LAUSANNE, August 4, 2020 - Eyes from every corner of the world are warming up with glee for the world's most valuable club competition, which makes a return this weekend. The UEFA Champions League may belong to the European continent but its universality continues to shine through season after season, and fans in other parts of the globe do not mind staying up late or waking up earlier than usual in order to enjoy the blockbuster.
Nearly 200 journalists converged on Zoom on Tuesday to discuss this season’s tournament which resumes in a new reality five months after it was halted in March due to the coronavirus pandemic; No fans, few journalists, new format. The need for journalists to regain access to media tribunes, which is a delicate matter, was definitely on the front burner.
AIPS mentors and football experts Keir Radnedge and Martin Mazur led the discussion with insightful presentations on the evolution of the UEFA Champions League, its endearing features, the 2019/2020 season so far and expectations for the remainder of the season which will come to an end on August 23.
Radnedge, who is also the AIPS Football Delegate, narrated how the creation of a European Champion Clubs Cup was triggered by the “English arrogance” that followed Wolverhampton Wanderers 3-2 victory over Honved in a friendly match in the early 1950s.
“That English arrogance upset Gabriel Hanot, the football editor of the French daily sports newspaper L’Equipe. So, in 1955, he and his colleagues created the European Champion Clubs Cup for all of Europe’s top clubs.
“It was too big a job for a newspaper sports department to organise so running the competition was handed to this conveniently-created new body UEFA. The rest is history.”
Over the years, like Radnedge expressed, the continental competition advanced to this point where it is now a global festival, “a world Champions League”, he says.
This is why attending a Champions League game for the first time on September 17, 2002 remains a special memory for Martin Mazur. It was a match between Arsenal and Borussia Dortmund at Highbury. That day, Martin Mazur felt: “I’ve made it as a journalist”.
Mazur gave credit to globalization as one reason why most people, regardless of time zone, have a European team they support, such that kits of European clubs are even more popular than national team jerseys and footballers dream of playing in the UEFA Champions League because it gives a special sense of pride.
Mazur further explained that video games and the media also helped “to develop the feeling of closeness with European football clubs. According to him, the UEFA Champions League is easy to follow and there is stability, especially in the last 10 to 15 years.
“The Champions League is what we all think that we have, that is part of us, but it’s also what we can’t have in all continents,” he explains, adding that the Champions League as “the first truly international competition” that will connect the world in this difficult period, is sending an “encouraging message”.
The Champions League season resumes this week with four games of the Round of 16 (Man City-Real Madrid, Barcelona-Napoli, Juventus-Lyon and Bayern-Chelsea). Four other teams (Leipzig, Atletico de Madrid, Atalanta and París Saint-Germain) have already qualified for the Final Eight, single-legged knockout tournament to be held in Lisbon next week.
Radnedge explained how and why UEFA decided on a “final eight” tournament to conclude the season.
“When it became clear that domestic competitions could be completed by July UEFA devised their Final Eight tournaments to be played in August. The Champions League will be played out in Portugal; the Europa League in Germany,” he says.
“UEFA has not yet published health protocols. But it is expected that there will be three levels of hygienic security with social distancing in place, as much as possible and temperature testing for the restricted number of people, probably 300, entering the stadium.”
The Europa League will also be concluded with an eight-team mini knock-out tournament in Germany. “It’s going to be a busy month,” Radnedge acknowledges. “I think it’s going to be a very exciting and dramatic month. The idea has been floated that maybe UEFA could do this every season to round up its competitions. I don’t think that will happen but you never quite know what happens.”
Ahead of this weekend’s Champions League restart, Martin Mazur gave a review of the season so far using the alphabets A-Z. It featured Atalanta’s Cinderella story, the Covid-19 nightmare, Haaland as “the Champions League’s revelation”, Black Lives Matter movement and taking a Knee, as well as the Record of this season being the longest ever.
The letter E was however reserved for Essential workers, which in this case refers to the journalists. “We need to regain access to the media tribunes as it was before the pandemic,” Mazur says. He added that it may seem difficult now but “we have to be ready to change this very limited, restricted number of journalists inside stadiums”.
AIPS President Gianni Merlo described the current restriction of journalists as a “great problem”, pointing out that even some of the journalists that are eventually accredited for the games are selected by clubs. “This is a lack of freedom in some way.”
During the open discussion, Nayden Todorov from Bulgaria described the current process of accreditation as “discrimination”. He said he was told by a UEFA staff that “only the journalists following participating teams and a few media outlets from the host country will be accredited”.
Considering that the stadium is empty anyway, Merlo is of the opinion that more journalists can be allowed to cover matches for their audiences. “Following a match from television, they can give you only some images that they like.”
Merlo however expressed AIPS’ commitment in ensuring that the rights of sports journalists will not be trampled on in the face of the pandemic.
The open discussion session of the event also featured talks about TV rights and revenues, transfer fees, and questions like if the Club World Cup will pose a threat to the Champions League and if the integrity of the competition will be seriously damaged with the new format. Both Radnedge and Mazur, however agreed that it’s better to conclude the tournament than have it cancelled.
Keir Radnedge mentioned Manchester City as one of the favourites for the Champions League title and Martin Mazur added that this week's Round of 16 encounter between City and Real Madrid will be "decisive in understanding the future of the competition".
