FootBiz newsletter #170: Are English clubs ruining the Conference League?

As Wednesday nights in east Germany go, this was a pretty good one for the 20,000+ south Londoners who had decamped to Leipzig for the Conference League final. 

Yes, FootBiz comes to you today from trains, planes and automobiles on the way back from watching Crystal Palace win UEFA’s newest competition, crowning a golden 12 months for a club who as recently as February were described by the BBC as being at “civil war”. 

Yet the nervy but merited victory that Palace enjoyed over a gutsy Rayo Vallecano side — allied with Aston Villa’s Europa League win last Wednesday — has unavoidably provoked some conversation around the Premier League’s overpowering performance in continental competitions. English clubs have now won 21 knockout ties in a row across the two tournaments that sit below the Champions League.

Broadly, the argument is that the Premier League’s absurd wealth (in both relative and absolute terms) is distorting these competitions. Of the five editions of the Conference League since its inception in 2021, three have been won by English clubs; West Ham, Chelsea and now Palace. 

All three of those teams find themselves among the 25 richest clubs in the world, per Deloitte’s Football Money List, with Palace (24/25 revenue: £195m) the relative paupers in 24th — above traditional heavyweights like Roma, Marseille and FC Porto — while West Ham were 20th on the most recent list and Chelsea broke the top 10. 

I guess a big part of this conversation is really about what the Conference League is actually for. And who it is for. 

Several of the key figures in its conception were in Leipzig this week, watching their baby stagger into its awkward toddler years. While it had been discussed as an idea as far back as 2014, it eventually came to life during the reign of Aleksander Ceferin who, as UEFA president, is blessed with enough political expediency to realise that handing more clubs a path to European competition (and, crucially, European competition revenues) would help secure him votes when it comes to re-election.

Adding another tournament to UEFA’s already overflowing portfolio also — if we are to describe it in soulless corporate speak — creates more live event and digital inventory for their commercial bods to sell. By having more clubs from more countries in their competitions, it also becomes a lot easier to sell broadcast rights in territories that previously had far less interest, thus raising revenues across the board. 

For context, its clubs only receive 7% of UEFA competition revenues while Champions League clubs rake in about 75%. Palace’s final win in Leipzig was worth €3m, taking their total prize money for the whole campaign to just over €20m. Kairat, the Champions League club that earned the least this season, made €21m from their winless run of eight games (D1 L7).

The key victories of this tournament’s early years have been in giving access to more leagues and more clubs. Liechtenstein, Gibraltar, North Macedonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Wales and the Faroe Islands have all had teams in the league phase of the competition, which for many of these nations was the first time they had enjoyed such representation in any continental competition.

That is undoubtedly valuable and probably the greatest feather in the tournament’s cap.

Another of the architects of the Conference League was Aki Riihilahti. The former Crystal Palace midfielder was wandering around Leipzig’s Marktplatz on Wednesday afternoon wearing his shirt from the 2001-02 season, complete with his name on the back should anyone not recognise him. The Finn was always one of the more cerebral footballers during his playing days and after retiring from playing shifted over to the executive realm, becoming CEO of his former club HJK Helsinki.

Riihilahti’s practical football knowledge and common sense met with a political nous to see him make friends quickly at UEFA, he was soon elevated to the competitions committee that would eventually create and launch the Conference League. 

By his own admission, the aim of the project was “to drive the agenda for more clubs in Europe. It’s been my focus since retiring.”

Which is all undoubtedly A Good Thing and has been achieved. But we also have to be realistic and say that these clubs are going to have a tough time winning the whole thing.

I’m not sure entirely why, but a parallel concept that comes to mind here is the content moderation philosophy used by Twitter before it descended into an AI slopfest under Elon Musk: “freedom of speech, not freedom of reach.”

The idea was that you can say what you want, but not everyone has to see it. And I guess the equivalent for the Conference League is that teams from a broader range of leagues absolutely should have the opportunity to play in it and compete, but it doesn’t entitle them to win the whole thing. The implicit suggestion in complaints about English clubs hoisting the five-year-old trophy is that clubs from other leagues should be winning it. Why can’t Roma or Olympiakos win the competition?

Well, they have.

And then you look at Roma, who are just a couple of places below Palace in the Deloitte Money League, though will surpass them given this year’s qualification for the Champions League, and you have to fairly ask if Roma winning the competition is any better than Palace doing so.

We do end up coming back to the purpose of the competition, though. One way of looking at it is that it succeeds on two fronts by granting more clubs the opportunity to compete on a continental scale, while also having clubs from the biggest leagues to help ensure eyeballs are on the competition. You’d be hard pushed to find someone who doesn’t think it is good to see clubs from Bosnia or Gibraltar getting an opportunity to play in this tournament but it doesn’t mean one of those clubs have to win it. At some point, you do need to reward the teams that are better at football. 

But what are potential solutions that keep the competition interesting and preserve its value? 

The one I like is the idea of bumping clubs out of the Conference League when their domestic league has earned one of the two extra Champions League spots reserved for performance.

From the very beginning, these European Performance Spots (to use their official name) felt like a pretty cynical ploy to squeeze more teams in from the biggest leagues, and so fairly predictably it has been English and Spanish clubs who have benefitted. This year once again it is the Premier League and La Liga earning extra berths, so fifth-placed Liverpool and Real Betis are both in. As you can imagine, UEFA’s commercial executives are delighted to have Liverpool handed a place, given they are one of the world’s most-watched teams with one of the most international fanbases.

Only a decade ago just four English clubs could play in the Champions League in any given season. Then it changed so that the Champions League winner wouldn’t bump out the fourth-placed team in case of not qualifying via their own league position. Then the Europa League winner gained automatic entry. Since EPS were introduced in 2024/25, the maximum amount of clubs from any one league to compete in the Champions League is now seven, which is admittedly absurd but could happen.

In the three years of EPS awards, English and Spanish clubs have benefitted in two.

But anyway, I digress from the proposal here.

The idea would be that if those leagues are going through a moment where UEFA’s own coefficient judges they are the two strongest, perhaps that extra Champions League place should come at the expense of its Conference League spot. Europa then bumps down etc, and so it means better European places for that league rather than just endlessly adding more. It also avoids the situation where basically half the Premier League clubs are also playing in European competitions (which greatly benefits the Premier League for a number of reasons, but not really everyone else). 

There are obviously stronger solutions too, such as taking out clubs from the top four leagues, but then what happens if you’re getting Feyenoord vs Olympiakos as the final every year? Or is that what it should be?

On the plane back from Leipzig, after witnessing a joyous occasion for a club that never would have had this opportunity otherwise, why would we want to re-legislate football to prevent Palace and their ilk from having their day in the sun? They face the same inequalities on the domestic front that these others are facing in Europe.

Who even gets to decide?

As usual, the answer to that question is: the people who are incentivised to make as much money from the competition as possible.

So we all know what’s going to happen, but at least we’ve put forward a potential solution.