How Disney explains modern football

The Faroe Islands offer a fairytale, but UEFA is wrestling with qualifiers that pale in interest compared with the club game, as England might show. Also, this Monday:

As England prepare for a potential qualification-clinching match in Latvia, UEFA are preparing for something that – they hope – will be much bigger. The European body has set up a working group to explore new options for qualifiers. They have the data and know that audiences for these games are… sub-par. This trip to Latvia isn’t exactly Paul Ince’s headband in Rome in 1997.

We can empathise, to a degree. Many of you are probably seeing that edition of Inside Football is about international football and won’t bother to scroll down. We know the figures. Anything about the big clubs just does much, much better.

But wait. Because there is a link here, and this is actually about something more. It isn’t a complete coincidence that the formerly named European Club Association chose an international week to unveil their big rebrand, now to be known as European Football Clubs. There’s more space. As one source stated, that wasn’t just a rebrand. It was a velvet revolution, as the body is essentially announcing itself as a third major institution – up there, and arguably on top of, UEFA.

EFC’s plans, which are ultimately the plans of the biggest clubs, far exceed the scope of working groups. The money they generate is now starting to affect the international game.

One of the ideas already discussed at UEFA level – and reported in this newsletter before – is the idea of replicating the Champions League’s “Swiss system” for international qualifiers. UEFA is quick to hail that new format as a great success, after all.

Some of those directly involved, however, would caution against it. One major club chief executive recently told me that they absolutely hate the system.

“It’s like our games in the group stage don’t really mean anything. You barely know the significance of single results.”

Much of this comes from different attempts to solve a common problem in modern football – one that is partly explained by… Disney.

The game is now constantly struggling to navigate old structures in a new world.

That new world has seen global interest in football rise to levels never seen before, which is one of the reasons why this World Cup is primarily being hosted in the biggest commercial department of all – the US. Everyone inevitably wants their own uplift from that. This is why we’re currently seeing so many football “documentaries,” where the content is tightly controlled.

The problem is that the vast majority of interest is concentrated in the major clubs and the big tournaments. Hence, in an increasingly squeezed calendar, there is less tolerance for anything that doesn’t “do numbers.”

That stands in direct contrast to the wider game, which is increasing numbers all the time. Football always wants more – and more constantly seems to actually be less.

So it is that FIFA and UEFA see that their major tournaments are still blockbusters, so they drastically increase their size… but then worry when the competitive tension of their qualifiers is drastically lessened.

It’s exactly like the Champions League. The big clubs see that games against each other do best, so they want more of them. They obviously can’t just cut out the rest of the game, as they tried with the Super League, so this system became the compromise.

And a compromise indeed it is. It doesn’t really leave anyone fully happy. Some of this comes from a classic misunderstanding of what happiness in sport comes from, because so many leaders also misunderstand the sport. It’s like some of them watched last season’s quarter-final between Arsenal and Real Madrid and think it got mass interest because it was a match between two major clubs… without realising it got mass interest because it was two major clubs meeting in a Champions League quarter-final.

You can’t confect those stakes. They have to be built up.

A group match where there’s little threat of elimination will never be the same.

Similarly, even a historic fixture like England-Germany isn’t the same as when it’s England-Germany in a quarter-final. It’s not the same as a Premier League match either.

Some football figures who do know what they’re talking about openly compare the situation to Disney, and how profits per film are starting to fall. They went too big. On buying major brands like Star Wars and Marvel, Disney’s initial film strategy was very successful. Their response, of course, was to make even more films – but consequently, without the same sense of event. Disney CEO Bob Iger even complained that the explosion of content “diluted focus and attention” for the brand.

It sounds familiar, except football’s major leaders seem to have reached the opposite conclusion.

That said, change isn’t always bad. The major tournaments have had this same qualifying structure since the 1930s. If there are more summer places available, it obviously makes sense to shorten qualification. The issue right now is that they have been shortened and diluted, leaving major nations without sufficient competition in their groups.

That isn’t universal, though. Both Belgium and Italy still have fights on their hands. That points to one uplifting difference with the club game. If the Champions League group stages actually needed to be changed because too many major clubs are too wealthy, there is still an organic nature to building international teams.

You can’t just spend. There’s even an enjoyable rock-paper-scissors element. Spain lack anything close to a goalscorer like Harry Kane. England lack anyone like Rodri or Martin Zubimendi in midfield.

But this is where it comes full circle – the club game is now manifestly affecting the international game.

One reason there feels insufficient competition for major nations is the wider socio-political transformations, and how the post-Communism sporting structures of many eastern European countries were corroded. Just look at the Czech Republic losing to the Faroe Islands last weekend. It’s a far cry from Pavel Nedved’s side of 2004, even if the success of the 55,000 people in the Faroes points to positives from the other side. A Disney story, if you like.

The tragedy is that football generates enough money to start solving these problems itself.

In Latvia, figures like league president Maksim Krivunecs have proposed ideas such as setting aside a mere €100m of the Champions League’s €3bn annual prize money for football infrastructure around Europe. After 10 years, that’s €1bn, which would make an extraordinary difference. That’s how less wealthy nations start honing talent in a world where wealthy nations are now industrialising theirs.

Instead, the money UEFA distributes to the 55 national associations is negligible next to the wealth of the Champions League. The new power of the EFC consequently becomes even more important.

So the international game is forced to come up with different solutions, where debates in the club game are mirrored.

One alternative to the Swiss System is to expand the Nations League and decide qualification through that, which would mean more matches among the bigger nations and – likely – an even greater likelihood of tournament places. The smaller nations – and we are still talking about those much bigger than the Faroes – are justifiably starting to agitate. A common line, repeatedly pressed, is that UEFA “shouldn’t kill the dream.”

They’re right. It would be very football in 2025, though, to come up with the wrong solution.

Get in touch

Are UEFA’s changes helping or harming international football, or is the club game simply taking over? Email me at m.delaney@independent.co.uk with your thoughts. Inside Football members get access to my answers in full.

What do these two sequences represent, and what is the link between them?

1954, 1958, 1982, 1986, 1990, 1998, 2022

Chelsea, Celtic, Derby County, Dundee, Preston North End, Walsall

The first series of numbers represents a sequence of events, such as when a club won a competition. The second is a list of clubs, representing the career path of a football figure. The two sequences are connected.

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