Arsenal have been one of the arch beneficiaries of football’s financial revolution during the last 30 years. Now, as that revolution lurches towards its inevitable next phase in the shape of a vast Uefa overhaul of its competitions, a club that has been at the vanguard of the corporatisation of football in Europe faces being left behind.
From 2024, it is increasingly likely that concessions will be made to the demands by Europe’s top clubs for a greater stake in the Champions League machine. A central tenet of the new creed is that past performance in Europe, determined by Uefa’s coefficient rankings, will play a role in the allocation of places each season. For years, Arsenal enjoyed elite membership of this stately clan. Now, they risk becoming buried by a landslip they helped to start.
Four seasons in the Europa League have radically altered the club’s surroundings, and at the worst possible moment. Arsenal are currently 11th in Uefa’s coefficient rankings, a five-year aggregate of European results, weighted in favour of the Champions League. But the future casts a shadow over the present.
Their elimination by Olympiacos in last season’s Europa League round of 16 meant that only one team in Uefa’s top 25 earned fewer coefficient points in 2019/20 than Arsenal. With changes to European qualification on the horizon, that kind of slide is not sustainable.
The proposals threaten to create a closed Champions League shop, the kind that proponents of a more equitable distribution of European places have loudly opposed. The changes wouldn’t, in themselves, hurt Arsenal. But come 2024, the top 10-15 places are likely to become ring-fenced, creating an uncertain future for those left on the outside.
Ahead of Thursday’s last-32 second-leg meeting with Benfica in Athens, Mikel Arteta acknowledged that the Europa League, for years Arsenal’s main hope of returning to the elite, is changing. The club have been frustrated in their efforts to win this competition in the past by teams, in Chelsea and Atletico Madrid, with Champions League squads.
Thursday’s opponents themselves have played in the group stages of Europe’s top competition in each of the last 11 seasons, and there are half-a-dozen more teams that could realistically stop Arsenal from reaching May’s final. The half-open ‘backdoor’ into the Champions League looks increasingly like a bolted gate with razor-wire trim.
“[This game] is huge because the club has to be represented in Europe, ideally in the Champions League,” said Arteta. “The competition in the Premier League now is so big, that there are a few teams that took this for granted for many, many years. It’s not the case anymore.
“So now the Europa League becomes a huge competition. You see how the competition has evolved in the last four or five years and the teams that are involved, you could say it’s like another Champions League.
“[Benfica] are a really tough opponent. They’re a Champions League team, they’ve been playing these types of games for many years. Their manager has huge experience.”
Next season, Uefa will introduce the inaugural Conference League, a third tier of European competition designed to offer more competition to club’s from Europe’s smaller nations. It’s also where the last European qualifier from the Premier League will, surely unwillingly, land. If Arsenal find themselves slipping in through the door to Europe just as it slams behind them, a tour of Eastern Europe’s developing football countries, without the carrot of a Champions League place waiting at the end, could be their reward next season.
Arteta claimed not to be concerned by the prospect of a season on European football’s unfashionable outskirts. Yet even notwithstanding the pay-cut it would entail for the club, the Conference League would represent an embarrassing backwards step in Arsenal’s rapidly diminishing European profile.
“I’m worried because there’s still a lot of work to do to get close to those positions,” said Arteta. “We need to be much more consistent [in the Premier League]. I’m worried about tomorrow first, and then we go to Leicester and try to win, and see how we can finish the season.”
A win in Athens could be the first step in ensuring this vision of a dystopian future goes away. Arsenal’s credibility at the vanguard of the revolution may depend on it.
Follow i sport on Facebook for more Premier League news, interviews and features
More on the Premier League
- Sam Johnstone tells Sam Cunningham why he is finally ready to become a Premier League star
- The making of Timo Werner: How his father’s motivation and ‘scary’ power meant Chelsea star was always destined for the top
- Eric Dier reveals why he stormed into the stands to confront an abusive Spurs fan
- Daniel Storey: How to lose supporters and alienate Messi, by FC Barcelona
- An apology to Man Utd’s Jesse Lingard
from Football – inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/3uvjDU9
Post a Comment