UEFA and its role in European football

UEFA and its role in European football

Room 101, Foster Court,
(Off Torrington Place WC1 opposite Waterstones Bookstore)

Wednesday 15th December 2004, 6pm-8pm

Given by:

Alex Phillips, Senior Manager, UEFA’s Professional Football Division


Before taking a position within UEFA, Alex Phillips worked in the City and then in Paris, Madrid and Milan before switching careers via the MBA Football Industries at Liverpool. Alex then spent four years at Deloitte Sport as an analyst and consultant. Fluent in French, Italian and Spanish, he created the European financial analysis for Deloitte which is now the lead feature in the Deloitte Annual Review. He has been at UEFA since 2002.

Alex’s role at UEFA encompasses:

  • specific stakeholders such as:
    • European professional leagues; and
    • player unions; and
  • specific projects such as, for example:
    • strategic analysis and planning; and
    • “Investing in Local Training of Players”

In this lecture, Alex will cover the following areas:

  1. UEFA’s role: Who are we? What do we actually do? How do we structure ourselves to achieve that?
  2. Structure of European football: How does it look now? Why does it look like that? What are the Pros and Cons?
  3. Solidarity: a key example – UEFA Champions League solidarity payments to leagues for youth development in clubs (180 million EURO distributed in five years).

(This seminar is invitation only. For further details please email Matt Holt)


  • King, A. (2000) ‘Football and post-national identity in the new Europe.’ British Journal of Sociology 51 (3), 419-42
  • King, A. (2003) The European Ritual (Aldershot: Ashgate).
  • UEFA Statutes (2004)
  • UEFA Direct (page 14)
  • UEFA Direct (available from publications section of
  • UEFA Annual Reports (available from publications sections of


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