The Split Season

Reimagining European
Club Football

A fan led vision for structural transformation

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The Problem
Why the current structure fails clubs and supporters

The current structure of domestic leagues was built for another generation and in many ways it still works, but the drama it produces is distributed in a way that leaves most clubs and most supporters watching from the outside for most of the season.

Too many clubs have nothing to play for

In every major league, a large portion of clubs know well before the season ends that nothing significant is at stake, no danger of relegation, no chance of qualifying for Europe, no meaningful difference between finishing ninth or eleventh, and supporters turn up anyway because that is what supporters do, but those afternoons have a different quality to them.

In the Premier League, mid table clubs play an average of 2.2 matches per season with nothing whatsoever to play for, and the sense of meaninglessness typically sets in several weeks before even that point. Analytics FC, 2024

This is a structural failure affecting millions of supporters every season, and one that football's own governing bodies are beginning to acknowledge. From the 2026 to 27 season, the EFL Championship will expand its playoff format from four teams to six, specifically to keep more clubs in contention deep into the season. It is a welcome step. It is also an admission that the current system leaves too many clubs without a purpose too early.

Europe remains the preserve of a privileged few

Even in the biggest leagues, only eight clubs can qualify for European competition, and when a smaller club does reach Europe it becomes a genuine occasion, a rare opportunity for supporters to travel the continent with their team. The current system dates from a time when travelling across Europe was difficult and expensive, which is no longer the case. The argument for restricting European access to a small elite was always mostly logistical, and that justification expired decades ago.

Domestic titles are increasingly predetermined

Across Europe, championships are concentrating in fewer and fewer hands, and the gap between the dominant clubs and the rest is not narrowing but widening with each passing season.

15Bayern Munich, Bundesliga titles in 20 seasons
17Porto and Benfica combined, Primeira Liga titles in 20 seasons
16Celtic, Scottish Premiership titles in 20 seasons
13Red Bull Salzburg, Austrian titles in 20 seasons
18Dinamo Zagreb, Croatian titles in 20 seasons
24Different clubs have won a top five league title in 20 years, from over 100 competing each season

In many competitions the champion is effectively known before a ball is kicked. For the dominant clubs, the domestic season has become a formality. The real measure of success is the Champions League, a competition that is frequently decided by a single moment, a refereeing call, or a mistake in a knockout round. For clubs in smaller leagues, the entire season can hinge on a two-legged qualifying tie played in late July while most supporters are still on holiday.

There is no definitive answer to who is the best club in Europe

Domestic league titles are earned over 34 to 38 matches against every other team in the division, which means you cannot get a favourable draw, you cannot peak for three weeks in May, and the best team over the course of the season is the one that wins it.

The Champions League works differently, and Chelsea won it in 2021 while finishing fourth in the Premier League, Real Madrid won it in 2022 while finishing second in La Liga, Chelsea won it again in 2012 on penalties in Bayern Munich's own stadium having finished sixth that season, and Liverpool won it in 2005 having finished fifth, coming back from three goals down at half time in the final. All legitimate results, none of which tell you who the best club in Europe actually was that year.

A pan-European league played over a full season would settle the question definitively, because the club that finishes top of the top division in May would be, without any qualification, the best club in Europe that season.

The Warning

Structural change is coming. The question is who designs it.

In April 2021, twelve of Europe's wealthiest clubs announced a breakaway European Super League, a closed competition from which they could not be relegated. Within 48 hours, all six English clubs had withdrawn under intense pressure from fans and governments. The project collapsed. But it did not go away.

The legal dispute continued for years. In December 2023 the European Court of Justice ruled that UEFA's rules blocking alternative competitions were unlawful. The company behind the project relaunched with new proposals as recently as late 2024, rebranded as the Unify League, this time for 96 clubs. Even that has since stalled. But the financial pressure driving it has not gone anywhere.

UEFA's response to all of this was to expand the Champions League from 32 to 36 clubs, a change that addressed nothing structural and primarily benefited the clubs that needed it least. The choice facing European football is between a future designed by and for the wealthiest clubs, or one built on genuine merit and universal access. This proposal is an argument for the latter.

The Money Problem
Why the finances are not an obstacle

UEFA currently distributes around €440 million per season in solidarity payments to clubs that don't qualify for European competition. That sounds like a lot. Divided among the hundreds of professional clubs across 55 member associations who see none of the Champions League money, it isn't.

The clubs that don't qualify have been getting louder about this. The Union of European Clubs was set up precisely because the main representative body, now rebranded as European Football Clubs, excluded smaller clubs from any meaningful say in how decisions get made. Their argument is straightforward: the clubs deciding how revenue flows through the game are the same clubs that benefit most from how it currently flows.

Travel costs are a real concern, and worth addressing directly. The lower divisions of the European phase would be seeded regionally, so a League Two club in their first season starts by playing neighbours rather than flying to Georgia. As clubs earn promotion through the pyramid the geography widens. By the time you are competing at the top end, continental travel is part of the deal, and the revenue that comes with it covers the cost. A competition drawing hundreds of clubs across 50 divisions is a fundamentally different broadcast proposition to one featuring 36 clubs from eight or nine countries. European club football is approaching €30 billion annually. The money exists. The question is who controls the distribution, and on what principles.

The Proposal
A season rebuilt from first principles

The Split Season divides the football calendar into two distinct halves, a domestic phase and a European phase. Both have full promotion and relegation. Both have something at stake for every club from the first match to the last.

August-December

The Domestic Phase

  • Compact divisions of 10 clubs each
  • 18 domestic league matches — 9 home, 9 away
  • Existing domestic cup competitions are preserved and reimagined. For example, The FA Cup Final becomes a Boxing Day tradition!
  • 4 promoted, 4 relegated, plus a playoff between divisions
January-May

The European Phase

  • Every professional club in Europe competes
  • 18 European league matches — 9 home, 9 away — plus European Cup knockout ties
  • Over 500 clubs seeded into approximately 50 divisions of 10
  • Promotion and relegation at every level
  • Leyton Orient in Budapest. Lincoln City in Bratislava. Colchester hosting Real Madrid.

A genuinely meritocratic Europe

All professional clubs across Europe are ranked and seeded into approximately 50 divisions of 10 clubs each. The lower divisions are seeded regionally, so clubs start by competing against geographic neighbours and earn their way into genuinely continental competition through promotion. The top division functions as the new Champions League. The lowest functions as an introduction to unfamiliar corners of the continent, Grimsby Town against their Northern European equivalent, Sligo Rovers earning a trip to Eastern Europe after a strong spring campaign.

In the first season, clubs are placed using a composite measure of UEFA club coefficients, domestic league position, and squad market value, simply to get the system started. That placement is a starting point and not a permanent verdict, because from that point forward clubs rise and fall based entirely on where they finish each spring, and within a few years the divisions would reflect genuine on-pitch performance rather than historical reputation or wealth.

Relegation becomes a normal part of the rhythm

Under the current structure, dropping a division is catastrophic, with clubs losing broadcasting revenue overnight and spending years trying to recover, and the financial terror that surrounds relegation, the reckless spending, the panicked managerial changes, the supporter despair, is partly a product of how rarely it happens and how severe the consequences are when it does.

In smaller divisions with more frequent movement that changes, because when four clubs go down every five months relegation becomes a natural part of the calendar rather than a near-existential event, and clubs plan for it, adapt, return, and the system stops punishing the unlucky and starts rewarding the consistently good.

A knockout cup that actually means something

Alongside the European league phase runs a single elimination European Cup, one-off matches, open draw across all tiers, so a top-division giant might be drawn away to a fourth-tier ground in a country they have never visited, which is exactly how the FA Cup has always worked, and that format has produced some of the most memorable moments in the history of the game, so there is no obvious reason that logic should stop at national borders.

Rivalries and traditions are preserved

The domestic phase preserves all existing rivalries, and if Tottenham and Arsenal find themselves in different European divisions one spring that adds to the intrigue the following August rather than diminishing anything. The FA Cup, the Copa del Rey, the DFB-Pokal, all continue compressed into the domestic window, and nothing that makes football great is removed while a great deal that is currently missing is added.

What It Could Look Like
Sample European divisions across all tiers

These are illustrative examples of what the European phase might look like across different tiers. Real divisions would be drawn from over 500 clubs across Europe, seeded by merit, with no more than a handful from any one country in the same group.

Where Would Your Club Be?

Search for your club to see which European division they would likely compete in during the spring phase, and which away trips would be on the horizon. This is a working illustration of the concept using a ranking of professional clubs across Europe.

Covers professional clubs across Europe. Search for your team.

    #ClubCountryCurrent league
    Your away trips this spring
    The European Cup
    One match. Open draw. Any club can face any club.

    Every professional club in Europe enters the same draw. No seeding by prestige. No protected positions. This is what the first round might look like. Imagine some of these away trips!

    FAQ
    Frequently asked questions

    This proposal was put together by football supporters who grew up watching lower league football in England, the full experience of clubs going up and down the divisions, of seasons defined by a single relegation battle or an unlikely cup run, of away ends in places most people have never heard of.

    The Split Season is not backed by any investor, commercial interest, or lobbying group. It is a detailed argument from people who think the game could be significantly better than it currently is.

    Structural reform proposals come around regularly. The most notorious was the European Super League in 2021, a proposal by twelve elite clubs to ringfence European football for themselves permanently. This is the opposite of that.

    The idea of a pan European league open to all clubs has come up before, but almost always as a replacement for domestic competition, or as a vehicle for powerful clubs trying to capture more revenue. The Split Season is different in two ways: it preserves domestic competition, and it starts from the principle that every professional club should have access to European football, not just the ones that can already afford to be there.

    The split calendar itself, a domestic phase followed by a European phase. That structure is genuinely new.

    Clubs, their fans and their players are what makes up football. Leagues are administrative structures. They do not own the game. What it would take is a critical mass of clubs, supporters, players and coaching staff standing up and saying what they want.

    Change is already coming anyway, the Super League pressure has not gone away, the Champions League has already expanded, and UEFA and the elite clubs are in permanent negotiation about the future shape of European football. The question is not whether change happens, but whose interests it serves when it does.

    All of that is true. And it is also true that the European Super League was killed in seventy two hours by fan pressure, mass protests outside grounds, supporters groups threatening boycotts, broadcasters pulling coverage. The clubs folded almost immediately. That is not a small thing. It demonstrated that organised supporter opposition can, at the right moment, move faster than the legal and financial structures designed to protect elite interests.

    Build a voice. Get supporters groups, journalists, and club officials talking about what European football could look like, rather than just defending it against the worst version of what powerful clubs want it to become. Get this proposal in front of people who have institutional access, the Football Supporters Association, Football Supporters Europe, the ECA, so that it enters the conversation about reform rather than sitting outside it.

    Proposals that start conversations eventually become policies, if enough people decide they want them. UEFA did not introduce financial fair play because it thought of the idea. It introduced it because enough people applied enough pressure over enough time that the alternative, doing nothing, became more costly.

    If this ends up being discussed in the right rooms, that is enough. If it contributes to a movement that demands reform has universal access at its centre rather than elite protection, that is success too.

    They are replaced by two things running simultaneously through the European phase. The first is the league system: tiered divisions covering every professional club on the continent, operating on exactly the same logic as domestic football. Finish top, go up. Finish bottom, go down. Division 1 is effectively the new Champions League.

    The second is a European Cup, open draw, every professional club eligible from the first round. This is where the real magic lives. Real Madrid away at Rotherham. Arsenal travelling to a minnow in Slovenia. A non league side from Georgia hosting a club from the top division of France. The FA Cup is beloved precisely because the draw is open and anything can happen. This is that, but across an entire continent, every spring.

    Domestic cup competitions, the FA Cup, the DFB Pokal, the Copa del Rey, stay exactly as they are within the domestic phase. Nothing is lost. A great deal is added.

    The first season uses a composite score based on domestic league position, UEFA club coefficients, and recent European results where they exist to place clubs into their starting division. This produces an imperfect but broadly fair starting point, Real Madrid and Manchester City in Division 1, Grimsby Town and Dunfermline somewhere further down the pyramid, with the 400-odd clubs in between distributed by merit.

    After that first season, the system corrects itself. Results in the European phase determine where clubs start the following year. Finish top of Division 4 and you are in Division 3 the following year. Over time, a club's division reflects actual European performance rather than historical prestige or wealth. That is the design intention: access based on merit, not legacy.

    That is part of the point. The current system gives the vast majority of professional clubs in Europe almost no meaningful European football. They enter a qualifying round, usually lose, and go home. Under the Split Season, a club like Dinamo Tbilisi or FK Astana would be placed in a division appropriate to their level and compete through an entire spring campaign, with genuine promotion and relegation stakes. They would host clubs from larger nations. They would travel to unfamiliar countries. Their supporters would have a European campaign to follow.

    At the top, Division 1 will initially look familiar. But domestic football has the same dynamic, and it does not make the lower divisions meaningless. The structure guarantees every professional club a competitive European context. Where they end up within it is up to them.

    Both, because the structure is detailed enough to be taken seriously, with the division system, the promotion and relegation zones, and the calendar split all thought through rather than left as vague gestures toward something different.

    The gap between a fan proposal and a structural change to European football is enormous. The point of publishing this is not to pretend otherwise. It is to contribute something specific and positive to a conversation that is already happening, about what European football should look like, who it should serve, and whose interests should be at its centre.

    The worst outcome is for the next round of reform to happen entirely on the terms of the clubs with the most money, because nobody argued loudly enough for an alternative. This is an argument for an alternative.

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