UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin defends new Champions League format

we were discussing about that for a long long time we spoke with all the stakeholders with the leagues with clubs with fans with with uh everyone in European football and in the end I think we came to a solution that will benefit all will make a more unpredictable competition more interesting competition um more teams will have or more national team uh National Association teams will will have a chance to participate so I think it's it will be a great change it is a great change has this finally killed off the super Le threat I I'm I don't know if this killed the Super League threat I think that the uh nonsense of of that proposal killed it itself but uh for sure this competition is so interesting that I don't see that anybody who has any clue about football wouldn't like to play in this in this great competition there's some concerns about player burnout and their workload being too great is there a risk of there being too many matches for the health of players I mean there are too many matches probably today already the thing is that from the from one point of view we have clubs saying we cannot afford playing paying the players and coaches anymore um they are in financial difficulties from the other point of view uh players of course don't want to play more matches but I think with this interesting matches this will be a benefit for for everyone what are you hearing from the players I mean the calendar is full and it's so full that nothing can change anymore I think we cannot play one more match but uh for the rest I think that everybody wants to win the European competition not just champions league but also Europa League and Conference League the calendar is so full that uh we cannot we will not change anything anymore is it the clubs who want more money particularly those outside of England because the premier league has so much wealth uh trust me also English clubs want want more revenues because it's very hard to to compete also for for English clubs with with other clubs from from other big leagues especially which you see because uh they don't win uh every year I would say the the teams from the Premier League so I think all the clubs uh practically all the clubs uh because of different reasons have are close to some financial problems so we had to restructure a bit to do it better and of course I have to say that the important thing is that also solidarity is raised very much for nonparticipating clubs will give 440 million to nonparticipating clubs which which is an amazing number we have seen Premier League spending down this year and in fact some clubs having to sell players homegrown players just to comply with financial rules perhaps do you hear from owners they don't want as many regulations and and rules that perhaps force them into making transfers yeah look I always say to to my guys we are not police we are not we have to help the club as much as we can so we changed the financial fair play but it's a first we scrapped it because of the covid situation and now we are in kind of testing phase and we will see now how many clubs can can or that at least a small number of clubs will breach the rules if we will have a bigger problem we will sit again and see how we can adjust it but uh clubs I think want rules but they each have different ideas what kind of rules and we have to have one rules for everyone does Raising more Revenue from the Champions League allow you to to say resist offers from places like Saudi Arabia to host the Champions League yeah we we are not planning to host a Champions League out of Europe um and it's not about changing the system it's about the fact that champions league is a European competition that fans deserve to have matches in Europe um I don't think that um the big spending or over spending of of of Saudis uh influenced much I know that some clubs even benefited from it because they sold players for a lot of money and they anyway they wanted to sell them um so I think that the the ecosystem is is very strong because when Cristiano Ronaldo went to Saudi Arabia there was perhaps a fear of an exodus of players to Saudi Arabia and while there's a lot of spending last year from Saudi clubs that's not happened in this transfer window yeah it's we saw that that they're spending much yes I think they um understand that uh overspending doesn't doesn't help by itself that football needs time uh I I said many times that that happened in China years ago and nothing changed to better there they even didn't qualify for the World Cup still as a country with with 1.5 billion people so um I think that we we also have good communication with Saudi Football Federation and I think they understood now that uh they have to invest into infrastructure into coaching because they have very young people who are super talented for sure and uh they have to develop their their own players if you buy players that are slowly finishing their career this doesn't help developing but that's not of course my problem but you can benefit from Saudi sponsorship for instance increas in the revenue in Europe yeah every sponsorship is welcome until we uh distribute all together 97% of all the money back to football and until we redistribute 93.5% of all the club revenues to the clubs for me I would be super happy if we get even more sponsors even bigger deals for broadcasting which which will not be easy but uh of course the cooperation with everyone is welcome and do you feel hopeful have you you you've gone through Wars the pandemic the Super League battles the financial challenges can you start now to to be hopeful for for where European football's heading yeah it it looks good now but uh you know you never know in this crazy world where we have wars every day we have a very tense situation we have um politics interfering into football quite a lot everywhere um we will but we are ready we are ready we are strong and U I am positive certainly in England that would be the Hope me even despite England reaching back to Batman's Euro final some people are still complaining I do you think there's too much anger and people need to be happier there's too much anger in the society you know England reached two finals of the Euros they were close to winning both I that should be a success sucess that should be a huge success I understand the disappointment because for a country like England or France or Spain uh it's it's always uh only the winning of the competition is is important but still you if I speak about English national team you have a fantastic players you have a chance to win it in 28 and might even be sweeter to win at home