‘We cannot play one more match,’ UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin says, ahead of expanded football calendar
The men’s football calendar is full and “we cannot play one more match”, UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin has told Sky News.
Amid concerns about workload for players, and fears of burnout, the boss of European football said expanding the Champions League was essential to help clubs in financial difficulties as costs escalate and to spread more cash across the continent.
Aleksander Ceferin speaking to Sky News’ Rob Harris
In a rare interview, Mr Ceferin also said:
• Financial regulations could be changed again if clubs are finding it hard to comply
• There are no longer plans to stage the Champions League final outside of Europe
• UEFA would welcome Saudi sponsorship
• Politicians should stop interfering in football
• England fans should stop being angry after losing back-to-back men’s European Championship finals.
Mr Ceferin has led UEFA for eight years – fending off the biggest threat to his organisation when the men’s Super League breakaway was repelled in 2021.
But elite clubs have helped to shape a radical transformation of the Champions League with more teams, additional games, and a more complex format.
Players’ unions have warned that their members are at “breaking point” as competitions grow – an issue acknowledged by the UEFA leader.
‘Players don’t want to play more matches’
Mr Ceferin told Sky News: “There are too many matches, probably today, already.
“The thing is that from one point of view, we have clubs saying we cannot afford paying the players and coaches anymore. They are in financial difficulties.
“From the other point of view, players, of course, don’t want to play more matches, but I think with these interesting matches, this will be a benefit for everyone.”
Mr Ceferin told Sky News he would welcome Saudi sponsorship
Especially when the Champions League prize fund is soaring by almost 25% to €2.5bn (£2.1bn) – a welcome boost, according to Mr Ceferin, even for clubs in the wealthy Premier League.
“Practically all the clubs because of different reasons have some financial problems,” Mr Ceferin said.
“The calendar is full and it’s so full that nothing can change anymore,” Mr Ceferin said, not wanting to discuss the Club World Cup.
“I think we cannot play one more match, but for the rest, I think that everybody wants to win the European competitions.”
Europe will remain the place where Champions League finals are staged.
In his first interview after being elected in 2016, Mr Ceferin told me he was open to moving them abroad, but that is now no longer the case.
“We are not planning to host a Champions League out of Europe,” he said. “And it’s not about changing the system. It’s about the fact that the Champions League is a European competition, that fans deserve to have matches in Europe.”
Newcastle fans celebrate the club’s Saudi takeover in 2021. Pic: Reuters
Saudi influence
There was a fear a year ago that Saudi Arabia could attempt to usurp European football but the spending spree has not been repeated by their clubs in this summer transfer window.
“I don’t think that the big spending or overspending of Saudi influenced much,” Mr Ceferin said.
“I know that some clubs even benefited from it because they sold players for a lot of money and anyway they wanted to sell them.
“I think [Saudi Arabia] understand now that they have to invest into infrastructure, into coaching, because they have very young people who are super talented for sure, and they have to develop their own players.
“If you buy players that are slowly finishing their career, this doesn’t help developing. But of course that’s not my problem.”
The Saudis are spending lavishly on sponsorship in football which UEFA would embrace.
“Every sponsorship is welcome,” Mr Ceferin said. “We distribute altogether 97% of all the money back to football and we redistribute 93.5% of all the club revenues to the clubs.
“For me, I would be super happy if we get even more sponsors, even bigger deals for broadcasting which will not be easy, but of course the co-operation with everyone is welcome.”
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Politics and football
A concern is meddling by politicians – a notable comment at a time as Sir Keir Starmer’s new administration plans legislation for the introduction of a regulator for English football, reviving Conservative plans.
Speaking generally ahead of the new European season, Mr Ceferin said: “In this crazy world where we have wars every day, we have a very tense situation.
“We have politics interfering into football quite a lot everywhere. But we are ready. We are ready. We are strong and I am positive.”
‘Too much anger’
And he has a message for England fans to be positive rather than complaining about the men’s team not winning a trophy since 1966 and losing the Euros finals in 2021 and again this July.
The next men’s Euros is being staged in Britain and Ireland with the final at Wembley in 2028.
“There’s too much anger in the society,” he said. “England reached the finals of the Euros. They were close to winning both.
“I thought that should be a success. That should be a huge success. I understand the disappointment because for a country like England or France or Spain, it’s always only the winning of the competition that is important.
“But still if I speak about the English national team, you have fantastic players. You have a chance to win it in 2028. It might even be sweeter to win at home – going home at home.”
The UK-US trade deal has been signed and is “done”, US President Donald Trump has said as he met Sir Keir Starmer at the G7 summit.
The US president told reporters in Canada: “We signed it, and it’s done. It’s a fair deal for both. It’ll produce a lot of jobs, a lot of income.”
Sir Keir said the document “implements” the deal to cut tariffs on cars and aerospace, describing it as a “really important agreement”.
“So this is a very good day for both of our countries – a real sign of strength,” the prime minister added.
Mr Trump added that the UK was “very well protected” against any future tariffs, saying: “You know why? Because I like them”.
However, he did not say whether levies on British steel exports to the US would be set to 0%, saying “we’re gonna let you have that information in a little while”.
Mr Trump also praised Sir Keir as a “great” prime minister, adding: “We’ve been talking about this deal for six years, and he’s done what they haven’t been able to do.”
He added: “We’re very longtime partners and allies and friends and we’ve become friends in a short period of time.
“He’s slightly more liberal than me to put it mildly… but we get along.”
Sir Keir added that “we make it work”.
As the pair exited a mountain lodge in the Canadian Rockies where the summit is being held, Mr Trump held up a physical copy of the trade agreement to show reporters.
Several leaves of paper fell from the binding, and Sir Keir quickly stooped to pick them up, saying: “A very important document.”
Sir Keir Starmer picks up paper from the UK-US trade deal after Donald Trump dropped it at the G7 summit. Pic: Reuters
The US president also appeared to mistakenly refer to a “trade agreement with the European Union” at one point as he stood alongside the British prime minister.
Mr Trump announced his “Liberation Day” tariffs on countries in April. At the time, he announced 10% “reciprocal” rates on all UK exports – as well as separately announced 25% levies on cars and steel.
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In a joint televised phone call in May, Sir Keir and Mr Trump announced the UK and US had agreed on a trade deal – but added the details were being finalised.
Ahead of the G7 summit, the prime minister said he would meet Mr Trump for “one-on-one” talks, and added the agreement “really matters for the vital sectors that are safeguarded under our deal, and we’ve got to implement that”.
Whitehall officials tried to convince Michael Gove to go to court to cover up the grooming scandal in 2011, Sky News can reveal.
Dominic Cummings, who was working for Lord Gove at the time, has told Sky News that officials in the Department for Education (DfE) wanted to help efforts by Rotherham Council to stop a national newspaper from exposing the scandal.
In an interview with Sky News, Mr Cummings said that officials wanted a “total cover-up”.
Politics latest: Grooming gangs findings unveiled
The revelation shines a light on the institutional reluctance of some key officials in central government to publicly highlight the grooming gang scandal.
In 2011, Rotherham Council approached the Department for Education asking for help following inquiries by The Times. The paper’s then chief reporter, the late Andrew Norfolk, was asking about sexual abuse and trafficking of children in Rotherham.
The council went to Lord Gove’s Department for Education for help. Officials considered the request and then recommended to Lord Gove’s office that the minister back a judicial review which might, if successful, stop The Times publishing the story.
Lord Gove rejected the request on the advice of Mr Cummings. Sources have independently confirmed Mr Cummings’ account.
Education Secretary Michael Gove in 2011. Pic: PA
Mr Cummings told Sky News: “Officials came to me in the Department of Education and said: ‘There’s this Times journalist who wants to write the story about these gangs. The local authority wants to judicially review it and stop The Times publishing the story’.
“So I went to Michael Gove and said: ‘This council is trying to actually stop this and they’re going to use judicial review. You should tell the council that far from siding with the council to stop The Times you will write to the judge and hand over a whole bunch of documents and actually blow up the council’s JR (judicial review).’
“Some officials wanted a total cover-up and were on the side of the council…
“They wanted to help the local council do the cover-up and stop The Times’ reporting, but other officials, including in the DfE private office, said this is completely outrageous and we should blow it up. Gove did, the judicial review got blown up, Norfolk stories ran.”
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Grooming gangs victim speaks out
The judicial review wanted by officials would have asked a judge to decide about the lawfulness of The Times’ publication plans and the consequences that would flow from this information entering the public domain.
A second source told Sky News that the advice from officials was to side with Rotherham Council and its attempts to stop publication of details it did not want in the public domain.
One of the motivations cited for stopping publication would be to prevent the identities of abused children entering the public domain.
There was also a fear that publication could set back the existing attempts to halt the scandal, although incidents of abuse continued for many years after these cases.
Sources suggested that there is also a natural risk aversion amongst officials to publicity of this sort.
Read more on grooming gangs:
What we do and don’t know from the data
A timeline of the scandal
Mr Cummings, who ran the Vote Leave Brexit campaign and was Boris Johnson’s right-hand man in Downing Street, has long pushed for a national inquiry into grooming gangs to expose failures at the heart of government.
He said the inquiry, announced today, “will be a total s**tshow for Whitehall because it will reveal how much Whitehall worked to try and cover up the whole thing.”
He also described Mr Johnson, with whom he has a long-standing animus, as a “moron’ for saying that money spent on inquiries into historic child sexual abuse had been “spaffed up the wall”.
Asked by Sky News political correspondent Liz Bates why he had not pushed for a public inquiry himself when he worked in Number 10 in 2019-20, Mr Cummings said Brexit and then COVID had taken precedence.
“There are a million things that I wanted to do but in 2019 we were dealing with the constitutional crisis,” he said.
The Department for Education and Rotherham Council have been approached for comment.
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