2024-09-12 19:18:16
The Chilean consultant and businessman accused UEFA of plagiarism and said he is initiating legal action against the format, which has already been used in Chile.
The new edition of the UEFA Champions League will be carried out with a revolutionary format of competition, leaving aside the groups to include a league phasewhere each of the qualified teams will play eight matches against eight different clubs. However, this change opened a controversy in which a Chilean is involved: Leandro Sharawho accuses that his scheme was “stolen” from him.
Regarding the Swiss Format, as it is called in UEFA, this is played with 36 teams, which compete in a general table where they play eight matches and each team has a different schedule.
In this way, The clubs finishing in the top eight places will have direct access to the round of 16. While the frames that end between the 9th and 24th place of the general classification will play a knockout round, to define the other eight that will be in the round of 16.
In this context, where there is still some confusion among football fans regarding how this format will work, UEFA faces a complex judicial struggle for the copyright of the scheme, which would belong to the Chilean auditor accountant Leandro Shara, who claims to have created the system and registered it with FIFA.
Who is Leandro Shara, the Chilean who denounces UEFA plagiarism for the new Champions League format
Leandro Shara is a Chilean consultant, founder and creator of the company MatchVisión, which specializes in the innovation of competition formats. Before that, he graduated as a public accountant auditor at the University of Santiago in 1990.
According to his LinkedIn profile, he describes himself as “an expert in tournament format solutions, with More than 20 years of experience solving all kinds of competitions, matches, calendars and tiebreaker challenges for sporting competitions around the world.”
Among her creations, Shara explains that she designed competition formats for Concacaf (qualifiers for the 2019/2020 Nations League and qualifiers for the 2014 and 2018 World Cup), and who has also worked on the creation of schemes for national cups of the federations of Chile, Costa Rica and Peru.
The complaint against UEFA for “appropriating” the format that will be used in the Champions League
The Chilean consultant, who has worked for global companies such as PwC and GlaxoSmithKline, explained to La Tercera that he proposed the format to UEFA, which has already been applied in the 2011 Chilean Cup and is currently used in Peru Cup. “Not only in football, it is applied in more than 10 sports on four continents. FIFA hired me as a consultant, where it recognises the intellectual property that I have on the format, it does so by contract, in writing,” he said.
According to his statements, the new format that will be used in the Champions League was used more than 10 years ago in the Chilean Cupwhose “league phase” or first phase was also contested by 36 teams, each playing six matches.
This is how the general table looked like:
After that, there was no playoff phase, as will be the case in the European competition, but The eight qualifiers went directly to the quarter-finals, which ended with Universidad Católica being crowned champion by beating Magallanes in the final.
In this context, Leandro Shara in an interview with Diario AS Spain denounced that “the UEFA acquired our format unfairly through a chain of deceit, breaches and manipulation. And on top of that, he ignores us. We have provided material to multiple UEFA officials over the last ten years. We even sent it to Alexander Ceferin (UEFA president). Now they are copying us, using our work (which they said they would never use) taking advantage of our efforts and many years of research.”
The legal attack against UEFA
Asked if he remained in contact with the European organisation after the announcement of the new Champions League format, the Chilean told the aforementioned media outlet that “immediately when we found out that UEFA would use our format, we called them again, including President Ceferin himself. We genuinely wanted to support them to help them resolve serious implementation errors in the first versions. They sent us a note telling us they would contact us soon… and we are still waiting.”
Regarding the beginning of a legal battle against the European body, Leandro Shara told La Tercera that “I have already started the legal proceedings, when they announced it I sent my first cease and desistcease and desist in Spanish (order to stop an activity and not resume it later)“.
“The first time, Alexander Ceferin replied that he would contact me in a few days. Why did he reply? Because I have been in meetings with the highest UEFA authorities for 10 years. I have prepared analyses and done scientific research on the subject. Because of a matter of discrimination, they call it the Swiss Format and, in this way, it shows that they produced that format, which is not the case. Additionally, they sent me a note saying that they will continue and that I should continue with my legal actions,” the Chilean consultant concluded to the aforementioned media.