Heineken Cup
'The ERC is dead'
ESPN Staff
September 26, 2013
Jacky Lorenzetti, President of Racing Metro 92, watches his side in action, Saracens v Racing Metro, Heineken Cup, Vicarage Road, Watford, England, December 11, 2010
Racing Metro owner Jacky Lorenzetti has built up a reported €245m fortune from his property dealings © Getty Images
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Racing Metro president Jacky Lorenzetti has delivered another hammer blow to hopes that the Heineken Cup could yet be saved by insisting that the current competition is 'dead'.

Premiership Rugby, the umbrella body representing the leading English clubs, and its French counterparts, the Ligue Nationale de Rugby (LNR), confirmed earlier this month that they plan to form a new cross-border competition for the 2014-15 season - the Rugby Champions Cup - having failed to negotiate changes to the structure of the Heineken Cup and also the qualification criteria and the distribution of revenue.

European Rugby Cup Ltd (ERC), the organiser of both the Heineken Cup and the second tier Amlin Challenge Cup, has scheduled a fresh round of negotiations for October 23 and have appointed an independent mediator in a bid to find a suitable compromise but the English and French clubs have no interest in dealing with the union-dominated ERC and are determined to push on with their own plans for a new tournament.

However, any new competition requires the approval of the respective unions and the International Rugby Board and the French Rugby Federation (FFR) and the sport's governing body having signalled their intent to block any such move.

But Lorenzetti is undeterred and has revealed that the clubs have their sights set beyond Europe. "Today, the European Cup is flawed," he told the Le Parisien. "It is organised by the federations. This is not normal. This is a competition for professional clubs, it should be managed by the leagues. With the English, we have asked for more space, a better distribution of roles without, moreover, taking from the Celtic teams.

He added: "We'll play something else. The ERC is dead. The competition we want to set up goes beyond the European circle. We are creating a global organisation to launch the Club World Cup. There will be English, French, New Zealand, Australian, South African, teams, and nations who want to join us. We are ecumenical!"

Lorenzetti has also shrugged off the FFR's hard line stance, commenting: "The role of the French Federation is to take care of the French national team. We are not asking to organise the Six Nations! However, in return, everything concerning the clubs must return to the Ligue Nationale."

However, Lorenzetti is aware the restrictions of the current global calendar could hamper their hopes of a southern hemisphere presence in the competition. "The difficulty is actually to respect the coherence of the calendar. We are working in this direction."

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