Only One Football

On the pitch and among the fans, Celtic and Rangers may be the fiercest of football rivals.  When it comes to the business end of things, namely the mission to maximize their financial potential by fleeing the Scottish Premier League, the Old Firm pair are partners in crime.  Like any good rivalry, Celtic and Rangers need each other.  However, they are quite aware that they do not necessarily need any other team in Scotland.  So the pair has made their desire to join the English Premier League well known, and this past week, their desires were spurned once again.

Leaving the Scottish league makes sense for Celtic and Rangers as businesses and as competitive entities.  The top flight in Scottish football has fallen far behind the English Premier League.  Outside of the Old Firm, the better clubs are Championship caliber and the rest perhaps League One.  The likes of Manchester United, Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool have their mettle tested week in and week out by other excellent teams in the EPL, an elite league that is attracting top talent even to teams outside of the regular European contenders.  The star-studded nature of leagues like La Liga, the EPL and Serie A draws in more and more sponsor revenue, widening the gap between them and the next two tiers of leagues down the UEFA coefficient ladder.  Both Glasgow clubs have begun to see their performances begin to suffer in European competition, and part of that must be the less-challenging nature of their domestic league.  They are still huge clubs, drawing enormous and passionate crowds, but the trajectory of Celtic and Rangers is all wrong.

Phil Gartside’s wily scheme to bring the Glasgow duo into an expanded, two-tier Premier League setup was nixed by other EPL clubs.  The setup would have seen a Premier League and a new division below it.  Rumor has it that together the tiers would consist of somewhere between 36-40 teams and there might not be relegation to levels below.  While Celtic and Rangers are unlikely to give up on ways to join the cash-rich competition to their south, there is another angle which may be more likely to succeed.

There are other clubs like Celtic and Rangers, big clubs where the quality of competition in their local market limits their upward potential.  A few years back talk of Atlantic League emerged, a premier league type setup between top clubs from Scotland, Holland, Portugal, Belgium and some of the Scandanavian countries.  Surely a league featuring the likes of not only Celtic and Rangers, but also Ajax, PSV, Feyenoord, Porto, Benfica, Sporting Lisbon and other top clubs would draw more sponsorship revenue to these big clubs than any of their domestic leagues alone.   Such a league would not need to mean the end of promotion and relegation - the worst placing club from a given country could face a relegation playoff vs the top finisher in the nation’s domestic league (picture 4 clubs from Scotland, 4 from Holland, 4 from Portugal, 3 from Belgium, etc, drawing invites).  Countries who could participate include Scotland, Portugal, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and both Irelands if the league decided to make an investment on the idea Irish-based clubs in a strong competition could siphon away big dollars being poured into Liverpool and Manchester United (Celtic may not like this particular idea, though).  European competition places would have to be worked out some how, but if an Atlantic League is supposed to represent a premier league level for these countries, then it would only make sense for them to work out a way with UEFA to have top European slots assigned to the clubs they send into the Atlantic League.

If Celtic and Rangers want to remain elite clubs, they need to find a better league to play in and do so in relatively short order.  If their fellow Britains can’t find a way to start them at a level at least as high as the Championship and let them earn their way up to the Premier League, they may have to look at alternatives and find like-minded clubs.  An Atlantic League would certainly not be the Old Firm’s first choice, but they should begin looking into it seriously.  If nothing else, the specter of a new elite league competing with the EPL for sponsorship money might convince the English clubs to look on their cause in a different light.  One thing is for sure, without some type of action on this front, Celtic and Rangers are likely to continue to find themselves over matched by clubs that draw significantly smaller crowds, but yet far more revenue.