A22 Super League road is timely amid Champions League ennui and Celtic-Rangers to England ridicule

Something is happening in European football - we just don’t know quite what yet

“Football is free! Free from the monopoly of Uefa!” This was the dramatic pronouncement from Bernd Reichart, the suspiciously tie-less CEO of A22

A22 is not a road but it could be a way out. They are a slightly shadowy Madrid-based sports marketing company agitating against Uefa on behalf of Real Madrid and Barcelona while promising to deliver a new pan European form of club competition. In this vision, Star, Gold and Blue Leagues will replace the Champions, Europa and Conference Leagues, with annual promotion and relegation within leagues and clubs promoted into the Blue League based on domestic performance. If not quite a closed shop, then a very hard to access one. More welcome is the promise of free viewing for all on a new state-of-the-art, advertising supported streaming platform called Unify.

The European Court of Justice ruling in A22's favour following an aborted breakaway attempt in April 2021 seemed timely. The draw for the last 16 of the Champions League took place only last week though you may well have missed it given the relentlessly dull nature of it. If Uefa cannot even make the first knockout round of the Champions League exciting, then they know they’ve got a problem. Even football obsessives I know have struggled to recall a single tie. Just the same old clubs against the same old clubs.

Super League plans brought protests back in 2021 from supporters.

There is a definite sense of ennui at that level and Uefa, hence the change of format next season. The Champions League increases to 36 clubs from 32 and is one league table. More teams equals more games and more money. This reworking is probably enough to stave off another attempt from rebel clubs to form a breakaway league, although it likely still in the post. As it stands, clubs, including Celtic, have been queuing up to distance themselves from such an extreme move and align themselves with Uefa, who were busy seeking to present this show of support as a victory for the good guys, when it all it was was a victory for the status quo – for now. The self-delusion is staggering. “Football is not for sale,” claimed Uefa president Aleksander Ceferin while keeping a straight face. Has he not seen the price of tickets set by his own organisation for next summer’s Euro 2024 competition?

Football changes. It needs to. It must evolve. Forty years ago this very week a club from Scotland were celebrating becoming ‘champions of Europe’. Aberdeen won something called the Cup-Winners’ Cup (RIP) and then lifted something called the Super Cup, which still does exist but is played between winners of the Champions League and Europa League in a one-off match at a neutral venue. When Aberdeen defeated Hamburg 2-0 at Pittodrie in December 1983, they had already held the Germans 0-0 away in the first leg. Aberdeen now lie eighth in Scotland. Hamburg? They are no longer in the top flight in Germany and yet are still attracting 50 plus thousand crowds.

European football is not everything. But, of course, money is everything. Aberdeen chairman Dave Cormack sounded particularly concerned by the prospect of Rangers and Celtic leaving Scottish football and leaving the game here impoverished. “We have slept walked our way into this without any discussion,” he wrote on X. St Johnstone manager Craig Levein tried to start a discussion a few days ago when he proposed letting Rangers and Celtic move to England – at a price – and was ridiculed for it.

As for A22, a promotional video broadcast shortly after the news from Luxembourg begins with what looks like an apocalyptic rain involving footballs falling from the sky, which certainly seemed apposite. Something is happening. We just don’t know quite what yet. But what should be abundantly clear is that Uefa taking any kind of moral high ground is preposterous.