By Andrew Warshaw, chief correspondent
May 23 – David Gill, who recently stepped down as Manchester United’s chief executive, looks certain to become English football’s most influential voice in Europe when he is elected to the executive committee of UEFA on Friday.
Gill, one of eight candidates vying for seven places – most of whom are applying for re-election – has been lobbying fiercely in recent months and looks poised to be voted in by UEFA’s 53 member nations at their annual Congress in London.
Crucially, Gill has the backing of UEFA president Michel Platini, so often accused of being anti-English because of the Premier League’s Big Brother status and limitless spending power. Gill, as it happens, has been a champion of UEFA’s financial fair play rules within the European Club Association and, if elected, would succeed former FA chairman Geoff Thompson, who steps down as UEFA vice-president after more than a decade at European football’s top table.
Apart from elections to the executive committee, Friday’s Congress – attended by most of world football’s powerbrokers including FIFA president Sepp Blatter – will rubber-stamp UEFA’s strict new anti-racism package for its competitions, involving both 10-match bans and stadium closures, and ask national federations to follow suit in their domestic leagues though that is somewhat wishful thinking given that the English FA, who pride themselves on fair play, only recently announced their own five-match ban regulation.
The most thorny issue on the agenda is Gibraltar’s application to become a full member, a topic that has enraged Spain but which is likely to be reluctantly approved following support from Court of Arbitration for Sport which has repeatedly upheld Gibraltar’s case, much to the irritation of UEFA’s top brass, many of whom are privately against the tiny British colony gaining the same rights as sovereign nations.
Also being presented on Friday is a move to allow the Europa League winners to qualify automatically for the following season’s Champions League from 2015. If the Europa League is won by an English club, they would not take the qualification place of a team finishing fourth in the Premier League – as happened to Tottenham Hotspur last season when Chelsea won the Champions League but finished sixth.
The principle was agreed by UEFA’s executive committee on Thursday and will be formally announced at Congress in a deliberate attempt to encourage clubs to take the competition, over-shadowed by the Champions League, more seriously. Despite the presence of many of Europe’s leading clubs who have missed out on the Champions League, the Europa League retains an aura of being a consolation prize.
When delegates come down to breakfast at the Grosvenor House hotel in London’s swish Park Lane, outside they will be confronted by a protest against the decision to hand this summer’s European under-21 finals to Israel because of its discrimination towards Palestinian players.
Filmmaker Ken Loach is among supporters of the campaign organised by Red Card Israeli Racism who will hand in a petition. Asked about the issue at a pre-Congress press conference, UEFA general secretary Gianni Infantino predictably replied that Israel were due the same rights as any other member association.
“The Israel FA is a UEFA member association like 52 others with the same rights and obligations and duties and possibilities,” he said. “It went through a bidding process and was awarded the organisation of the under-21 finals. You cannot pretend that football should solve issues which are much bigger and are highly political. Football has to stay out of this.”
The anti-Israeli protest is not the only one confronting delegates. Once again, Qatar will find itself unwittingly in the spotlight when UEFA will be lobbied by trade unions as part of the campaign to secure better treatment for migrant workers employed in the construction of stadiums for the 2022 World Cup in the Gulf state.
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