European soccer's governing body UEFA is meeting in Budapest next week to discuss a number of topics surrounding football in Europe.
The agenda has been restricted to four items this year that will likely be covered during the morning session, writes sport website SportSkeeda.
What’s more, discussions concerning leadership are expected to be broached at some point during UEFA’s meeting on Tuesday, following the departure of Michel Platini last year.
A year ago, Platini had just been re-elected to a new four-year term as UEFA chief and was basking in the financial success of UEFA's showcase Champions League competition.
However, within weeks, global soccer body FIFA was engulfed by corruption scandals and its ethics committee banned Platini from football for eight years, later reduced to six on appeal, over a 2 million Swiss franc ($2.02 million) payment he received from FIFA for work done for its disgraced ex-president Sepp Blatter a decade earlier.
On April 6th, Swiss police raided UEFA lakeside headquarters seeking information about a contract signed by former UEFA secretary general Gianni Infantino, who replaced Blatter. UEFA said the issue concerned Champions League TV rights it sold to an Ecuadorean broadcaster via an intermediary. It denied wrongdoing by either itself or Infantino.
In light of Platini's absence and Infantino's departure, Europe's big football clubs have been pushing behind-the-scenes for radical changes, which could include automatic places for some of them in the Champions League.
Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, head of the powerful European Club Association (ECA) which represents more than 200 clubs, has already spoken of a European Super League that could be organized with or without UEFA.
UEFA will not replace Platini until his appeals process has been exhausted. He has a hearing at the Court of Arbitration for Sport on Friday but the decision could take weeks, and UEFA has no acting president in his place.
Infantino's ex-deputy Theodore Theodoridis has taken over as general secretary, but only on an interim basis. The format for the Champions League in 2018-2021 must be decided by the end of the year and Theodoridis has admitted that UEFA faces a "big challenge" in negotiations with clubs.
Yet, without a president or long-term general secretary, UEFA is unlikely to be able to tackle such major policy matters. The main agenda item in Budapest on Tuesday is whether to admit Kosovo as UEFA's 55th member, itself a thorny issue as it has been resisted by Serbia.
Theodoridis insisted in March that UEFA's executive committee is strong enough to administer European football without a president. Critics say leading UEFA is not so straightforward and involves a delicate balancing act.
They say the UEFA president must placate the 54 national associations that elect him, which Platini did by expanding the European championship from 16 to 24 teams.
On the other hand, the president also has to appease the ECA whose member clubs make UEFA competitions so lucrative. UEFA has already seen what can happen when the clubs are not happy.
In the late 1990s, leading clubs including AC Milan and Manchester United held talks to build support for a breakaway league, and UEFA replied with a reformed Champions League to forestall the schism.
Platini, one of the finest players of his generation, used his charm and reputation to keep both sides happy, in part with decisions which helped increase the revenue of the bigger clubs. With UEFA now missing such a leader, that delicate balance is in danger of unravelling.
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