At the base of the current format of the Champions League, the one with 36 teams and eight guaranteed matches for each club, seems to be the hand – or rather: the mind – of a Chilean mathematician. He has sued UEFA, claiming that the formula of the current League Phase is his idea. And that, therefore, the European Confederation has committed a real theft against him. The plaintiff is named Leandro Shara, born in Santiago, Chile in 1966, and he claims to have had his first contacts with UEFA executives in June 2013, in Tel Aviv, Israel. “I met at that time with Giorgio Marchetti (now UEFA Secretary General) and his assistant Lance Kelly,” Shara explained to El Mundo. “I have witnesses, because a Mexican partner accompanied me on a long 36-hour journey from Chile.”
According to Shara, it was during that meeting that UEFA first came into contact with what was his idea to change the format of the Champions. For their part, according to Shara, the executives of the European Confederation appropriated it without acknowledging his authorship. On March 23, a court in Madrid declared itself ready to handle the case, and the match over the signing of the “new format” of the Champions League will therefore be played in court: “I just want my intellectual authorship to be recognized,” says Shara. However, in the meantime, he has also requested compensation of 20 million euros: “After all, I am asking for less than 0.5% of the revenue that my format generates,” Shara explained.
The Chilean mathematician retraced the path that led to his idea being “stolen” by UEFA: in 2003, while he was in a medical office, Shara saw on television Joseph Blatter, former FIFA president, discussing with a journalist about the impossibility of expanding the World Cup to involve more teams. “I immediately asked an employee for a pencil,” he recounted, “and I jotted down my idea on a piece of paper that I then put in my pocket.” Blatter, during his speech, had stated that he had already sought help from four consulting firms, but had never found a solution. Shara then realizes the value of his intuition and decides to present it to CONMEBOL (the governing body of football in South America). But the plan does not go well: “They told me they wouldn’t accept it,” he continues. “Two weeks later, however, I open the newspaper and see my ideas applied to the Copa Libertadores.”
Shara does not give up and decides to patent his format with the International Organization for Patents and Trademarks. His idea is then put into practice for the first time in 2011, for the Copa Chile, and then in 2015 in the Copa Peru. The mathematician becomes an external consultant for FIFA due to his ability to organize competitions and begins to hold conferences in America, Asia, and Europe. During one of these trips, Shara starts to have contacts with UEFA, until the meeting in Tel Aviv in 2013, when the Chilean mathematician also presents his proposal to the Nyon body. The UEFA executives, at least initially, do not seem enthusiastic about the project, convinced that the timing for a revolution of the Champions format is still premature. However, everything changes when UEFA’s monopoly is threatened by the Super League (a private competition created in 2021 by 12 top European clubs as an alternative to the Champions League): the clubs essentially demand more revenue, and so in 2024, after twenty years, the classic group format is abandoned with the introduction of the single league of 36 teams.
According to the Chilean mathematician, this format would have been built based on his idea, while Nyon claims authorship of the project. Moreover, they argue that the creation of the so-called “Swiss format” – as it has been dubbed by the press – was “the result of 10,000 hours of work.” As mentioned, Shara then decides to take legal action, requesting compensation of over 20 million euros – an amount that is set to increase for each season in which the format is applied. Not before, however, having reached out again to Nyon to resolve the issue amicably: according to reports from El Mundo, “the company led by Shara tried to obtain recognition of our format from UEFA, but they responded with disdain.” Then came the lawsuits and the court proceedings. Which, in some time, will reveal the (judicial) truth about the invention of the League Phase.