Breakaways or crossing borders: what is the future of European football?

The delegates filing into a conference room in central Brussels could not have missed the huge multishaded mural, a block further down Rue de la Loi, that read “The future is Europe”. They took their places and for the next two hours heard panellists discuss what, in a football context, that future should look like.

Closing the discussion was Javier Tebas, the La Liga president and perhaps the most divisive administrator in the modern game. “If this association is not strong,” he told the 104 clubs and 15 league representatives who had made the trip, “then in a few weeks’ time the future of European football is going to be pretty dark.”

Tebas was speaking at a forum held by the Union of European clubs (UEC), which was created this year in an attempt to address a lack of representation for non-elite sides. Some of those present were signed-up members; others, including five lower-ranking Premier League clubs and two of their Championship peers, were in town on a try-before-you-buy basis.

They heard Tebas, a rare high-profile voice pushing back against football’s money-driven juggernaut or a rabble-rouser with multiple axes to grind depending on who you listen to, lament that football has ignored existential challenges. “We need to face up to them or there’s going to be no way out,” he concluded.

Prophecy or hyperbole? Perhaps it is somewhere between the two. It remains to be seen whether Tebas and UEC, whose activities he has part-funded, can wield any serious influence but they have earned their hearing through the acknowledgment that European football is at an inflection point.

The sport lacks a coherent answer to the money and extraordinary spending power, concentrated in England and a handful of isolated citadels such