QUOTE (Porty @ Sep 12 2007, 06:09 AM)
Me too!
QUOTE (Bluesummers @ Sep 12 2007, 09:04 AM)
What is it exactly that they want to do?
On September 27 the federation will sit at Istanbul to discuss several matters. Platini wants to put forward the changes he wants to make in the Champions League (maybe he will decide to do it later on if he sees he doesn't have the backing...) and he's going to have his first real argument since he became President of the UEFA. These changes are for the 2009-2012 period. There are many ideas he wants to dish up, some of them are radical some are bloodless (for the G14 members)!
(The bloodless ones:) One of the measures he will propose will see the 75% of the UCL Final tickets go to the hands of fans and not sponsors and other... "engagements"! That is a good one... Moreover he wants the Final to be held only at 75+K capacity stadiums, a thought that will exclude most of Europe's stadia (and cities) but I think is right cause the Final should be played at a stadium as big as possible! Another one of these plain measures (and a weird one) is that he wishes the Final to be played on Saturday evening rather than Wednesday evening... he sees Saturday as a more... "family day"... or whatever!
But there are also big changes he has in mind and those will run into the G14 and the big federations! Platini's plan is not to cut the number of teams the big countries have in the competition but to make it harder for them to get into it and so to give bigger chances to other Champions to enter... the
Champions League (In the draw a fortnight ago only 13 of the 32 teams were champions in their countries)! Platini wants the domestic Cup winners to be given a place in the CL too. Until now, 24 leagues oppose to this measure. English, and rightly so, are the greatest polemicists to this as the dynamic of the Premier League and the enormous TV contracts are threatened if the 4th League place does not mean a chance to enter to the CL! Some say the FA would like to see this measure be applied but they don't have the power to come against the Premiership administrators (?).
The strategy committee, in which the UEFA vice-presidents, the clubs, leagues and players take part, led by Şenes Erzik, will work up these thoughts and will propose their own measures to the executive committee on September 27. A proposal made by Umberto Gandini (Milan's representative and Organizational Manager) was to decrease the number of automatic qualifications spots to 20 and leave the other 12 spots up for grabs but Platini does not want to tail off the auto qual. spots!
To conclude, Platini, in the two days' congress at Istanbul will have to start the first big fight against a board he created himself and the committee that already blindsided him on the Euro 2012 issue...