In a week when soccer's mighty get down to the real thing in the Champions League spare a thought for Nyva Ternopil. For who?

Nyva Ternopli is a little known Ukraine club that normally spends its days bringing up the bottom end of a First Division table dominated by Dinamo Kiev, winners of the last eight Ukraine titles. Last weekend, it was reported that senior Nyva coach, Ihor Yavorskyi, had resigned.

"The last straw was when the club's water, electricity, heating supplies and phone-lines were cut off," said an understandably unhappy Yavorskyi.

This might make for amusing reading, especially if we were talking about a Sunday morning, amateur kick-around side. Nyva, however, play in the same division as one of Eastern Europe's most famous clubs, one that in recent times has produced talent such as AC Milan's Andriy Shevchenko.

Even allowing for the obvious consideration that soccer in post-communist Eastern Europe remains a case apart, what is the future for a so-called first division side that has difficulty meeting its most basic costs?

Whilst Europe's top clubs, those within their respective TV-rights zones, continue to move forward at a lightning pace, are the rest being left behind?

Even clubs from a country rather more affluent than the Ukraine, namely those of current World and European champions France, are apparently losing out - at least according to no less a commentator than former French midfielder Michel Platini.

"There's no point being naive about this. A French club will never be able to win the Champions League if opposing clubs can count on a squad that includes 25 foreign players and can count on TV rights revenue that is all out of all proportion to what French clubs earn.

"There is huge disparity in European soccer, and it is getting worse all the time", Platini told French weekly L'Express.

At the moment, he serves on a variety of FIFA committees in his free-ranging role of "counsellor" to FIFA president Sepp Blatter.

In the past, too, Platini served on FIFA's special task force committee, arguing authoratively in favour of rule changes designed to both improve the game whilst better protecting creative players - the yellow card for the foul from behind and the rule that goalkeepers must play a defender's pass back with their feet rather than their hands.

Platini is talked of as a possible successor to Swede Lennart Johansson as next president of UEFA. "I haven't made up my mind yet . . . If I did stand in the UEFA 2002 elections, it would only be in order to see my principles win, not for the job itself . . ."

As an indication of those principles, Platini outlined a couple of his fondest concepts last week. "I think that players of my generation enjoyed their football more. Football has become a never-ending, tragi-comic drama rather than fun. I belong to a generation that was in love with soccer not business. Not that I find soccer-biz difficult to understand but I do wonder about clubs being quoted on the stock market. When you play football, you play to win, not to see your shares gain two points on the all-share index."

Now, a UEFA president who acted in accordance with those thoughts could prove intriguing. Wealth might be spread around, a deal more evenly. It might even reach as far as Nyva Ternopil.