FINALLY, SOME ACTION
At the meeting of European sports ministers in Leipzig last Thursday Sports Minister Richard Caborn emerged ebullient having secured agreement for a review, led by Uefa, European football's governing body, aimed at curbing what Caborn terms modern football's "excesses".
"This is unique, historic," he enthused. "It is a genuine, political attempt to establish good governance and good regulation, and restore football's soul and integrity."
Big words, and although in Britain we move instinctively towards scepticism, perhaps we should give this process a chance. Caborn's habitually decent sentiments have mostly lacked solid action here, but in Leipzig he worked hard to secure a political approach of some sophistication. It recognises that in law and football, true reform has to be Europe-wide.
In football, England's top clubs argue against, for example, sharing money more equally because they are competing with the likes of Real Madrid, Barcelona and Juventus, who hoard so much of the money in their own countries.
In law, football is exhausted from battling the European Commission, which treats the game like any other industry and subjects it to fierce free- market imperatives often to the detriment of a more collective approach.
Caborn is, then, attempting to marry high European politics with the nitty-gritty of addressing football's ills. He will argue that the EC's Nice Declaration on sport should be given legal force rather than its current ineffectual advisory status. Agreed in 2000, the declaration states that, when framing laws, the EC "must take account of the social, educational and cultural functions inherent in sport" to preserve its unique role in modern communities.
Caborn's idea is that in return for football being treated exceptionally as a life-enhancing part of the social fabric, not just another business, its clubs must agree to behave less like money-grabbing beasts.
"We do not follow the US tradition in which sport is purely entertainment," William Gaillard, Uefa's director of communications, explained. "We have seen too much of plcs, breakaway leagues, and the top level becoming greedier, to the detriment of the rest. We are clear that we need greater solidarity."
In "Vision Europe", the enlightened strategy document published earlier this year, Uefa argued for a "democratic" game of "integrity, sportsmanship and loyalty" with "solidarity" - in which clubs feel they are all part of the same game. In an ideal world, Uefa states it would like clubs to be owned by their members and supporters, not individual businessmen or plcs.
This, then, is a major opportunity in which Uefa will work up concrete proposals by June next year for Caborn to take to EU governments. "If football will agree to be more responsible in this range of areas," Caborn told me, "I will aim to secure political support for football to be allowed special exemptions from EU law along the lines of the Nice Declaration."
Vision Europe - Uefa's manifesto
In Uefa's Strategy Document, Vision Europe, published earlier this year, European football's governing body set out its broad aspirations for the game in a section entitled "In an Ideal World". Its wish list included:
A stronger than ever football pyramid
Solidarity - not charity - at all levels
Mutual respect and solidarity between associations, leagues, clubs and players at all levels of the pyramid
Representative, clean, transparent democracies operating at all levels of the football family, leading to self-regulation within football
Everyone taking part in organised sport or physical activity - keeping fit, becoming happier, learning and passing on the values of sport and so building a better society
Everyone in Europe having the opportunity to watch attractive live football in safe and modern facilities in their locality or region
All clubs legally structured and governed in ways that prioritise sporting objectives above financial and other objectives
All clubs controlled and run by their members - eg supporters -according to democratic principles