Former Bayern Munich CEO Karl-Heinz Rummenigge offered his assessment of European football at present, sharing his thoughts on the SuperLeague, Inter and Juventus. The German legend was interviewed by Il Corriere dello Sport and discussed the challenges facing European clubs, the potential for a new European competition and the ongoing crisis affecting Juventus:
On Inter:
“A significant part of my career was at Inter. My Inter are the fans, those people, their affection. I remember a match from 1984, 4-0 against Juve. My first league goal. A foul, the crowd is five meters from the pitch and I hear shouts “Kalle!, Kalle!”. Goosebumps, a feeling I’ve never experienced before… In the 80s, Serie A was the world’s top league.
In Germany we thought for a long time that your presidents, all Italians, had agreed to organize the best championship in the world: a maximum of two foreigners per team and also for medium-to-small clubs to have the possibility of buying champions. The country was fine at the time.”
On the Premier League:
“Today the only championship alive is the Premier League, England spends astronomical sums and in an unintelligent, irrational way, the other countries go on amid financial suffering and scandals, but still manage to bring home the trophies.
“This means that the British make crazy mistakes, theirs is a market out of control. Chelsea threw away hundreds of millions in January to find themselves in tenth place and with almost half the points of those in the lead: it’s absurd.
“The globalization of the market has created painful imbalances, once there was a national market, money circulated within the system, wealth was better distributed.”
On the SuperLeague
“It is no coincidence that the idea came to three clubs with enormous liquidity problems. They aimed to obtain significant revenues quickly. Now the Superlegue proposal has gone from 20 to 80 teams, but football would not be able to withstand such a radical upheaval.
“Instead, what needs to be changed, and quickly, is Financial Fair Play, it will have to be stricter. Clubs are constantly under pressure from fans and the media to spend and spend. But football is the only industry that only produces losses… (pauses) Reading what Juve had done I couldn’t believe it, I’ve never heard such a thing in my life. Juve are a very important club, a point of reference for Italian and European football, they scored a sensational own goal, but I’m sure they will be able to rebuild. At the right time.”
On Barcelona (Allegations of payments to referees):
“You believe me when I tell you that I laughed reading this news. But that doesn’t surprise me: every time we played in Spain I felt a strange feeling”.
On the Italian League:
“As long as the stadiums are owned by the municipalities, things cannot change. In Germany we were like you, the 2006 World Cup allowed us to overcome this obstacle and we built beautiful facilities for families. The organization of the 2032 European Championships could help Italy to follow our example, I hope they will be assigned to you.”
