No US or Saudi Arabia for Champions League final, EU warns

BRUSSELS — EU Sport Commissioner Glenn Micallef said there’s no way a flagship European event like football’s Champions League final should ever be held outside the continent.

There have been persistent suggestions for years that the annual iconic game — which this year takes place on Saturday in Munich between Inter Milan and Paris Saint-Germain — could one day head to the U.S., where football is a growing market, or big-spending Saudi Arabia.

“These are European competitions and European competitions should be played in Europe, I think that’s quite clear. It’s the European Cup, come on,” Micallef said.

“You can say I’m emotional on this, but if you have a favorite local club and if that club manages to get to the final of a trophy, be it the national cup or another final, why shouldn’t you be able to afford to watch your team,” he added. “These are the people who have made these clubs so successful. There is a relationship between a club, a community and its fans.”

During an expansive interview at his office in the European Commission’s headquarters, the Maltese commissioner also weighed in on several politically controversial sports subjects, from Russian athletes at the Olympics to dynamic ticket pricing and trickle-down funding for small football clubs.

The disputed issue of whether Russian athletes should have any place in world sports amid the Kremlin’s devastating war in Ukraine has roiled governing bodies for years.

Shortly after her election in March as the new International Olympic Committee president, the top job in world sport, Zimbabwe’s Kirsty Coventry suggested there was a path back to international competitions for Russian athletes — who have largely been banned since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Micallef said he’d continue to insist that “there should be no space in sports for countries that are responsible for wars of aggression and for illegal and unjust wars, including Russia.”

“Although I understand that the sports movement is autonomous and they can take their decisions on this through their governance systems, we have a duty to speak up and we have politically a role — as a Union as well — to send a signal that we will be against the inclusion of those who are responsible for wars of aggression in big sporting events,” Micallef said.

“These are platforms through which we send messages of peace, human rights, solidarity and democracy,” he added.

As the world’s most popular sport, football regularly throws up politically convulsive issues, and those are set to intensify ahead of next year’s men’s World Cup, partly hosted in Donald Trump’s backyard.

Media reports last week suggested that world football governing body FIFA was mulling dynamic ticket pricing — a system where the cost of tickets can surge in response to high demand — for the 2026 World Cup in the U.S., Canada and Mexico.

Micallef said he was yet to have a formal meeting with FIFA in his role as sports commissioner, but the broader issue of dynamic pricing — and its impact on supporters — concerned him.

“I’ve been clear in my messages on the accessibility of sports for fans and people who follow sport,” he said. “We have had issues surrounding this theme also in Europe, and I’ve said this publicly many times, these are things that are concerns to me and which I hope we can also delve into when we do the strategy on how we strengthen the European sports model.”

That European sports model preaches open competitions, pyramidal structures featuring promotion and relegation, the independence of sports governing bodies, and financial solidarity from top to bottom.

An upstart association for non-elite professional football clubs in Europe — the Union of European Clubs (UEC) — is currently fighting for a greater share of solidarity revenue from continental governing body UEFA’s coffers.

Micallef said he was “intrigued” by a recent UEC proposal that asks UEFA to allocate at least 5 percent of its annual club competition revenues to a new mechanism that would benefit smaller clubs that develop the players who go on to play for bigger teams in UEFA tournaments.

While Micallef again stressed the autonomy of sports organizations and credited UEFA’s “robust and solid” system of solidarity payments down the football pyramid, he said there should be a “transparent discussion on systems that can strengthen this solidarity even further.”

“I was precisely intrigued for this reason because I think they [the UEC] have come up with a proposal that could be a basis for a good reflection on how solidarity — that already exists — could be strengthened even further,” he added.