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The Telegraph

Exclusive: This is the future of football – by European game’s most powerful man

It was when Aleksander Ceferin returned to his native Slovenia having seen off the plan for a European Super League that Uefa’s President was reminded just how seismic a moment it had been for the game – and the widespread opposition to it from across the continent. The position of Ceferin – a 53-year-old Slovenian lawyer who took over at Uefa in 2016 when he succeeded Michel Platini – appears to have been strengthened by the ESL crisis. Certainly, to his credit, he quickly plugged into public sentiment. “When I came back to Slovenia an old lady with a stick stopped me on the street and said ‘thank you for fighting those bastards’. And she doesn’t watch football. It is a societal thing,” he said in an exclusive, wide-ranging interview with Telegraph Sport. “A friend of mine in Switzerland, his son came home from school and said ‘Daddy, are we for Super League or against Super League?’ and his father says ‘we are against the Super League’. And his son, nine years old, said ‘thank God. Everybody in school is against the Super League’.” Ceferin feels that the aborted proposal by a group of 12 clubs, including the Premier League ‘Big Six’, will be to football’s benefit. Not the idea, of course, but the fact that it placed the elite’s agenda firmly in the open. “In a way it is very good that this happened because it was always in the air – big clubs against the rest,” Ceferin said. “It was a question: can I come to your house and say ‘how much is it worth?’ and you say ‘£500,000’ and I say ‘I’ll give you £1million, now leave’. But it’s ‘no, no, this is my house. “This was big and the threat has now gone. And from the other point of view it is clear how much football means to Europe. “I think that the three clubs [Real Madrid, Barcelona and Juventus] who still think we have a Super League have helped us in a way because now it’s much easier to speak about solidarity and everything else because we can say to them ‘just go to your Super League if you don’t like it’. People were saying ‘American owners’ [of three Premier League clubs are to blame] but don’t forget that the only three who think the earth is flat are an Italian and two Spanish. “Before, for many years, it was hard because there was always some kind of threat and now it’s clear that whoever has any common sense would never try this again. It was tough, it was stressful, for 48 hours, but it is good that it happened.” Villarreal’s victory over Manchester United in the Europa League final is, Ceferin said, a prime example of why it is important to “keep the dream alive and even bigger than before” that any club can win a trophy. “Villarreal from a city of 50,000 people won the Europa League,” he said. “They won it on the pitch. It’s a clear sign.” So, where does the European, domestic and international game go from here? This is the future of football, according to the man with the most power in the sport in Europe: The Super League Ceferin said the European Union will look at introducing laws to “protect the sports model of promotion and relegation” and kill off any future attempts by clubs to launch a breakaway Super League. Real Madrid, Barcelona and Juventus are ploughing ahead with legal action against Uefa and also against the nine clubs (the six English clubs, the two Milan clubs and Atletico Madrid) who dropped out of the ESL plans. At the same time the three ‘rebels’ are applying to be in next season’s Champions League competition. “Even the most clueless people in the world understand that it [the ESL] is over,” Ceferin said. He revealed that Uefa “will speak with the European Union” in support of a proposal from the French president Emmanuel Macron to outlaw any attempt to change the “model… which is promotion, relegation. You have national leagues, you have European competitions and you have to qualify. It’s the essence of football”. France assumes the EU council presidency in 2022. Ceferin said he was also pleased that the UK government was planning similar legislation. “I am glad that the British government is thinking of some laws to protect the future to prevent the self-proclaimed Super League happening,” he said. English clubs Ceferin said that he has received a personal assurance and apology from Manchester United’s co-chairman Joel Glazer that the club will “never again” try to join such a venture. In fact Ceferin claimed that he did not think any English clubs would ever be involved in breakaway plans and said: “Without English clubs it’s hard to say it’s a serious competition. I spoke with Joel Glazer and he was honest when he said ‘look we made a mistake. We know we have to suffer sanctions and we will never do it again’. I believe him.” Ceferin was in Gdansk last week and met with United’s executive vice-chairman Ed Woodward, who has resigned in the wake of the ESL debacle, and who he labelled a “snake” for apparently lying to him about his club’s involvement. Woodward has since privately suggested that he, too, was caught out by the extent of the ESL plan. “He said he didn’t know that it was happening,” Ceferin concurred. “But, I don’t know. I don’t want to accuse him or not. I have not said anything about him to anyone else. I just said he called me and said the reforms [of the Champions League] are good. Maybe he was honest back then, I don’t know. But he [later] wanted to explain that he didn’t know it [the ESL] was ever happening. That’s as much as I know.” It was, of course, two would-be Super League clubs in Chelsea and Manchester City who met in the Champions League Final and this interview takes place hours before that game kicked off in Porto on Saturday evening. “I am happy that they are now on our side, they are members of Uefa. I don’t know why we should now haunt them for the rest of their lives,” Ceferin said. “For me, for the nine, the story is over and I treat them exactly the same as all the others.”