IT IS not greed that motivates the G14 clubs. It is fear. Fear that they are
not good enough. Fear that their players are overpriced and overrated. Fear
that the coach is not as smart as he thinks he is. Fear that the guy with
the money isn’t as rich as he needs to be. Fear in the megastore. Fear in
the marketing department. Above all, fear in the boardroom, where the
petrified men in suits gather, trembling.
They don’t fancy it. Their bottle has gone. They can barely look. It is their
very own Blair Witch Project. Oh my God, what was that? There’s
something out there. Did you hear it? What’s that noise? Bolton Wanderers?
Osasuna? Werder Bremen? Oh, please, Lord, help.
The bogeyman for G14 is the well-run small club. The type that might steal
that last Champions League spot then turn them over in the knockout rounds.
The G14 elite like to paint themselves as the future when, in fact, they are
rooted in the past. They are the industry’s dinosaurs. They have had it
their own way for decades and do not want change.
There are 18 clubs in G14, but, like Orwell’s barnyard society, some are more
equal than others. Votes are apportioned according to European trophy wins,
so Real Madrid get 20 (two points for every European Cup, plus one point for
each Uefa Cup) and Arsenal one (for winning the Cup Winners’ Cup in 1994).
By G14’s preposterous logic, Real, whose recent history could be collated
under the chapter heading “How Not To Run A Football Club”, deserve the
greatest say in the direction the game in Europe should take because they
were very good 40 years ago.
The second most powerful voice is Liverpool’s, a club dubiously qualified to
advise the rest of the Continent on the business of football, having been
annihilated financially by Manchester United from a position that should
have been unassailable in the early 1990s. It is 16 years since Liverpool
won the domestic championship, but failure is no handicap for a G14 club,
either. Bayer Leverkusen have never won the Bundesliga, Paris Saint- Germain
have claimed Le Championnat once in 20 years, while Inter Milan must rewind
to 1989 to find their most recent triumph in Serie A despite buying a Who’s
Who of world football.
The G14 clubs are in fact the enemies of excellence because they want the
rewards without the hard work. They seek more Champions League matches
guaranteed because they are frightened of defeat in the ones they have; they
want qualification for Europe on a plate, so finishing fourth or first
becomes inconsequential; they want to be paired with the most feeble or
naive opponents in case challenging the mighty is too much for them.
Ferran Soriano, the vice- president of Barcelona, wants extra games inserted
into the Champions League format, which can only mean a return to the torpor
of the second group stage — an idea that came close to killing the
competition as a spectacle the last time, and would do so again.
Adriano Galliani, of AC Milan, believes that the knockout stages should be
seeded, based on performance over five years, with first playing eighth and
so on. In other words, newcomers such as Chelsea or Bremen would be
constantly pitted against wealthier, experienced clubs, reducing their
chances considerably.
This is the rationale of the gibbering coward. Given every advantage
imaginable, Goliath still wants David to fight with an arm tied. Having
manipulated the tournament until the cost of reaching the later stages for
any newcomer is roughly £250 million — and it looks as if Chelsea need to
add another £50-100 million to win the final — they are still not satisfied.
This racket is necessary to shield the inadequacies of the self-appointed
elite. Without a freak set of circumstances, Everton would have taken
Liverpool’s Champions League place last year and there is still time for
Bolton to nip ahead of Arsenal over the next two months. This would be a
financial disaster for any big club. So the G14 cartel is not truly about
the desire to progress, but the need to thwart that progress in others. The
well-run small club must be shut out: in the qualification process, at the
draw, by rearranging the format to the benefit of the select few.
Yet the names on the G14 roster are as random as any snapshot taken at a
particular moment in football’s history — and one name in particular. G14
was formed in September 2000, when Leverkusen happened to be moderately
successful, having finished runners-up in the Bundesliga three times in four
seasons. Losing to Real in the 2002 Champions League final, they remained
ever the bridesmaids, yet the invitations were out and they were among the
second-tier clubs invited to swell G14’s numbers to 18. Why should this be?
Leverkusen are elite in neither achievement nor popularity. On February 18
they drew a capacity crowd of 22,500 to a home match with Duisburg, their
local rivals. That weekend, Hannover attracted 49,000, Hertha Berlin more
than 50,000, Eintracht Frankfurt 47,500 and Borussia Mönchengladbach 54,019.
The previous week, SV Hamburg had drawn 52,081, FC Cologne 50,000, Werder
Bremen 36,218 and Schalke 04 61,524.
None of these teams is in G14, despite also eclipsing Leverkusen’s success. In
total, Leverkusen’s eight rivals lay claim to one European Cup, four Uefa
Cups, two Cup Winners’ Cups, 14 Bundesliga titles, 23 German Cups, four West
German league championships and 11 German national championships. Still,
Leverkusen have two trophies (the 1993 German Cup and the 1988 Uefa Cup) and
were quite good five years ago, so they deserve a say in the future of world
football. And that is G14’s brains trust in action.
Hamburg were among the three non-G14 clubs who won the old European Cup in its
final ten years. In the 13 years it has stood as the G14-approved Champions
League, though, it has been a closed shop. So G14 players are best? Not
necessarily. On June 14, 2004, the starting date of the last European
Championship tournament, G14 took out a full-page advertisement in The
Times. “GO FOR IT” the headline read.
Despite working against international football at every opportunity, G14 was
clearly not against using national pride to promote its overblown stars.
“G14 members are providing a third of all players at Euro 2004,” it boasted.
“We are confident G14’s players will help to make this year’s Championship
the best yet.” Below was a list of 139 footballers. The advertisement it
would have been nice to see would have appeared on July 5. Beneath the
headline “GOING, GOING, GONE”, the copy would have read: “G14 members
provided one player in the Greece squad that were crowned European champions
yesterday. His name was Giorgos Karagounis and he was suspended for the
final. Bugger.”
Sadly, G14’s 138 also-rans turned out to be knackered, laughably overestimated
or, in the case of the strikers, unable to cope with basic man-for-man
marking. Still, that has not stopped their bosses attempting to sign them up
for even more football. Provided that it is not in the shirt of the national
team.
Among the least palatable aspects of G14 policy-making is its total disdain
for the international game. A court in Belgium is considering a claim by
Royal Charleroi that injury to Abdelmajid Oulmers, one of their players,
while representing Morocco against Burkina Faso, cost them the 2005 domestic
championship (even though he was injured in November, making Charleroi the
ultimate pipsqueak one-man team).
Naturally, G14 supports Charleroi because the case will further its claim to
have player wages paid while on international duty. This would bring
football’s World Cup in line with its rugby union equivalent; and make it
about as interesting. In Australia in 2003, countries such as Fiji and
Samoa, who could have posed a threat to rugby’s big eight, were weakened
because they could not afford to buy their best players out of their
contracts with professional clubs. The quarter-finals were depressingly
predictable as a result.
Now imagine if Ivory Coast had to pay Didier Drogba’s Chelsea wage this
summer, plus that of Kolo Touré, of Arsenal, and team-mates dotted at clubs
all over Europe. It would be the end of the World Cup as a spectacle,
certainly the death of its ability to surprise. Those who indulge G14’s
logic probably think that Africa should be grateful for European
colonialists plundering the land, rather than the other way around.
“The voice of the clubs,” is G14’s slogan, but it is as false as the claim to
superiority. G14 is not the voice of Bolton or Bremen, nor even of Chelsea,
kept out by this quivering elite for daring to challenge its monopoly. It is
not the voice of the World Cup or of the champions of Europe. It is not the
voice of anybody who cares for football or for the level playing field. It
is the voice of lawyers, of faceless political manipulators, of
shortsightedness and reckless self-interest.
Above all, it is the voice of frightened little men. Frightened that they are
not good enough. And on this, for once, they are right.
