to take any chances. 'It's never easy when you go to those knockout games (and) it's a lot easier if you qualify through the group stage directly,' the former Red Star Belgrade defender said in Perth this week. 'It's been hammered home and I think the boys are well aware of the situation, that there are two games that are separating us from going to a World Cup.' If Australia do beat the Samurai Blue, they still face a long wait to find out if they have secured a berth at a sixth straight World Cup Finals. The Saudis kick off in Bahrain some five hours after Australia and Japan, potentially leaving the Socceroos players on tenterhooks well into the early hours of Friday morning. 'If we do get the win, hopefully we will, we are obviously almost there,' Degenek added. 'The most important thing is that we win. We can obviously be happy inside and celebrate a little bit, but nothing too major because if Saudi win against Bahrain... we'll still have to go there and get a result.' With Japan already qualified, Hajime Moriyasu has rested several of his best players and brought in a handful of uncapped youngsters for the game. But Degenek, who played club football in Japan for Yokohama F. Marinos, did not think that would make Australia's task any easier. 'I think it's even harder for us that those so-called stars are out, because the boys that are coming in are going to want to prove to the boss that they should be there at the World Cup,' he said. 'So it's not going to be a walk in the park, and they're going to take this as serious, if not more serious, than any other game.' REUTERS Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.
Hindustan Times
04-06-2025
- Business
- Hindustan Times
Soccer-Australia target easier path to World Cup ahead of Japan clash
SYDNEY, - Australia's Milos Degenek said he has been impressing on younger teammates how tough it is to get to the World Cup through intercontinental playoffs as they prepare for their last two matches in the third round of Asian qualifying. A first win over Japan in 16 years in Perth on Thursday would put Australia well on their way to the finals in North America in 2026, but will not get them over the line if Saudi Arabia beat Bahrain in a later match. The Socceroos have a three-point edge and a healthy goal difference advantage over the Saudis, their main rivals for second place in Group C and their opponents in their final qualifier in Jeddah next Tuesday. The expansion of the World Cup means Australia still have room for error but Degenek, a veteran of the 2018 and 2022 World Cup campaigns that were secured by playoff wins over Honduras and Peru, is loathe to take any chances. "It's never easy when you go to those knockout games it's a lot easier if you qualify through the group stage directly," the former Red Star Belgrade defender told reporters in Perth this week. "It's been hammered home and I think the boys ... are well aware of the situation, that there are two games that are separating us from going to a World Cup." If Australia do beat the Samurai Blue on Thursday, they still face a long wait to find out if they have secured a berth at a sixth straight World Cup finals. The Saudis kick off in Bahrain some five hours after Australia and Japan, potentially leaving the Socceroos players on tenterhooks well into the early hours of Friday morning. "If we do get the win, hopefully we will, we are obviously almost there," Degenek added. "The most important thing is that we win. We can obviously be happy inside and celebrate a little bit, but nothing too major because if Saudi win against Bahrain ... we'll still have to go there and get a result." With Japan already qualified, Hajime Moriyasu has rested several of his best players and brought in a handful of uncapped youngsters for Thursday's game. Degenek, who played club football in Japan for Yokohama F. Marinos, did not think that would make Australia's task any easier. "I think it's even harder for us that those so-called stars are out, because the boys that are coming in ... are going to want to prove to the boss that they should be there at the World Cup," he said. "So it's not going to be a walk in the park, and they're going to take this as serious, if not more serious, than any other game."
The Advertiser
03-06-2025
- Sport
- The Advertiser
Let fans have their flares, says Socceroos veteran
Socceroos veteran Milos Degenek wants to see flares back at Australian soccer games, saying travelling teams now have it too easy due to fans being over policed. More than 50,000 fans are expected to turn out on Thursday night when Australia host Japan in a crunch World Cup qualifier at Optus Stadium in Perth. The match will be played less than a week after riot police were called in to control unruly fans walking to the game in the lead up to Melbourne City's A-League Men grand-final win over arch-rivals Melbourne Victory. About 20 flares were lit in the crowd, with one police officer taken to hospital after allegedly being kicked. Football Australia strictly bans flares and other pyrotechnics in and around stadiums, with perpetrators facing hefty bans. The Socceroos have faced plenty of hostile crowds over the years in various World Cup qualifying campaigns, but Degenek feels Australian fans aren't given the scope to return the favour due to restrictions being placed on them. "It would be a lot nicer if when countries come to Australia to play against us, the crowd was a little bit more hostile" Degenek said in Perth on Tuesday. "Put it this way. I played in Serbia. I played at Red Star Belgrade, in the Eternal Derby where you play Partizan (Belgrade), where flares are thrown onto a pitch, where the city gets shut down on game day. "But in the end, that's normal for me. There's no fear. "There's a code in the footballing world: Fans are never going to attack footballers. "I saw the pictures from the (A-League) grand final - a lot of police. "For me, I just think it's nonsense that you have people in riot gear for guys who are going to a game. "I don't think we're going to a war. We're just going to a football game. You're making it out to be a lot worse than what it is." Degenek believes by tightening down on people's rights with a huge police presence, it leads to more problems. "That has a counter effect, in my opinion," he said. "Because you are paying so much attention to those things - fans or flares and this and that - in the end, you're going to force an issue, because you're narrowing down corridors where they can walk. "You're pushing them to a side. Someone's going to step on someone, someone's going to push and then that escalates really quick, rather than give them freedom to move and getting them safely to a stadium. "Once they're in, you close them off. No one's going to walk out onto the pitch, no one's going to walk out to the other side and fight with the other fans, because by the time you get from A to B, it's a 150m walk." Degenek believes more people would attend games if they were policed less. "You need to give the fans the freedom, the joy," he said. "Because the more you do that (police them), the less people are going to go to the stadium. "In Europe, you have less police, and that's where you have more fans at the games. "And for us as footballers, it's a lot better when you see flares in the stadium, when you see fans screaming, chanting, flares going off, because that kind of gets the adrenaline going and motivates you even more." The Socceroos (13 points) sit second in their qualifying group. A win over Japan (20 points) would almost certainly lock in their place for the 2026 World Cup. Socceroos veteran Milos Degenek wants to see flares back at Australian soccer games, saying travelling teams now have it too easy due to fans being over policed. More than 50,000 fans are expected to turn out on Thursday night when Australia host Japan in a crunch World Cup qualifier at Optus Stadium in Perth. The match will be played less than a week after riot police were called in to control unruly fans walking to the game in the lead up to Melbourne City's A-League Men grand-final win over arch-rivals Melbourne Victory. About 20 flares were lit in the crowd, with one police officer taken to hospital after allegedly being kicked. Football Australia strictly bans flares and other pyrotechnics in and around stadiums, with perpetrators facing hefty bans. The Socceroos have faced plenty of hostile crowds over the years in various World Cup qualifying campaigns, but Degenek feels Australian fans aren't given the scope to return the favour due to restrictions being placed on them. "It would be a lot nicer if when countries come to Australia to play against us, the crowd was a little bit more hostile" Degenek said in Perth on Tuesday. "Put it this way. I played in Serbia. I played at Red Star Belgrade, in the Eternal Derby where you play Partizan (Belgrade), where flares are thrown onto a pitch, where the city gets shut down on game day. "But in the end, that's normal for me. There's no fear. "There's a code in the footballing world: Fans are never going to attack footballers. "I saw the pictures from the (A-League) grand final - a lot of police. "For me, I just think it's nonsense that you have people in riot gear for guys who are going to a game. "I don't think we're going to a war. We're just going to a football game. You're making it out to be a lot worse than what it is." Degenek believes by tightening down on people's rights with a huge police presence, it leads to more problems. "That has a counter effect, in my opinion," he said. "Because you are paying so much attention to those things - fans or flares and this and that - in the end, you're going to force an issue, because you're narrowing down corridors where they can walk. "You're pushing them to a side. Someone's going to step on someone, someone's going to push and then that escalates really quick, rather than give them freedom to move and getting them safely to a stadium. "Once they're in, you close them off. No one's going to walk out onto the pitch, no one's going to walk out to the other side and fight with the other fans, because by the time you get from A to B, it's a 150m walk." Degenek believes more people would attend games if they were policed less. "You need to give the fans the freedom, the joy," he said. "Because the more you do that (police them), the less people are going to go to the stadium. "In Europe, you have less police, and that's where you have more fans at the games. "And for us as footballers, it's a lot better when you see flares in the stadium, when you see fans screaming, chanting, flares going off, because that kind of gets the adrenaline going and motivates you even more." The Socceroos (13 points) sit second in their qualifying group. A win over Japan (20 points) would almost certainly lock in their place for the 2026 World Cup. Socceroos veteran Milos Degenek wants to see flares back at Australian soccer games, saying travelling teams now have it too easy due to fans being over policed. More than 50,000 fans are expected to turn out on Thursday night when Australia host Japan in a crunch World Cup qualifier at Optus Stadium in Perth. The match will be played less than a week after riot police were called in to control unruly fans walking to the game in the lead up to Melbourne City's A-League Men grand-final win over arch-rivals Melbourne Victory. About 20 flares were lit in the crowd, with one police officer taken to hospital after allegedly being kicked. Football Australia strictly bans flares and other pyrotechnics in and around stadiums, with perpetrators facing hefty bans. The Socceroos have faced plenty of hostile crowds over the years in various World Cup qualifying campaigns, but Degenek feels Australian fans aren't given the scope to return the favour due to restrictions being placed on them. "It would be a lot nicer if when countries come to Australia to play against us, the crowd was a little bit more hostile" Degenek said in Perth on Tuesday. "Put it this way. I played in Serbia. I played at Red Star Belgrade, in the Eternal Derby where you play Partizan (Belgrade), where flares are thrown onto a pitch, where the city gets shut down on game day. "But in the end, that's normal for me. There's no fear. "There's a code in the footballing world: Fans are never going to attack footballers. "I saw the pictures from the (A-League) grand final - a lot of police. "For me, I just think it's nonsense that you have people in riot gear for guys who are going to a game. "I don't think we're going to a war. We're just going to a football game. You're making it out to be a lot worse than what it is." Degenek believes by tightening down on people's rights with a huge police presence, it leads to more problems. "That has a counter effect, in my opinion," he said. "Because you are paying so much attention to those things - fans or flares and this and that - in the end, you're going to force an issue, because you're narrowing down corridors where they can walk. "You're pushing them to a side. Someone's going to step on someone, someone's going to push and then that escalates really quick, rather than give them freedom to move and getting them safely to a stadium. "Once they're in, you close them off. No one's going to walk out onto the pitch, no one's going to walk out to the other side and fight with the other fans, because by the time you get from A to B, it's a 150m walk." Degenek believes more people would attend games if they were policed less. "You need to give the fans the freedom, the joy," he said. "Because the more you do that (police them), the less people are going to go to the stadium. "In Europe, you have less police, and that's where you have more fans at the games. "And for us as footballers, it's a lot better when you see flares in the stadium, when you see fans screaming, chanting, flares going off, because that kind of gets the adrenaline going and motivates you even more." The Socceroos (13 points) sit second in their qualifying group. A win over Japan (20 points) would almost certainly lock in their place for the 2026 World Cup.
