UEFA President Michel Platini has said in an interview that the Champions League has ‘destroyed Europe’ because the immense interest in the competition precludes all others, including UEFA’s own Europa League.
The Champions League continues its first knock-out phase this week with Juventus’ return game with Celtic taking place on Wednesday evening.
Platini went on to discuss UEFA’s democratic process, confirming that any changes needed the agreement of all the UEFA countries which is why things within competition remain the same – though he did express his own desire to change the Europa League to improve its standing.
The former Juventus midfielder was speaking to German newspaper Bild, and supported the Champions League, saying it was “the competition of the heart, of all Europe”, but added that because of the “tremendous attention” the competition generates, he would favour Europe’s second competition being “the Europa League, but upgrade again”.
Platini also discussed international matters in the interview. He described the experimental Euro 2020 as a ‘great adventure’ and confirmed that he favoured the World Cup in 2022 in Qatar, so long as it was held in winter, as it would not be fair to play in the summer – either on players or fans.
Platini, who played 72 times for France and managed his national side, has been president of UEFA since 2007.
Mr. Platini has to get off his leather chair and start working on making the Europa League more interesting (first of all bring back the name Uefa Cup) or get rid of it completely. The answer is not adding more teams to the CL. Unfortunately he has made some mistakes in his term as president, now criticizing the best tournament in soccer hands down (cause the World Cup has been crap ever since they added more teams and the Euro is missing Brazil and Argentina to make that the best tournament. I have a word for Mr. Platini, instead of complaining work on making things better and advance the marketing of the European game to reach all corners of the world, including CANADA
For me, the problem is that in order to increase markets, governing bodies too readily accept competitors who are not (yet) at the level of the competition. That, naturally, brings about a dip which (should) level out in time. However, there is only a limited talent pool in world football, so increasing cannot be continued forever.