The plans drawn up by top clubs to reshape the Champions League after 2024 would create a “super league” motivated by greed that Uefa should firmly reject, the president of Europe’s football leagues’ association said.

Lars-Christer Olsson, who heads the European Leagues, the collective body that includes the Premier League, told the Guardian that Uefa should instead be looking to improve “competitive balance” so that success is not so concentrated among rich clubs. Olsson called for 20% of Champions League revenues to be redistributed outside the participating clubs and for Europe’s leagues to share money more equally.

Speaking at the start of a potentially fraught week in football politics, Olsson described proposals presented by Uefa and the European Club Association last month as a “closed league”, designed to give 24 top clubs permanent participation in an expanded, lucrative Champions League.

The ECA has consistently denied it has any developed plans for the future of European football, despite making public new “principles” for a “pyramidal structure” and promotion and relegation. The chairman of the ECA and Juventus, Andrea Agnelli, a driving force behind the project, said a year ago that he wanted the Champions League to provide eight more matches in the group stage, by having four groups of eight clubs rather than eight groups of four, and that domestic leagues could be diminished.

Publicly Uefa has not confirmed how far plans have been developed beyond “an informal brainstorming session” with the ECA board in March on the shape of its competitions when the game’s agreed calendar concludes in five years. The Uefa president, Aleksander Ceferin, has said since that a consultation is ongoing and that he wants “to find a way forward that meets the needs of the game across the whole of Europe, not just in the big markets”.

Lars-Christer Olsson says Uefa must ‘develop a much fairer distribution of the money from European competitions’. Photograph: José Sena Goulão/EPA-EFE

Olsson, however, said European Leagues were shown detailed plans by Uefa last month, which were supported by the ECA, for 24 clubs to retain participation in the Champions League each season, and for the group stage to be recast as Agnelli proposed. For the first season, 2024-25, 28 clubs were proposed to be included based on their ranking in their national leagues over the four previous seasons. Only four clubs, most likely champions of mid-ranking leagues, would make it into the Champions League through qualifying rounds.

The ECA’s promise of promotion and relegation was incorporated into a divisional structure with the Europa League, which would have a top division of 32 clubs and second division of 64. Four clubs would be promoted from the second division and four from the top division into the Champions League. Eight clubs would be relegated at the end of the season from the Champions League into the Europa, although domestic champions could redeem themselves through the qualifying process.

“This is not even a new proposal – it is very similar to the proposals made by the old G14 [top] clubs 20 years ago, for a breakaway super league,” said Olsson, who was involved in senior Uefa administration from 1992 and was the organisation’s chief executive from 2004 to 2007. “But this is more dangerous because it is proposed under the auspices of Uefa, the governing body of European football.

“There has been huge opposition from our member leagues and clubs across Europe, from supporters and increasingly now from national associations, telling Uefa that this closed shop is a proposal for the richest clubs to get even wealthier. This is an attempt to form a super league, absolutely.”

Uefa’s president, Aleksander Ceferin, has commissioned work on improving competitive balance. Photograph: Angel Diaz/EPA

Analysis by European Leagues for its clubs documented the Champions League’s phenomenal growth in TV exposure and income, from a total of €22m (£19.5m) shared with the participating clubs in 1992-93, the first year of its modern reorganisations, to a projected €2bn (£1.8bn) this season.

More of those revenues have become increasingly concentrated in the coffers of successful and rich clubs, a tendency continuing in the 2018-21 cycle. Overall Champions League revenues have increased over these three seasons by €686m compared with 2015-18, and a “coefficient” has been introduced, awarding 30% of the income according to clubs’ historical victories in the competition, clearly benefiting major clubs.

While the Premier League, Europe’s richest by far, has developed a huge financial gap between its top six clubs and the other 14, several other European leagues have become increasingly dominated by a single club, which is perpetuated by that club receiving more money for its success. In Serie A Juventus have been league winners now for eight consecutive seasons. But an inability to close the financial gap with the Premier League is one of Agnelli’s motivations for the post-2024 plans.

Ceferin has commissioned internal work on improving competitive balance but ideas including restrictions on squad sizes and a “luxury tax” fall well short of seriously redistributing TV money.

“Our counterproposal,” Olsson said, “is for Uefa to develop a much fairer distribution of the money from European competitions, to leagues other than the wealthiest, that 20% should be redistributed. We need to keep the dream alive for clubs, to help their youth development, and to improve competitive balance.

“This ECA proposal will distort competitive balance in Uefa competitions and domestic competitions – making the gap between the rich clubs and the rest permanent, or even bigger. We’re calling for preserving the European model, not introducing the closed North American system.”

The ECA is holding a special general assembly of its clubs in Malta on Thursday and Friday; its position is that no new competition formats have yet been agreed and its plan is to “workshop the principles”.