Crystal Palace chairman Steve Parish blasts UEFA as ‘the greatest enemy to domestic leagues’

Crystal Palace chairman Steve Parish has described UEFA as ‘the greatest enemy to domestic leagues’ and accused president Aleksander Ceferin of ‘picking the pockets’ of non-elite clubs.

It came after Ceferin fired a salvo at Real Madrid, Barcelona and Juventus as they attempt to resurrect the idea of a breakaway European Super League.

Ceferin accused the ringleaders of ‘living in a parallel world’ and using the cover of the Russian invasion of Ukraine to relaunch a competition that collapsed last year.

Crystal Palace chairman Steve Parish has hit out at UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin

But Parish hit out at UEFA, Ceferin and the powerful European Club Association [ECA] while calling for Europe’s clubs to run the competitions and a regulator to keep UEFA in check.

He told the Financial Times Business of Football Summit in London: ‘I wish 10 per cent of the scrutiny that is shone on the Premier League and governance in the UK is shone on the governance at UEFA.

‘To hear this morning Ceferin paint UEFA as the saviour of football and the supporter of the fans was quite incredible.

Aleksander Ceferin says clubs planning a new European Super League ‘live in a parallel world’

‘If you ask pretty much every football club outside of the gilded 20 that run the ECA, most people would tell you UEFA are the greatest enemy to domestic leagues that exists.

‘You’ve got a completely opaque ExCo [executive committee], people from individual clubs with far too much say, far too much pressure.

‘You’ve got the ECA which is 20 clubs that decide everything and you’ve got a tournament in the new Champions League proposals that looks so much like the Super League you can’t tell the difference. In fact in some regards, they’re worse.

‘If there is one thing [Juventus chairman] Mr Agnelli, [Barcelona president] Mr Laporta and me can agree in, clubs should run tournaments and the governing body of the game should govern the game.

Barcelona and Real Madrid were amongst the founders of the controversial project last year

‘While we have this inter-locking where FIFA and UEFA, the people in charge, and there’s nobody over the top to govern and regulate it, then I think we’re in trouble.

‘We seem to be sleepwalking into it while Mr Ceferin picks all our pockets, frankly.’

At the same event earlier on Thursday, Ceferin took aim at Andrea Agnelli, who was sat on the front row as he addressed the hall virtually from Switzerland.

The UEFA president said: ‘I have to say that those speaking about the Super League are not speaking about football. I am sick and tired of this non-football project.

Juventus chief Andrea Agnelli was also a driving force behind the European Super League

‘First, they launched their nonsense of the idea in the middle of a pandemic. Now, we read articles that they are planning to launch another idea now in the middle of a war. They obviously live in a parallel world.’

But Parish countered by saying: ‘He uses the Super League as this nasty, terrible thing that he managed to stop when frankly he was part of making something happen with coefficients with 40 per cent of the money being decided on your last five years of history and already pulling the drawbridge up.

‘He talks about the tournament being extended from 32 to 36 teams. Is he including in that, the teams I traditionally saw in the Champions League?

‘He’s trying to give two more people places who will provide the most media revenue to him in any given year.’