England plays delay game over centralised media rights, insists UEFA

Scott Parker_playing_for_England

By Andrew Warshaw at Soccerex in Manchester

March 28 – England is the only country among UEFA’s 53 members to be dragging its feet over thrashing out final details covering centralised media rights for national matches, according to the organisation’s general secretary, Gianni Infantino.

Infantino (pictured) said Europe’s governing body had still not completed talks with the English Football Association over selling rights on a pan-European basis from 2014 after promising higher revenues to all its members.

“The sticking points are minor rights details, radio rights and so on, and it is a matter of sitting around the table and discussing that,” Infantino told the Soccerex conference here.

“We have reached agreements with 52 out of the 53 countries so there is no reason why we should not reach it with England – we still have a couple of days and there are just a couple of minor points [to agree].

“It will have a seismic effect on the football landscape across Europe.”

Gianni Infantino_21-03-121Infantino (pictured) added: “This is about the promotion of national-team football and giving more financial stability to national associations.

“We have seen that national-team football, especially qualifying matches, is being squeezed by the Champions League and national competitions.

“You only have to look at the European club competitions to see the benefits of a competition being centrally managed.”

He continued: “What has happened in the past is that the national associations agree on when they should play each other, kick-off times, home and away, and so on; this will now be centrally managed by UEFA.

“Also, our media partners won’t have to run after each association and can go to a single point of sale.

“That’s why, following discussions with all the national associations to centralise the qualifying matches of the World Cup and European Championship, we’ll start in 2014 with the European Championship.”

Infantino insisted that national-team football “still draws the highest TV audience” but stressed that “it needs a boost – which is why we are launching this project. We have some excellent agreements now with the clubs and the key has been to find the right balance between national-team football and club football.”

FA officials played down the suggestion that they had not endorsed the new agreement, insisting they had signed up to the main deal last year and that only piecemeal nuances remained – all of which are expected to be ironed out over the next 48 hours.

Meanwhile, Infantino admitted that UEFA is anxious about finding a credible format for the expanded 2016 European Championship finals.

“It is 24 teams and that is a problem,” Infantino told reporters.

“It is not an ideal finals tournament because you will have to have a few of the third ones that qualify [for the knockout round] as well.”

West Germany and Austria were accused of colluding in the Germans’ 1-0 victory that allowed both to qualify from their group in the 1982 World Cup finals at the expense of Algeria.

Infantino admitted he was concerned about a similar scenario: “The question is: how do you make it in a way that results cannot be organised?

“You don’t know in advance what you need to be the best.”

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