What does European league mean for Everton

This process really started when the Premier League broke away from the Football League back in 1992, so in a way we can’t really complain and you could argue this is just a natural, almost inevitable development.

The Premier League breakaway was followed the same year by the evolution of the European Cup into what became the Champions League and the rest as they say is history.

What is different about today’s announcement is that football cannot claim to be the poor relation it thought it was back in the early nineties. At that time the beautiful game was still only just recovering from the twin disasters in the eighties that nearly destroyed it in this country: Heysel and Hillsborough.

The first was the riot that killed nearly fifty Juventus supporters when Liverpool ‘fans’ attacked them before the 1985 European Cup Final in Brussel’s Heysel Stadium. A wall at their end of the stand collapsed and hundreds were crushed in the scramble to escape.

Then four years later in a horrific parallel, just under 100 Liverpool supporters were crushed to death as others tried to get into the ground before the 1989 FA Cup semi-final kicked off at Sheffield Wednesday’s Hillsborough ground.

Both these disasters are intimately linked to Everton too. In 85 the Toffees had just won the league title in rampant style and had also lifted their first European trophy with the Cup-Winners-Cup having been added to that championship.

The Blues of course had a fantastic team and looking forward to the following season, Everton would surely have been favourites to win the European Cup in an era when English clubs were dominating on the continent.

The Heysel riot was the climax of years of hooliganism problems and led eventually to all English clubs being banned from European competition for five years, a ban which particularly hurt Everton who were denied their best chance to claim Europe’s top club prize at last. I can still remember watching the coverage on TV as Jimmy Hill announced the latest example of English hooliganism was unfolding live in Belgium.

In the end the Toffees never really got over the European ban and although another championship was won again in 1987, it ultimately led to a string of players like Gary Lineker, Trevor Steven, Gary Stevens and manager Howard Kendall leaving the club over the next few years.

Then came Hillsborough. Everton were playing in the other FA Cup semi-final that Saturday and I came home on a high as the Blues had got though to Wembley only to hear of the disaster. It hit Blues fans as many had friends or family connected to it and the whole of Merseyside felt the impact of those deaths.

Anyway, after all that football was very much in the doldrums as the 1990’s began and the Premier League breakaway was the outcome as the First Division clubs sought to try and revive the popularity and income of the game by linkeing up with the new satelite tv station BskyB.

And it worked as the new league went on to become the most profitable football league in the world. In addition the ‘Champions’ League (although you didn’t have to win your league anymore to qualify), is now worth millions more and the biggest names in European football have grown immensely rich from it.