The president of the Royal Spanish Football Federation (RFEF), Luis Rubiales, defended the current format of the Champions League, the “best club competition in the world”, and said UEFA will continue to “lead it” Y “generating greater wealth” against the European Super League project outside of UEFA.
“UEFA has for many years built the best club competition in the world, the Champions League, and will continue to lead, drive and generate more wealth every year, also guaranteeing its excellence and rewarding based on sporting merits“he said in statements forwarded to Europa Press.
Luis Rubiales recalled that the RFEF is part of UEFA, “and is positioned with her on this matter“like the rest of the European federations, as well as that the 'Champions' has more than 60 years of experience,” and combines history with modernity, thus achieving wide recognition and being at the forefront of sport. “” At the RFEF, as we at UEFA defend the concept of the soccer pyramid, where top clubs and footballers can reach the top, thanks, among other things, to the grassroots work of other more humble clubs and federations“, he stressed.
In the opinion of the president of the RFEF, the return of football money “cannot go entirely to the elite“.” A part of it has to necessarily have an impact on training, on the base, and ultimately on the most modest football and this is what UEFA has achieved with its current model, “he said. In this sense, he stressed that the UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin and his entire Board of Directors, including Luis Rubiales himself as vice president, work daily and strive for “the best for European football” and declared himself convinced that the Champions League “will continue to evolve until reaching levels never achieved before”.
These statements come after the former president of FC Barcelona Josep Maria Bartomeu indicated at the press conference on his resignation that the Barça club would be included in this European Super League along with other great Spanish clubs such as Real Madrid and Atlético de Madrid.
The Portuguese Football Federation, for its part, rejects a hypothetical Super League. The president of the Portuguese Football Federation (FPF), Fernando Gomes, said today that he “disagrees and repudiates” the hypothetical creation of a soccer Super League, after the rumors of the last days.
In statements sent to the EFE Agency, Gomes argues that he disagrees since a Super League “It violates all the principles of sporting merit and, as far as is known, it would be a kind of self-proclaimed privileged club.”
“The last thing that is needed is the exacerbation of selfishness,” said Gomes, in relation to the context of the current global pandemic of Covid-19.
“The Super League will not have in Portugal and in the FPF any possible way of support”, concluded the federative president.