Premier League could lose fourth automatic Champions League place

The Premier League faces losing one of its automatic Champions League spots under proposals being floated by the European Leagues.

Clubs in La Liga, Serie A and the Bundesliga would also be affected by plans to revert to three guaranteed places, with a fourth club having to go through qualifying, which will be discussed at a European Leagues meeting in London next week.

“I think some of the big leagues would be fine if they are all treated in the same way,” said Lars-Christer Olsson, the organisation’s president. “If you are giving four positions to the Premier League and taking one away from the Bundesliga then you have a problem. The big leagues are prepared to participate in this discussion for something new if they are treated the same.”

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The European Leagues also want to scrap historical coefficient payments, a system by which clubs in the Champions League get extra money based on past successes. This season Chelsea will get £27.9m and Spurs £17m in such payments but Olsson believes those revenues should be redistributed outside the participating clubs to improve competitive balance.

“Absolutely it should be replaced,” said Olsson, who confirmed the proposals could come into effect in 2021. “We are saying we should look into the financial distribution as a whole and our message is that the solidarity has to increase.”

Olsson also confirmed that the European Leagues was still solidly against plans by the European Club Association for an expanded and more lucrative Champions League.

However the chairman of the ECA and Juventus, Andrea Agnelli, a driving force behind the project that would lead to a top division of 32 clubs with four groups of eight teams playing matches, said that stonewalling was not an option.

“Hearing ‘no, no, no’ as an answer, which we have heard from the leagues in the past couple of months, is not really healthy,” said Agnelli. “Whatever changes are brought won’t bring much change for Real Madrid, Paris St-Germain. However you play with it, they will qualify.

“What’s important is creating a system where clubs can grow within a system and not just be relegated.”

Agnelli also denied that an expanded league would be a closed shop or that he wanted to kill domestic football. “We want to see more European matches with higher sporting quality,” he said. “Much has been mentioned about wanting to kill domestic leagues: no. What is important is that this is never going to be a closed league because we, the leaders in Europe, do recognise the value of keeping the open system.”

Agnelli also warned that football’s traditional powerbrokers do not fully comprehend the threat faced from esports. “We have to look at the behaviour of generation Z,” he said. “We should seriously start to think that the competitors of the game today are not other sports, clubs next door or in the next countries but League of Legends, esports or Fortnite. Those are the ones who are going to be our competitors going forward.”