This new requirement, an important step in establishing the fundamental principle for European clubs to have a dedicated officer working with supporters and clubs on safety and security, was worked out by UEFA in close consultation with Supporters Direct (who assist fan groups in 17 European countries). Their press release explain further:

Supporter Liaison Officers at clubs already exist in a limited number of European countries and primarily help improve the dialogue between the fans and the clubs they support. Most importantly, SLOs must be credible with fans, and therefore should have experience with and contacts to the networks in the fanbase at the club.

They inform the fans about relevant decisions made by the club management board and, in the other direction, communicate the needs of the fans to the board, as well as building relationships – not just with various fan groups and initiatives, but with the police and security officers, They will also engage with fan liaison officers of other clubs before matches to ensure that the fans behave in accordance with security guidelines.

To implement the new requirements, a network of SLO project contacts from each national governing body across Europe will be created and work together with the UEFA club licensing team and Supporters Direct to assist clubs and supporter groups improve communication in each of the 53 UEFA member associations. This year more than 600 clubs applied for a UEFA licence with many more applying for domestic licences based on the same or similar principles. Hence, the broad scope and significance of the SLO project.

This is a substantial step not just for the practical benefit of it that should be obvious enough, but by establishing the seriousness of the need for clubs to work with supporters in this way in UEFA’s regulations and setting a minimum basis for this relationship.

From the American side of the pond, this is something that US Soccer ought to consider including in the regulations it is drawing up for the professional clubs in its league, at least from Division II level up. Many MLS clubs, for example, do have a liaison for supporters who works in this manner, but too often it’s a secondary or tertiary role for that employee, who is often (unfortunately) actually a ticket sales executive, meaning their time, abilities and training is ill-suited to working proactively with supporters in areas like safety and security. In the Chicago Fire’s case, our supporters’ association is fortunate to work directly with an extremely competent liaison well-suited to the role, but on a nationwide level, that isn’t always the case. Regulations like these would help ensure clubs take the employment of such a liaison with the appropriate training seriously at all times.

You might also be surprised to learn the tournament dates back to 1948, and it is, as far as I can tell, the longest-running junior competition in world soccer (CONCACAF’s equivalent U-20 competition began play in 1962; the AFC U-19 tournament began in 1959; the South American Youth Championship was founded in 1954; the African Youth Championship began in 1979, and Oceania’s OFC equivalent started in 1974).

Indeed, it even pre-dates the existence of UEFA (Europe’s governing body was created in 1954) and was originally organised by FIFA, hence its original name, the FIFA junior tournament. That first tournament in 1948 took place in London, with 8 teams taking place. The final was held at White Hart Lane, England defeating the Netherlands 3-2. Indeed, England have been extraordinarily successful in the tournament, perhaps suggesting junior performance is no guarantee of senior success, holding the record with 9 wins (though none since the class of 1993, a team that included Scholes, Gary Neville and Sol Campbell; suggesting in reverse that a lack of junior success is now a predictor of future failure).

England did not defend their title successfully the next year, though: they “lost” to Northern Ireland in the first round following a 3-3 draw in an era that pre-dated penalty kicks following a coin toss. France won the competition held in the Netherlands, beating the Dutch 4-1 at the final in Rotterdam.

England soon embarked on a remarkable run of success at youth level, winning the tournament five times in the course of a decade from 1963 to 1973.  But few household names emerged from these teams, Trevor Francis (1973) and Harry Redknapp (1964) rare exceptions. England’s 1975 champion team, though, was packed with talent that would light up English football in the 1980s: the final XI that defeated Finland in the final that year contained Ray Wilkins, Brian Robson, Glenn Hoddle and John Barnes.

Indeed, the champions over the next few years did predict senior success in the 1980s well: the Soviet Union won in 1976 and 1978, with the senior team then reaching the final of the 1988 European Championship; Belgium won at home in Brussels in 1977, and finished in fourth place at the 1986 World Cup; Yugoslavia were champions in 1979, and developed a fantastic team that reached the quarter-finals of the 1990 World Cup; England were winners again in 1980, and the senior side reached the semi-finals of the 1990 World Cup.

The next year, in 1981, UEFA made another change to the competition, making it a U-18 event and renaming it the European Under 18 Football Championship, because in 1978, UEFA had created the UEFA European Under 21 Football Championship, and wanted more variance in the age levels between its junior competitions.

Future success at senior level was again predicted that year with West Germany (1990 World Cup winners) triumphing, and the strong state health of Scottish youth development at that stage was indicated the next year with their victory at the final that year in Helsinki, with future Celtic and Scotland midfield stalwart Paul McStay starring.

UEFA tinkered further with the tournament from 1984 to 1994 as it was briefly made biennial before returning to its usual annual format in 1993. France were the most successful side in the 1990s, ahead of their 1998 World Cup win.

And UEFA made a further change in 2002 that brings us up-to-date in the tournament’s format, again making it a U-19 competition, perhaps because of the growing prominence of the FIFA U-20 World Cup, with the tournament serving as the qualifier for that global event.

Its first staging as a U-19 event again saw Spain win, eight years ahead of global glory, with Fernando Torres the top scorer with four goals, and one Andrés Iniesta their creative force in midfield.  As an aside, Dean Ashton scored three times in the competition: eight years later, one wonders if England’s World Cup fortunes might have been different had he been in South Africa as Rooney’s foil. That is the intrigue of these youth competitions: what injuries, what fortune, what acts of chance will determine these players’ futures, with the world at their feet at these times?

Italy won in 2003 at a tournament rather remarkably staged in Liechtenstein, Sampdoria’s Giampaolo Pazzini — who made his debut for Italy’s senior team last year — scoring in the final.

Perhaps the tournament is a predictor of forthcoming senior success: if you were investing in futures on football, you’d want to take a close look at this competition to see the future of senior national teams based on recent history. The most successful two teams in it in the past two decades have been Spain and France with five titles each: both, of course, have in the past 12 years held both the European Championship and World Cup aloft.

Interestingly, in that regard, neither has reached the final in the past two years: in 2008, Germany defeated Italy 3-1, and in 2009, Ukraine won the competition for the first time, defeating England in the final. Keep your eye on Dmytro Korkishko, then, folks:

A little buried under World Cup hype and Robbie Findley hysteria is the fact that UEFA will be selecting the host for Euro 2016 this Friday at its Executive Committee meeting in Nyon, choosing between Italy, France and Turkey.

We can rule out Italy from the three final bidders, with UEFA already having offered serious reservations about ticketing, transportation and stadia infrastructure plans in their bid. France might seem an obvious favourite with Michel Platini heading UEFA, but Platini cannot vote or take part in the final debate (and nor can his Turkish or Italian counterparts, of course).

Turkey would be a bold choice and would better match, in fact, Platini’s own efforts to  reach out more away from the traditional western European strongholds of UEFA.

And remember, from 2016, the European Championship will expand to a slightly absurd 24 teams, increasing the demands on the host considerably. This piece gives us a good overview of the financial states of each bid, and it’s perhaps surprising to learn that Turkey “only” needs to spend 920 million Euros to prepare for the finals, compared to 1.7 billion Euros for the French, who hosted a World Cup just twelve years ago.

Despite this, the general consensus appears to be that Turkey is the riskier choice, but with much greater upside for European football than choosing France to host their third UEFA championship. The biggest event Turkey has hosted is the 2005 UEFA Champions League final.

World Football Insider has a good overview of Turkey’s bid, concluding that:

Expansion of UEFA’s flagship tournament into a new territory and the chance to grow the game in Turkey makes this the most attractive bid. But it’s also the most risky, with seven stadiums planned and massive infrastructure projects to complete. Turkey would be up against the clock if it were awarded the championships. But the government’s guarantees to provide 100% of the estimated total investment are an important and persuasive element of the bid. However, the Ukraine factor may ultimately count against them. The 2012 co-host’s trouble-hit preparations have been a major headache for UEFA and the governing body might look for a safer option this time around.

Concerns over Turkey because of Ukraine’s rather unique problems are harsh, however.  Giving Euro 2016 to Turkey would be a major spur for the sport in that country. France has hosted two World Cups and two European championships already; little is to be gained for football’s development by going there again.

Big Story

Yesterday, we kicked off a weeklong series on the question of supporter involvement in club governance, looking particularly at the role of supporters’ trusts in England. The piece focused on the prospects for fan ownership, but the broader importance and benefit of supporter involvement in the running of football is increasingly being recognised across Europe.

Case in point: yesterday, UEFA (including president Michel Platini and general secretary Gianni Infantino) met with representatives from Supporters Direct and Football Supporters Europe in Nyon, Switzerland. UEFA’s website says the following were amongst the items discussed:

• matchday arrangements at UEFA club and national team competition matches
• the Fan Hosting Seminar held in Barcelona in February (Football, Host Cities and RESPECT)
• the new UEFA policy of hosting the UEFA Champions League final on a Saturday and providing a special allocation of tickets to parents and children
• increasing further the dialogue between UEFA and supporter representatives.

This sounds like simple stuff fans should be in the loop about in discussions by the authorities for everyone’s benefit, but this is something football’s authorities have long struggled to do. Whether because of fear, arrogance or apathy, supporters have typically been regarded as inessential to the process of dialogue and decision-making. This is curious, because without supporters, there would not be professional football. Of course, supporters themselves could only blame themselves for some decades for their own short-sightedness, but great steps have been taken in recent times on European-wide collaboration amongst fan groups.

In an important step recognising the mutual gain to be had from this dialogue, UEFA have officially recognised Football Supporters Europe as the representative European fans’ organisation. FSE’s held its first proper general meeting last year, and describes itself as “an independent, representative and democratically organised grass-roots network of football fans’ in Europe.” FSE says that:

We think that there are enough issues that need to be acted upon in modern football such as ticketing, fan culture, discrimination and policing in football, and football fans should finally speak up, loudly and clearly, and develop a powerful, united, influential and independent representative voice within the structures of the game!

We asked Dave Boyle of Supporters Direct about how the meeting with UEFA went. “UEFA are serious in their engagement with fans and lots of national associations could learn from them!”, he told us. “We don’t agree on everything, but like all good relationships, it isn’t dependent on complete agreement. As Johnny Rotten said, they mean it man!”

From a North American perspective, fans here ought to consider the similar benefits of a nationwide supporters’ network.  MLS’  “Supporters Summit” needs an upgrade in its substance, as Don Garber himself seemed to be looking towards in his address at MLS Cup last year. It seems to me there is an open door there from MLS for supporters to create this dialogue in this continent before anything like the problems we have seen in Europe over the decades become a detriment to the game’s growth here, one reason I’m backing the commitment of the nascent Show Racism the Red Card North America to celebrate and support the diversity of the sport.

Though someone else can deal with Uncle Jack Warner….

Quick Hits

• Are English standards in the Champions League dropping this year? “Europe Strikes Back”, Oliver Kay says in the Times.
• James Lawton keeps up the seemingly daily coverage of the Red Knights riding to Manchester United’s rescue, saying that “Sooner or later some of the less temperate critics of the Red Knights – who propose, among other things, to move Manchester United from under a mountain of debt – may have to get a bit more specific.”
• You know, it’s pretty damn cool that the Fire’s official blog has a piece by one of their 16-year old Academy prospects who travelled with the first team to Mexico in pre-season this week.

The Sweeper appears daily. For more rambling and links throughout the day every day, follow your editor Tom Dunmore @pitchinvasion on Twitter.

Big Story

UEFA held its Women’s National Team Coaches Conference last November (“the first of its kind”, UEFA says), and the extensive report on it in their “Technician” publication (PDF) makes for very interesting reading.

It’s notable that the report, whose focus is on the technical side of the game, opens up by touting impressive viewing figures for the 2009 UEFA Women’s European Championship: expanded to twelve teams, the report says it “attracted unprecedented TV audiences which highlighted a spectacular growth in the popularity of the women’s game.”

To prove the point, UEFA notes that “almost 40% of the viewing public” in the Netherlands watched their country’s semi-final game, with 1.5 million in the UK and 7 million in Germany tuning in to the final, won by latter for (and this fact probably isn’t so good for the women’s game) the fifth successive time.

The twelve team format was the subject of some debate at the conference; it prompted some teams to play for draws, but the chances of the format changing seem low:

As Giorgio Marchetti [UEFA's Competitions Director] pointed out, finals with 8 or 16 teams might be fairer in sporting terms but the former would be seen as a retrograde step and the second option, although it would provide greater incentives, might create a tournament which would be difficult to host and to finance.

Team shape and structure was discussed; the report emphasised the growing tactical innovation on view:

As Andy Roxburgh commented at the conference, “top teams again proved that shape mattered. A disciplined defensive structure and a framework for attacking fluidity and creativity was important.” As recently as the 2001 finals, the most frequent team shape was a classic 4-4-2. In Finland, however, the trend was towards a 4-2-3-1 with two screening midfielders operating in front of a zonal back four.

The pace of the game and the ability of teams to shift tactics during games was praised as an advance on previous tournaments. Germany’s winning coach Silvia Neid commented that “I would say that the difference in terms of coaching, positional play and tactics in comparison with the 1997 finals, for example, was simply incredible.”

Importantly, it was felt that even the eliminated teams showed quality, and none were embarrassed, this despite the tournament’s expansion. “What most struck me,” Norway’s coach Bjarne Berntsen said, “was that teams were so well organised and played at a higher tempo than in the past. I think we are seeing the results of girls starting to play their football at earlier ages and, in the case of the Nordic countries, the benefits of being able to train and play on artificial surfaces. It means that the level of skill is progressively increasing as the young girls come through.”

The goal average, at 3.00 per game, was down slightly from 2005, but still well up from 2001 and 1997.

The overall positive tone of the report hits an interesting snag with regard to the continued dominance of Germany. There’s no doubt the exceptional quality of the athletes Germany continue to produce sets a standard in European and even world football, and raises the level of the women’s game. At the same time, the gulf between that country and the rest of Europe was once again well-illustrated, including in the final, as they swatted away England’s cinderella dreams with relative ease.

England’s coach Hope Powell was honest and straightforward about the German team’s quality:

“The players on the German bench would be starters in other teams. Their other strengths are a clear playing style, strength, power and direct attacking. In the final, we tried to take the game to them and we managed to force them on to the back foot for certain periods. But they are always dangerous and one of their other strengths is the belief that they can always score goals.”

How can the level of the game be raised continent-wide to match the Germans? The conclusion to the report notes the need for better training of coaches up and down the game, as Silvia Neid put it: “We are at risk of letting enthusiastic young players work with coaches who haven’t really got enough tactical know-how.”

Others commented on the need for infrastructure investment, and for football’s authorities to take the women’s game more seriously. As Hope Powell summed up, “women’s football needs to continue to make efforts to attract investors and governments need to be persuaded to fully embrace the women’s game and not just make token gestures.”

Quick Hits

• The Premier League has decided to table discussion of a possible play-off for England’s fourth Champions League spot; the Daily Mail and ESPN Soccernet are both reporting “fixture congestion”, along with opposition from the biggest clubs, as the main factors in the decision by club chairmen.
• Paul Doyle looks at an odd afternoon in west London, as South Korea take on the Ivory Coast in the middle of a weekday afternoon, with a “a decidedly Spinal Tap quality to formalities.”
• It’s the end of an era at a ground in Scotland, as Hibernian’s East terrace is torn down.

The Sweeper appears daily. For more rambling and links throughout the day every day, follow your editor Tom Dunmore @pitchinvasion on Twitter.

Richard mentioned this here briefly last Sunday, but ahead of the Super Bowl this Sunday it’s worth pausing for thought to consider that the UEFA European Champions League final in 2009 was watched by more people than the Super Bowl for the first time in 2009; and its popularity is set to continue to rise much faster.

109 million watched Barcelona beat Manchester United last May; 106 million watched the Steelers beat the Cardinals last February.

A report from London-based Futures Sports and Entertainment emphasised both were doing well to grow in an era of media fragmentation:

“While the Super Bowl has secured free-to-air broadcasting deals in a number of important European markets such as the UK, France and Germany, it’s distribution and popularity in the key Asia-Pacific region lags far behind the UEFA Champions League,” said the report.

The report, in its seventh year, is based on official data from national bodies and measures ‘at-home viewing’.

Alavay said the continued growth of the Super Bowl and the Champions League final was particularly impressive in a time of fragmentation in television audiences caused by digitalisation.

“The value of these properties is actually growing disproportionately and in an area of digitalisation they are more than bucking the trend,” he said.

UEFA are clearly looking to build on this by moving the Champions League final to a Saturday from this year, meaning days more concentrated buildup, and also a friendlier timeslot for Asia with no work day following allowing a later night for many more. Significantly, according to ViewerTrack, “In 2004, just 6% of the audience for the Champions League Final came from Asia, but by 2009 this figure had doubled.”

In the same period, from 2004 to 2009, the overall audience for the Champions League has risen a simply staggering 74%.

The value that the event now has to UEFA and the significance of that can hardly be overstated, and is central reason why a breakaway European league is (almost) unthinkable, even with UEFA intending to regulate the sport’s financial excesses more tightly.

Where the Champions League still lags behind the Super Bowl, interestingly, is as a local event: the extravaganza that is Super Bowl week is said to have generated over $500m for the South Florida region in 2008, whereas only $63m was claimed for Rome in 2009 (I couldn’t find a figure for the 2009 Super Bowl; and these numbers should always be taken with a large helping of salt).

The switch to a Saturday may help UEFA with that, but they still have some way to go to match all this. There’s big, and there’s the biggest.

UEFA’s plan to introduce a Financial Fair Play initiative in time for the 2013-14 season whipped up an enormous amount of speculation, including claims that evil Frenchman Michel Platini was deliberately targeting English clubs to get them excluded from European competition.

An interview by Reuters of UEFA general secretary Gianni Infantino makes a mockery of all that, and provides a wealth of detail on how the initiative is being put together and what the details will be.

Read the whole thing if you can, but we’ll extract some of the most interesting parts here, and I’ve bolded particularly key sentences for the even lazier amongst you.

The basics:

REUTERS: Can you explain what Finanical Fair Play is exactly?

UEFA: Essentially it is not a difficult thing. The main reason for financial fair play is that it is a tool to help improve the long-term stability and the financial health of European club football. It should help the clubs live within the revenues that they generate and one important element of this is that this whole concept was agreed last August in Monaco by all the stakeholders: the clubs, the leagues, the players unions and the national associations, they are all behind this concept.

This was approved by the Executive Committee and now we are in the middle of elaborating the rules. By ‘we’ its not just UEFA, but also external experts, members of the Club Financial Control Panel, in a broad consultation process.

So it’s all these folks against the big clubs? Nope.

REUTERS: The owners of the clubs are also in favour of this? Michel Platini has said that the owners of the big clubs have approached him.

UEFA: Absolutely. Reading some of the things recently I am puzzled, because this is very much a joint project from the beginning. Some of the club owners have said to Michel Platini “help us”. So it is not something that UEFA is imposing against English clubs or whatever, it’s not the case.

The whole media echo to some extent — not only in England but also across Europe — has contained so many inaccuracies.

We are doing this after very detailed research which we will publish next month. A report has analysed 650 clubs all over Europe, and it shows that around 50 per cent of those clubs are making losses every year — and 20 per cent are making huge losses — every year. Huge losses mean more than 20 per cent of their revenue. It also shows of these 650 clubs more than one third are spending 70 per cent or more of their income on salaries only — which is worrying.

The other element, which is again worrying, is that last season, revenues in in European football generally went up by 10 per cent which is very positive. But, on the other side, the increased costs — basically on the players’ salaries — have gone up 18 per cent.

So these are all trends that are worrying and which are saying to us, ‘we were right’ and by ‘we’ I mean the all the stakeholders had to take some action and move in the direction of Financial Fair Play.”

A salary cap, then? Nope, but clubs will be restricted to spending what they make.

REUTERS: Are you then looking at the possibility of putting some sort of limit on the percentage of revenue the clubs can spend on salaries?

UEFA: No, there will be some indicators, but the limit would be the break-even rule. You could spend 80 per cent on salaries, if the rest of your costs are 20 per cent, travel costs, for example, everything. But if your other costs are higher then the salaries have to go down. As a kind of indicator 60-65 per cent for example, you should be in the green zone; if you are not there, then we might have to look a bit closer — this would be the task of the Clubs Financial Control Panel to evaluate.

Debt, then. Will clubs like Manchester United and Liverpool automatically be banned from European competition, as some have presumed? Well, no.

REUTERS: What is the situation regarding clubs being in debt? Will they be banned from European competition when the new rules come in?

UEFA: If they owe money to other clubs or if they owe money to their players and non-playing staff and they are not paying what they should be paying, then that would be a reason to take a sanction. But the sanction would not necessarily be a ban in the first instance. We are still formalising the rules. So it is a bit premature to say this.

But this is only one thing. There are other elements to the rule like the “break-even” element which means that for the 2013-14 season, that clubs must basically break even. The rules are being written now and hopefully will be ready in the summer. But break-even basically means of course, the revenues that you generate you can spend but not more. You cannot have losses.

Now to define losses. You can have losses for one year, because perhaps you had one bad season, and you did not qualify. So we are looking at losses over a “multi-year” basis, for example over three years. So one year you can make a loss, but not over three years. So this is also a distinction — and this has been wrongly reported — because we are not speaking about debts. We are speaking about losses.

Debt, per se, is not necessarily a bad thing. The problem with the debt is the cost of the debt, for example the interest you have to pay, and this can create a loss. We are focusing on the losses.

But we are also also saying losses can be admitted, if the money is invested for long-term purposes — developing a youth academy for example or infrastructure. This of course can lead to a loss in the short-term, but in the long-term it will be beneficial for the club, help increase the revenues. So it is not true to say that if a club is in debt it will be banned from Eureopean competition.

What will be the positive effect? Why would clubs support this? Essentially, to force themselves to engage in collective restraint and not bankrupt themselves.

REUTERS: The President has often said that clubs in debt who carry on buying players they cannot really afford, are, in effect, “cheating.” Will the FFP stop this ?

UEFA: This is certainly one of the key objectives — to decrease the pressure on players salaries and transfer fees and to limit the inflationary effect. Everyone with normal common sense, would not engage in something they cannot afford. Sometimes, and especially in football, emotions come in and people act in an irrational way, but if you have a rule, which helps you to stay within some boundaries then of course you should respect the rule and this sort of inflationary effect will stop

Fascinating stuff. One interesting question not raised by Reuters is the issue of benefactor funding by the likes of Roman Abramovich, and whether that can be used to cover losses under these rules (see this discussion). That may be the biggest question mark remaining for the future of finance in football and especially for this initiative to receive support from English clubs. Overall, though, one can hardly say this isn’t a serious, substantial effort by UEFA to formulate some wide-ranging rules to straighten up the economics of European football.

They also indicate the extent to which UEFA – and their local organizing committees – have commissioned ever–more elaborate and expensive brand identities to define the European Football Championship since 1996.

Graphic design has an captivating relationship to the game of football, particularly with regard to professional club identities developed or redefined in the modern era. The United States, in particular, had a great many adventurous insignias created in the late sixties and seventies for its brand–new soccer teams; unshackled from the burden of history, tradition, and ethnic association. Teams such as the San Francisco Gales, New York Cosmos, or Atlanta Apollos adopted minimal identities clearly inspired by the style of modernist graphic artist Paul Rand – largely regarded as the father of modern corporate design. The adoption of this aesthetic showed an ambitious vision to lay lasting and professional foundations in North America. A patently patriotic and singular visual manifesto, here the ideals of American corporate mobility were cunningly applied to sport.

Of course, these homegrown design methods were actually German, Swiss, and Dutch in origin; and Paul Rand was actually Peretz Rosenbaum, son of immigrant Jews in Brooklyn.

Yet, such is design; so often maintaining an oxymoronic nature. Paradoxically, the most meticulous work is usually the simplest, and a successful solution can have most any ideology grafted onto it after the fact.

The 1960 logo (and 64, 68, 72, 76, 80, 84, 88, and 92)

From the same classic modernist era as Rand, the European Nations’ Cup was born in 1960. True to the time, a simple icon was created for the competition held in France, holding to the very definition of cool graphic minimalism. A rising wave of five lines in the national colors (two red, one white, two blue) over the confederation initials (a conjoined E/F following the same waveform) creates a fluttering flag symbolizing the international competition.

And symbolize it, it did. This exact same icon was used for every tournament through 1992 in Sweden – with only the colors modified to reflect the changing host country, with two digits added to indicate the competition year.

Not Mario Brothers, but still Italian

An intriguing exception was the 1980 European Championship in Italy, the second to be held in that country. While the officially recorded emblem was that same UEFA flag icon, the tournament organizers had developed a second: a flower with the familiar 32–panel “classic” football as its bloom, over the simple text EUROPA 80. While possibly looking like it belonged to a contemporary Atari video game,it did presage developments 12 years hence toward unique logos for each staging of the competition. At this point, the tournament did not yet enjoy the high profile it now possesses, and fan interest/financial support only hinted at the
marketing behemoth the Euros have now become.

Strangely, very little concrete information is actually available (publicly or otherwise) on the origins of European Championship identity prior to the 2004 tournament. Consultation with reference material, design historians, and UEFA Media Services all led nowhere – in fact, correspondence with UEFA acknowledged their media archives do not even attempt to record and save such data.

What follows, then, is an assessment of the tournament’s recent brand development, with the benefit of the limited source materials available.

Euro96 England

There's lots of rural charm in the country

This was the tournament where I first became aware of the European Championships, thanks to coverage on ESPN and family interest in the exploits of the Spanish national team. The tournament was entertaining, Spain’s shirts were “all-time” gorgeous, and inscribed on it all was the now famous Euro 96 logo.

Looking back, it was certainly an appropriate icon for the times, being an image that as easily could have served as cover art for a Blur single. Yet I recall having little idea what it was supposed to depict. It was clearly an abstract soccer ball, yes, but why was it drawn so strangely?

It was only well after the tournament that its representation became clear: an abstract football player, dribbling against a blue sky, under a yellow sun. Even now, it does seem a curious image given the extended period England went without hosting a major event, and all the possibilities for imagery therein.

Now, the typography beneath is far more successful, partly for existing before UEFA dropped its half–moon corporate wordmark into everything with which it was associated. The lettering is tight, smart, and simple while maintaining a playfulness through a mixed but harmonious selection of typefaces.

All the necessary information is there in just 18 characters: who, what, where, and when. Notably, this was the first tournament officially referred to with the “Euro” abbreviation. Different naming directions might have been explored – but what prevailed, thankfully, showed a predilection to the succinct.

A bit of cheese, not all that gouda

Euro2000 Belgium/Netherlands

Where Euro96 was available on ESPN, I remember watching Euro2000 via pirated signals at restaurants. Characteristically, it featured prolonged Spanish disappointment, but also the best match I’d witnessed to that point in my life: Spain 4–3 Yugoslavia. I thought Gaizka Mendieta was beyond incredible, and Fernando Morientes claimed my most-favored-player status from Raul (for a time).

The logo barely registered. Maybe I didn’t see it enough, or perhaps this just wasn’t an inclination I’d yet developed. Upon reflection, it is a very unsatisfactory emblem, doubly so as a representation for two paragons of creative design in Belgium and The Netherlands. The merging of the two countries’ flags is a solid enough conceptual foundation from which to draw, but the execution lacks anything truly aesthetically unique to the region, one rich with inspirational creativity – ranging widely from Victor Horta’s natural ornamentation to Theo van Doesburg’s stark essentialism.

The typography used is even worse. The half–moon UEFA mark appropriately reflects the sphere above, but a bland serif titling adds nothing to the mark. The use of the same character for 0 and O further makes the lettering heavy to the right side.

The presence of those four 0s normally might spark some creative handling of their juxtaposition, but in this instance it was a path un-pursued. All in all, a disappointing and ultimately forgettable image.

Brought to you by the letter F for "filters"

Euro2004 Portugal

The competition was wonderful, the stadiums spectacular, the atmosphere magnificent, the logo atrocious. Lord knows how many tones, gradients, filters, and blurs were employed to execute the “official” version of the mark. It’s interesting that now, most records have chosen to archive the “simplified” version produced for merchandise and printing purposes instead of the Photoshop bonanza.

Reference materials from the logo unveiling claim “passion” as the unifying design principle (thus justifying the heart shape), as if passion was an export unique to Portugal. The base concept of a heart drawn around a ball is weak alone; but unneeded additions, complications and blends further obscures whatever rationale that wasn’t actually there in the first place.

On the other hand, the typography is somewhat successful, and productively keeps with the theme such as it is. The “PORTUGAL” tag does appear an afterthought, once they realized nothing about the image indicated where the tournament was actually taking place. There are certainly problems with character kerning and the fluidity between glyphs in the title (rendered as if it were a handwritten script) but these concerns largely pale against the atrocity residing above it.

The hills were alive with the sound of Spaniards

Euro2008 Austria/Switzerland

A tournament, once more, that was widely televised in the United States. My brief residency in Italy the year prior had permitted travel around the continent, and for the first time I’d actually been to nearly every city and stadium in the competition. I particularly recall poking my head between the gates at Basel’s St Jakob-Park, or sneaking into the unguarded upper tier of Ernst-Happel-Stadion during an Austria Wien training session. Now, here they were hosting many of the biggest names in sport.

Of course, Spain’s triumph will be my primary remembrance through future years, but the logo is much more along the lines of what one might expect visually from the two countries.A single line curving around a ball, rendered in red (their common national color) and green, with the line beveled and spiked to represent the primary topographical feature for which the nations are known – the Alps. While the use of shine and gradient is often overdone, it’s subtle enough here to be effectual. The light reflection on the lower swoop even gives the feeling of a Alpine skier or bobsledder racing to the finish.

The style and implementation of type below is exactly what you’d envision representing the Swiss. Simple, unadorned, sans–serif. A change in line weight to set off segments of information, compact leading, and precise attention to detail are its hallmarks. Even the location identifier is subtly aligned to the inner edges of the second–outermost characters. Overall, though it possesses a bit more shine and polish than necessary, it’s still a winning result.

Seriously, they grow it there

Euro2012 Poland/Ukraine

This brings us to the recently revealed Euro2012 logo, the first such competition to be held in Eastern Europe. Co–hosted by Poland and the Ukraine (two countries one might not otherwise think of together) it’s sure to be the most publicized yet in the United States; while it’s more likely than not I’ll be watching from elsewhere, if not in person.

The European Championship is a genuine brand now, a mark of excellence and quality known around the world. The logo is more important than ever, but only as part of an overall brand identity carrying through every aspect of the tournament’s presentation. Colors, graphics, and typeface – the Euro brand is now a complete experience. Everything from the press packets, to the façade of the Olimpiysky’s VIP box (where the champion will receive the Delaunay Trophy) will have been designed along set identity guidelines.

Still, the logo is the most visible manifestation of the brand, and this one succeeds. Faced with the challenging task of creating an image common to countries not normally associated, wildlife and the decorative arts served as fertile inspiration. While still possessing a “made–for–television” appearance via the use of delicate color blends not reproducible in other applications, it remains more restrained than most. Simplified versions exist for other applications, of course. Blooms in the nations’ respective colors stem from a white and gold ball–plant, not wholly unlike the aforementioned unofficial Europa 80 mark. Figures illustrating celebrating players or cheering fans subtly jump from the petals of each.

The typography below might be its major triumph. The UEFA mark is set against the curve of the lower Ukrainian stem, and directly above the Euro “O”. The lettering is built around this central axis, fluidly joining the R to the O, and using a lighter weight face for the year matching the curves around the UEFA mark. Much like the previous tournament, the location identifier is tight and balanced in the same style as the rest, feeling considered and part of the overall scheme.

For all its obtuse bureaucracy, UEFA has still shown attentiveness to branding and design appropriate to its European focus – a virtue that FIFA, on the other hand, has clearly been unable to adopt. Though often too complex, the newer Champions’ League branding alongside an annually renewed finals’ identity are additional indicators of UEFA’s keen visual awareness.

Unfortunately, recent World Cups, with the possible exception of the 2002 tournament in Korea/Japan, have had grossly deficient identities wholly unsuited to the most prominent sporting event on the planet. The South Africa 2010 logo is just the most recent atrocity. While on one hand FIFA have shown a >predilection to contemporary arts, with initiatives to bring aboard global creatives for tournament poster designs,, hperhaps one day soon FIFA will give its crown jewel its deserved aesthetic attention.

(Thanks to UEFA, the SFV, and Clyde Araujo at Under Consideration for their assistance)

Big Story
It’s not exactly breaking news that from 2012 onwards, UEFA are planning to introduce stringent financial regulation that will not allow clubs making a loss to enter European competition. But the Telegraph does have some interesting details today, and confirms that interest payment on debt will be included. Uefa’s general secretary Gianni Infantino told the Telegraph that:

What we are doing, with the support of all the stakeholders in the game including the major professional clubs, is to try and improve the long-term stability of European club football by encouraging clubs to live within the revenues that they generate. We are concerned, and many of the clubs and owners are concerned, about the sustainability of the game.

We survey more than 650 clubs all over Europe, and found that 50 per cent of those clubs are making losses every year, and 20 per cent of them are making huge losses, spending 120 per cent of their revenue every year. Around one third of the clubs are spending 70 per cent or more of their revenues on wages. Revenues across European football grew by 10 per cent last year, but the salaries of players and coaches have gone up by around 18 per cent. It is clear that if we continue like this it will end up with a spiral of inflation, so we need to bring a more rational and reasonable approach to this crazy game.

14 of the 20 clubs in the Premier League made a loss in 2008, but it appears that even though a few clubs might protest the new regulations, the broader base — as Infantino implied — of clubs in the European Clubs Association accepts the need for some sanity to prevail in financial regulation.  But it will be a major challenge to clubs with severe interest payments eating up any profit they are making.

Worldwide News

• Speaking of which….it looks as if the Glazers’ bond issue at Manchester United has been a success, in financial terms, as the Times reports: “More than 50 low-risk investors, primarily insurers and pension-fund providers, have stumped up the cash at a fixed annual interest rate of 9 per cent.” Unfortunately, as Helen Power explains, this isn’t actually good news for the club or its fans: “The problem for United fans — who have long detested the Glazers for their perceived addiction to debt — is that it is a bad thing to give the family more freedom. The family will also almost certainly take advantage of that new freedom to spend as they wish to pay off some of the £202 million they owe to hedge-fund investors under the club’s payment-in-kind notes. If they do not, the interest rate on that debt will rise from 14.25 per cent to 16.25.” The Telegraph, meanwhile, looks at the latest effort by United fans to save the club from the Glazers, as they seek wealthy backers for a prospective consortium.
• American soccer writer Steve Davis tells us why the fact less American media outlets will be able to send as many journalists to the World Cup this year might actually be a good thing for the quality of the coverage, if not the quantity: less general writers who know nothing about the game will be going, leading to less embarrassing incidents like the writer Davis saw at the last World Cup identifying US defender Jimmy Conrad by the credential around his neck (thanks to William for the tip).

The Sweeper appears every weekday, and once at the weekend. For more rambling and links throughout the day every day, follow your editor Tom Dunmore @pitchinvasion on Twitter.

Big Story
Chelsea are debt-free. Their owner and benefactor Roman Abramovich has converted no less than $541 million in interest-free loans to the Premier League club into equity, apparently in advance of possible forthcoming UEFA financial regulations that will require clubs in the Champions League to be breaking even to enter the competition by 2012.

But this does not mean the future is necessarily rosy for the club. Chelsea’s hopes (expressed early into Abramovich’s reign by Peter Kenyon) of becoming profitable by 2010 have clearly not been realised. As generous as Abramovich has been with these loans, now converted to equity, the question remains whether the club can continue at its current competitive level without further massive cash injections from the Russian, which seem unlikely to come.

Indeed, this may be exactly why Abramovich has recently taken a different strategy to squeeze his rivals in the coming years, culminating in this debt-relief. It was a visit from Abramovich himself to Michel Platini at UEFA that gave considerable momentum to the plans for the proposed new “financial fair play” regulations in European competition.

This of course is convenient for Abramovich and Chelsea, as their main rivals do not have the same option of their billionaire owner converting debt into equity. The banks will not be so kind to Manchester United or Liverpool. Abramovich remains rich enough to do this, even if he is not crazy enough to keep pumping in hundreds of millions of more dollars into the club to keep up. He has attempted to make the club big enough to generate serious cash itself, and is now using the unsustainability of the Premier League’s madcap spending that he helped generate in the first place to push UEFA to restrain the rest of the elite as he draws back.

Pretty clever, if you think about it.

Worldwide News

• Yet the dangers of reliance on a benefactor are clearly shown elsewhere in the Premier League. Portsmouth have been given until February 10th to clear their debts to HM Revenue and Customs, a deadline they are unlikely to be able to make, and are thus likely to be made bankrupt. A long saga of mismanagement and broken promises is ending in disaster. As John Beech comments, looking at the club’s history back to the 1970s, “Portsmouth provide a textbook example of the unsustainability of the benefactor model.”
• Gary Megson is fired as manager of Bolton, and it’s the fans blamed by Barney Ronay at the Guardian for “a rather grisly, bullying version of “fan power”.”  It’s curious, though, that the piece never mentions who actually fired Megson (hint: it wasn’t the fans.).
• Everton’s stadium plans are back at the drawing board, though there remains hope the city council can help the club find a new home. Maybe it’ll help that the council leader is an Everton fan.
• Anyone want to read about Ronaldo telling us how “real” football fans should behave? Thought not.

The Sweeper appears every weekday, and once at the weekend. For more rambling and links throughout the day every day, follow your editor Tom Dunmore @pitchinvasion on Twitter.