The inevitability of change

European football's continuing evolution is as inevitable as it is necessary

- Keir RADNEDGE

On November 13, 1963, Sporting of Lisbon demolished APOEL of Nicosia 16-1 in the European Cup Winners' Cup. Six of the goals fell to Domingos Antonio da Silva, their 26-year-old Angolan-born forward otherwise known as Mascarenhas. Records from that second round opener survive today.

The scoreline raised eyebrows around Europe and sparked angst over gaps in skills, standards and finance. Sounds familiar? So it should. The arguments, like the records set 60 years ago, still stand, albeit in a far different financial and media context.

A vain search for a bridge over the chasm will run and run. UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin has been musing about a salary cap while aware, as a lawyer, that such an imposition would offer only professional and financial delight for his professional colleagues.

UEFA's first attempt at an answer was the Financial Fair Play (FFP) system dreamed up by Ceferin's predecessor, Michel Platini, and enshrined in the rules and regulations by then-general secretary Gianni Infantino.

The original FFP had some effect, but both it and the refined new version merely seal the status quo in place to such an extent that even super-rich Newcastle's spending potential has been neutered by the expenditure/revenue ratio.

At base, the sticking point is the C-word: Change. Everyone wants it, no one likes it.

Turn the clock back to 1963 and Sporting's demolition of APOEL. This was only nine years after UEFA had been founded and was still mulling its identity and purpose: should it be an independent governing body, or merely a Euro-centric pressure group within FIFA? The power potential soon settled that debate in favour of as much autonomy as possible.