The Athletic. Hello I'm Mark Chama welcome to the Business of Sport Podcast on the Athletic

Mat Slater with us as usual we'll get the latest on the Chelsea takeover a little later in the pod but first of all

Mark you've been in conversation with Darius Meiduski owner and president of Poland's

most successful club that's Laker your Warsaw and also he's vice chairman of the European Club

and also he's vice chairman of the European Club Association.

Yeah he is and that's really I suppose it was the sort of

second half of his of his job spec there that is the reason

we I wanted to talk to him I've been along to various European Club Association

meetings and he's always impressed me. A very bright guy, obviously Polish, I think he was educated at Harvard, a lawyer.

It just speaks really well, really clearly.

And the European Club Association is an unusual group.

We often sort of refer to them on this pod.

They were born of, I don't know if listeners will remember, the G14 group, which was the sort of,

it was around about the 80s the 90s the the

richest clubs in Europe formed a little lobby group to really kind of lean on

uwafah and this is really where the Champions League came from.

It was their pressure that turned the old European Cup into the Champions League.

So think about guys like Berlusconi.

Rangers were very involved at the beginning as well, which, again, there's a little story there about how far we've come, I guess, over the last 25, 30 years.

Turning that old-fashioned knockout competition, which had loads of jeopardy,

i.e. a big team could play a big team in the first round and get knocked out.

And then we've morphed into this ever bigger league, basically, which is going to become a real a proper league from

...