Crystal Palace chairman Steve Parish has warned the new-look Champions League will have a “devastating” effect on English football.
UEFA are determined to press ahead with a new 36 team format which will start in 2024 and mean more European games, bigger prize money for the rich clubs and a dramatic change in the match calendar.
Parish warned that the changes - set to be agreed within the next fortnight and introduced from 2024 - would kill off the League Cup and, in the long term, wreck the chances of smaller clubs getting into the Champions League.
Parish, talking at a crunch European Leagues meeting, said: “From the point of view of where we sit this will have a quite devastating effect on domestic competition in England. We have three cup competitions. The Premier League and two cup competitions.
“One of which, the League Cup, is the largest financial contributor to the EFL and the 72 clubs. This proposal will probably see the end of that cup in its entirety or reduced to some kind of youth competition.
“We also seem to be expected to accept these proposals because they are not as bad as they could have been. I can’t quite buy into that thinking that we should be ever so grateful that it’s only an extra 100 games.
“My question to everybody is where does this all end. When we began the CL was a knockout competition of five games for just the champions. We are now looking at an extra 100 games.
“This may not be affecting your domestic leagues as much as it looks like will affect our domestic competitions in this cycle but the creep is neverending.
“The way this is managed and the conflict of interest the attempt to transfer value with the assault on the calendar that is what we are talking about from domestic to European competition and I think it's very concerning.
“We are seeing the coefficient and the calendar principles that are attempted to be ingrained so that next time things will be changed even more and domestic competition in the end takes a secondary seat to the European super league.”
