Something of the ridiculousness of modern elite football could be found on the streets of central Vienna on Monday night as hundreds of the game’s power brokers were escorted across the city to make sure they didn’t miss their dinner. Oliver Kahn was hugger-mugger with Michael Ballack, the Uefa president, Aleksander Ceferin, was being pursued by the Leeds owner, Andrea Radrizzani, and Ajax’s Edwin van der Sar was trying to find out whether Roman Abramovich had been poisoned. They were part of a cohort that resembled a bunch of exchange students as they followed a big sign saying “ECA” to a grand restaurant where the food was later described as disappointing.
The European Club Association is, depending on who you listen to, the secretive power broker at the heart of the continental game or a collaborative collective that seeks to make clubs’ voices heard amid the grinding bureaucracies of football’s governing bodies, Uefa in particular. This week they were holding their general congress in Sigmund Freud’s home town, a year on from apparently embracing their own death drive.
