London: England should scrap its League Cup in order to avoid fixture congestion, Uefa president Aleksander Ceferin has said.
English teams compete for both the FA Cup and the League Cup every season but the scheduling and format of the latter has come in for criticism, especially with two-legged semi-finals adding to a congested calendar.
Liverpool were forced to play their Under-23 team in this season’s quarter-finals as the senior team had to fly to Qatar for the Club World Cup and manager Jurgen Klopp had appealed for football authorities to rethink the scheduling of their big events.
“The League Cup is off in France already. Only England remains. I think that everybody knows that it would be better for everyone if that were not played any more,” Ceferin said in an interview with The Times.
The French professional football league decided in September that the League Cup would not be held from next season after they failed to secure a broadcaster for the 2020-2024 period while Germany, Spain and Italy have only one cup competition.
“But the problem is that, through that cup, you finance a lot of clubs that are quite disadvantaged,” Ceferin added. “So I understand the problem. The English are also quite traditionalist, you like things that have been there for ages.”
Manchester City won the League Cup for the third consecutive season last weekend after beating Aston Villa 2-1 at Wembley.
