Ibrahim Oladamola
European football’s governing body Uefa must change how it hands out Champions League money, says Crystal Palace chairman Steve Parish.
Parish says Uefa’s coefficient ranking system has helped Europe’s elite clubs become “entitled with winning”.
“There’s a top half and a bottom half, and that disparity will get bigger and bigger unless we put some rules in to try to control it,” Parish added.
The Palace chairman was speaking at the launch of the Union of European Clubs (UEC) in Brussels on Monday.
The UEC’s general secretary, Dennis Gudasic, says that of the 22bn euros (£19.5bn) in revenue earned by Uefa from club competitions over the past 25 years, 34% of it has been distributed to a group of just 12 clubs.
Currently 30% of Champions League revenue handed out to the 32 clubs in the group stage is determined by their coefficient ranking, which based on how that club has performed in Europe over the past decade. Clubs who have played in Europe regularly over that period get more of that 30% than those who have not.
While Parish accepts the value of the Premier League’s television broadcast deals means the distortion caused by European earnings is less stark in England than in other leagues, he believes Europe’s top clubs have an unfair financial advantage.
“We’ve got six, now probably seven, teams [in England] where the amount of capital they have is either unlimited or is enormous compared to us, and qualifying for European football is almost impossible,” he said.
“It still doesn’t feel like a meritocracy entirely. And with the coefficient, it feels more and more that there’s a two-speed Premier League.
“You’re up against the situation where people have become so entitled with winning that they don’t accept any system which challenges the status quo or threatens it, and I think that’s what we have really got to look at across Europe.”
