The Champions League is a rich man’s club, complain football teams from nine south and east European countries. They are bent on setting up an alternative dubbed the “Eastern League”. The revolt is led by Dinamo Bucharest and Greece’s Olympiakos Pireu and has been joined by 14 other clubs: Steaua and Rapid from Romania, The Turkish Galatasaray Istanbul and Besiktas PAOK Salonic of Greece, the Serbian Steaua and Partizan Belgrade, Hajduk Split from Croatia, the Cyrpiot Apoel Nicosia, Maribor from Slovenia, the Bulgarian teams TSKA Sofia and Levski Sofia and the Ukrainian contributions of Shakhtor Donestk and Dinamo Kiev.
It is partly about pride and partly about money.
In the past decade eastern footballers, trounced by well-heeled competitors from the West, consistently failed to qualify to participate in the Union of European Football Associations Cup and the Champions League games. This translates into a loss of up to a million dollars per team per year as they miss out on lucrative advertising and broadcasting deals when they are matched against giants from Spain, Germany, Italy, or even England.
The Eastern League is not a done...