A needed change for the domestic league

It’s time to find a new way to govern the European domestic leagues. You heard that right: the current system of governance allows the leagues to become greedy and susceptible to making power grabs when they are left to their own devices. 

This is evidenced by the fact that for the past seven years, the winner of the Premier League has been as predictable as a Spanish soap opera. Current champions Manchester City are in a galaxy of their own in England, winning an unprecedented sixth title in seven years. While it’s true that England does have more competitive teams than other European leagues, these team’s ultimate purpose is to serve as a stick for Manchester City to trip over in one-off games; in the long run, few teams can compete with the Citizen’s vast reserves of wealth.

In the current set up, European leagues depend on their revenue like it’s their blood; the money they generate is used to sustain the departments which make them effective governing bodies. They reinvest the profit they generate from viewership, ad revenue, and licensing agreements into player development, training facilities, funding for cup competitions and, most importantly, funding for the their regulatory department. 

This department has put its name in the headlines in recent years. In November 2023, the English FA (Football Association) deducted six points from Everton FC for spending 19.5 million euros above the 105 million euro limit. This marked the first significant enforcement of the profit and sustainability regulations, showing that the FA meant business in enforcing fairness and sportsmanship. 

That may be all well and good in theory, but the truth is that Everton wasn’t exactly dominating the league up until that point. The toffees finished tenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth in the years leading up to those charges. Was a six-point deduction really necessary with Everton floundering in mid-table? It could be argued that it was; after all, the FA’s message to the world was that any team caught breaching the rules should be adequately punished.

Everton manager Sean Dyche when he found out about the points deduction (probably not)

The FA drew the line, however, when successful clubs began to overspend. Take Manchester United for example: The Red Devils spent a whopping 700 million euros over the past five seasons, despite millions in lost earnings from not having won a Premier League title in eleven years. Yet United continued to spend, and no legal action was taken from the FA. 

It’s not as though United’s faulty finances were being kept a secret. In fact, UEFA sanctioned Manchester United for breaching financial fair play regulations from 2019 to 2022, making them pay 260,000 pounds. Frequent campaigns into the profit-deficient Europa League, and a five-year Champions League quarter-final absence would have been a dagger into United's profit margins, yet they continued to spend. 

If UEFA was able to sanction Manchester United, then surely the FA would also be able to. The thing is, they don’t want to. Remember how I said that these domestic governing bodies are for-profit organizations? One of their main sources of revenue, viewership is garnered via millions of fans tuning in to watch their league’s flagship teams battling it out. Stunting the growth of these megateams would essentially be stunting the growth of the these governing bodies. 

Similar to domestic competitions, success in European tournaments plays a major part in drawing attention to the domestic leagues. Teams that reach the latter stages of tournaments such as the Champions League and Europa League will consequently garner a bigger following from international audiences, which brings in more viewership for the domestic leagues. Financial gain from European competitions comes from other areas as well: the current Champions League system handsomely rewards teams which make deep runs into its competition, ensuring that these teams will replenish their squads over the summer, finish high in their domestic leagues, and end up back in the Champions League once again. 

The truth is that the FA simply cannot afford for their best teams, despite what regulations they’ve broken, to be missing out on the best competitions. The superclubs’ revenues are diverse; they won’t crumble if one of their sources of income runs dry. Domestic leagues, on the other hand, have no such luxury. Rationally, it doesn’t make any sense that the most prevalent enforcer of rules also has a vested interest in the success of the parties it enforces regulations on. FIFA and UEFA can only do so much; outside of holding up the law in their respective tournaments, they have little say when it comes to how domestic leagues are handled. 

Champions League teams aren't just competing for their well being; they're competing for the well being of their league

The proposed European Super League, which would have pitted the best teams in Europe against each other while banning lower level teams, was a cocktail of vagueness, greed, and intentional ignorance. As the fans, pundits, and players of the world fought to make their opposition heard, and as UEFA scrambled to denounce the movement, the domestic leagues were compliant, the notion of profit enough to keep them silenced. RFEF, Spain’s governing body, was reactionless as it saw its three flagship teams—Barcelona, Real Madrid, and Atletico Madrid—break away and advocate for a rogue league. The FA let the fans take the initiative as they protested in the streets. The governing bodies of Europe’s best leagues turned away as football’s structure looked to be on the brink of collapse. They had been given their moment for redemption, all eyes on them, and they chose to be silent. 

What can be done about this? There seems to be two solutions: we can either let the domestic leagues continue to be the primary governing bodies, or give UEFA larger roles in the governance of those leagues. The first case would only work if we remove all monetary links that the domestic governing bodies have with their teams, to keep them unbiased. This seems nearly impossible, which is why allowing UEFA to preside over the English leagues seems like the more natural conclusion. Is UEFA corrupt? Sure. Do they have the league’s best intentions in mind all of the time? Probably not. Still, UEFA is unbiased, and slightly less corrupt than FIFA. And in this screwed up world, that’s got to count for something.