Graham Kelly: How Aigner's astuteness helped Uefa to save the World Cup

Gerhard Aigner's peremptory and unexpected fax was clear. "Butt out", it meant. It was January 1997 and the chief executive of Uefa, the governing body of European football, who has announced that he will be retiring at the end of this year, was instructing the Football Association to withdraw from the World Cup 2006 campaign in favour of Germany in the interests of European solidarity.

Too much water has flowed under too many rebuilt bridges for that argument to be profitably revisited, but, when the Uefa president, Lennart Johansson, who paid warm tribute to Aigner for his commitment and dedication to football at the Rome congress last week, confided to me in Stockholm the following year that the chief executive could be the slightest bit stubborn, I took great delight in replying: "I've noticed".

Aigner had the task of ushering in the apple of Arsène Wenger's eye, the Champions' League, in 1992 and, in a frenzied round of shuttle diplomacy that would have tested the most skilled of world diplomats, the urbane German went eyeball-to-eyeball with the powerful European club magnates in 1998 when the Media Partners initiative was threatening to hijack the concept and convert it into a stand-alone superleague.

He has consistently battled to ensure the Champions' League's survival, with all its imperfections and frequent adjustments. It's a money-spinning bonanza which benefits not just the giants but also the smaller clubs and associations.

Alan Hansen addressed a topical issue simplistically in his club versus country documentary on BBC TV: Champions' League or World Cup? A group of Manchester eight-year-olds may have delivered the perfect riposte to Wenger and his Arsenal vice-chairman, David Dein, when they chorused that they dreamed of scoring the winning goal in the World Cup final rather than the Champions' League because of the greater worldwide glory such a feat would bring.

But it can be argued that Uefa, the wealthiest of the confederations, under Aigner, has saved the World Cup. For what would have happened to the world order if an outside circus had got the cream of European club football in 1998?

Everyone in the game pays lip service to the current regulatory structure: leagues, associations, confederations, and Fifa, football's world governing body. But, equally, nobody denies that money calls the tune and by fighting for the Champions' League, which may not be to the increasingly pompous purists' satisfaction, Aigner ironically did his long-time rival, the Fifa president, Sepp Blatter, a supreme service.

Aigner may have had animus to Blatter, but his instincts were usually correct. He kept Uefa out of the agents' maelstrom, arguing that Fifa should delegate authority over the transfer system to the confederations, or keep the whole sorry thing. (They held on to it.)

Fifa made repeated errors over agents. They knew from a commission including their then president, João Havelange, that an unauthorised agent had been used in the transfer of John Jensen and overlooked the irregularity, before a subsequent investigation caused the downfall of George Graham at Arsenal. Loopholes between the FA and Fifa over the regulations on agents led to bungled proceedings against the Fifa-licensed agent, Dennis Roach.

Then we come to the Fifa transfer windows. Are they open windows or not? Certainly, the Football League are unsure. The Premier League have followed Fifa instructions, but the Football League, who have been trying to obtain an answer from Fifa headquarters in Zurich for more than a year, have not.

I venture to suggest that, if a sufficiently determined pan-European group of powerful club owners, bolstered by a sound marketing proposal, got together, it would take more than a year's waffling about Fifa statutes to prevent them from destroying the world order and the World Cup with it. That may be more likely with markets declining – Aigner warned the Rome Congress that, with some deals still to be concluded, the value of the new television contract would mean there will be £110m less to share out next season – because in desperate times, as we have seen in England, extreme measures result. The Premier League was born after the Hillsborough tragedy.

So, Johansson will have to find a successor to Aigner before he himself steps down, probably after the World Cup in Germany in 2006. The French legend Michel Platini, now a member of both the Uefa and Fifa executives and, as a Blatter ally, a possible replacement for Johansson, is, at the very least, the most likely candidate for the French nomination as their most illustrious player of the last 50 years for Uefa's Hall of Fame, which will mark their golden jubilee next year.

The next chief executive is likely to be more malleable and probably more noticeable than the courteous Aigner, but he will definitely need to be as strong.

Aigner, 60 in December, is leaving to spend more time with his family: the very best of reasons.

grahamkelly@btinternet.com