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Fixture overload Top European coaches consult on crowded calendar
Posted: Wednesday September 01, 1999 01:21 PM
GENEVA (AP) -- UEFA gathered the coaches of 10 top European clubs Wednesday to hear their concerns on issues including the increasingly crowded soccer calendar and the disciplinary system. "I think everybody was concerned with the congested calendar and yellow cards," Manchester United manager Alex Ferguson said after the meeting, intended as the first in a series of consultations. The coaches, among them Barcelona's Louis van Gaal, Inter Milan's Marcello Lippi and Bayern Munich's Ottmar Hitzfeld, were also concerned "that we should help the referee as much as we can," UEFA technical director Andy Roxburgh said. "One or two of our colleagues would like to look into the technology side of it," he added. Although "the few that did speak weren't thrilled by the idea of two referees," he said they would be prepared to consider an experiment. UEFA general secretary Gerhard Aigner said FIFA President Sepp Blatter's proposal for a biennial World Cup wasn't discussed Wednesday. But "we need to look very closely at the scheduling of international matches," particularly alongside UEFA's expanded Champions League, Roxburgh said. The club managers also expressed concern over European competition rules that bring suspensions after a player receives a pre-determined number of yellow cards. "The system [may] punish sometimes fair players at quite the wrong moment when they have the chance of a lifetime to play a big final," Aigner said, adding that the basic rules couldn't be changed. "We will have to see whether there are possibilities to amend it in a way that those who seem to be quite normally behaving are not becoming victims at the wrong moment."
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