European Super League (Indefinitely Suspended)

[HIF]

Some of the founding members of the SL are setting themselves to be perennial doormats for a few years at least.

If they weren't going to qualify for CL next year or the next few years, they won't be that good in the SL, where they don't have a dozen games vs. bottom of the table clubs.

What is that going to do to ticket and merchandise sales if a club like Arsenal or Tottenha are like #15 or #16 in the SL table?

This is the hilarious thing about the SL. Teams who think they are big winners are going to be perennial losers. Will spurs win a trophy in the next 100 years?

[HIF]

Some of the founding members of the SL are setting themselves to be perennial doormats for a few years at least.

If they weren't going to qualify for CL next year or the next few years, they won't be that good in the SL, where they don't have a dozen games vs. bottom of the table clubs.

What is that going to do to ticket and merchandise sales if a club like Arsenal or Tottenha are like #15 or #16 in the SL table?

Tottenham just fixed their problem: Mourinho. I think they will be fine.
Arsenal need to get their act together and fix their recruiting and probably a better manager. The player recruitment will be a bit easier since they will always play in the top competition.
For Arsenal in particular I think it's better to be 15th in SL, than to be in Europa League every year.
In the long run they will need a salary cap and a CBA similar to NBA, but for now the 12-15 founding members are in similar size markets(except for London and Paris).

As an Arsenal fan, I'm actually looking at it from a totally different perspective. That's just more money for Stan Kroenke (net worth: 8.2 billion) to not spend on players, so why the hell would I care?

Or to put in his pocket.

This league is being formed in part because the BIG clubs have mismanaged money by paying footballers too much and are now in heavy debt. It's not to do with football. They'll run into debt again in the near future as their bankers ask they to pay back the loans. Did any of you see the financial record of Manchester united since their rich owners took over. Debt, debt and more debt.

Let them go. Cut them off. Let's get some soul back into real football and financial stability.

I must admit that when Leicester were in the second division I didn't watch the Prem very much and apart from when Leicester were in the CL I don't watch that very much either. I like to watch my team and the teams that we play against. I enjoy watching football at any level. Perhaps I'm abnormal but watching Messi and Ronaldo are fun but not as much fun as watching teams that I'm attached to.

[HIF]

At any rate, based on what I'm seeing and reading, and I have no idea how to accurately assess this, but the response seems to be overwhelmingly negative so far. If that is indeed the case and it continues, it will be interesting to see if they still push through with this or not, ramifications be damned.

Hope they do. we don't need cancerous owners continuing to kill football from inside our domestic leagues.

[HIF]

Im in awe of Florentino Perez. The guy knows how to run a propaganda campaign. The whole world can see through this blatant power grab. And he just doesn´t give a ****, son. No, this is actually good for small clubs and the whole world of football if an exclusive club of billionares are doing their thing and getting richer, and that those filthy rich men alone have the power to decide who can join the club.
The profits the SL will generate will massively support clubs like Spielvereinigung Unterhaching. It just does. Believe him. He will make Unterhaching great again.

I should hang a portrait of him at the clubhouse in my town. Just to honor this great man.

someone has to explain me how atletico , bayern or juventus can agree to a league where the PRESIDENT is florentino who has rigged the " draws" and blatantly payed the refs for the last hafl a decade and deprived them of several C.L wins.
like seriously, refs robbed atletico TWICE and Bayern TWICE against them and juventus once.

I guess in the Serie A, only a couple of teams are making big money. Same is true in the other top leagues.

In the EPL though they have a huge TV contract where the bottom of the table clubs are getting tens of million of quids a year. So the 6 biggest EPL clubs may think that they should be getting more money, not having to share with a Sheffield or Burnley.

Meanwhile, Barca and Real get huge revenues but their TV money is nothing like the EPL so they want a more TV money. Same probably for Juve and the Milan clubs.

I wonder if SL games will only be available on paid TV, like Sky and maybe ESPN or Paramount + in the US.

In the SL how long will it be before the top teams want a bigger share of the cake than Spurs? And the invited 5 (hahahaha) will have to pay to enter the league for 1 season.

The league is a sand castle. built upon foundations of debt. the only winners will be the bankers (as always). Long live Capitalism.

[HIF]

That's very good post for those who try compare soccer with those few NBA franchises thinking that Europe is one country without grasp how big this thing is and how separation of those teams hurt whole european soccer perspective.
UEFA provides financial support to develop and foster football at all levels - that's the biggest problem some people here does not understand.

I think the people you disagree with you understand very well. You should not assume that if someone doesn't agree with you, doesn't understand something. Here in US we like to debate a lot, which is very healthy.
What UEFA does in Europe, the high schools and colleges are doing it in US. UEFA and FIFA are being chastised for being corrupt, with well known and unknown scandals around that

That's exactly the answer which telling me that you're missing the main point what peope try to tell you.
I don't doubt that someone finance sports on a micro level also in States, hower this does not change the fact that it's UEFA who does this with soccer in Europe.
UEFA is not saint, but it's beyond my understanding how someone can't see how bad idea is a separating of richer part of association from UEFA for whole European soccer.
Unless you believe that all the other european soccer, development of young talents included, apart from those few clubs for us don't matter.

It would be like the whites separating from the non-whites in business and then explaining to us how wonderful it will be for the poor as well as the wealthy.

[HIF]

"Our primary job is to maximise our revenues and profits. The wider good of the game is a secondary concern"

Wow

This is capitalism not sport.

[HIF]

I remember how some American Friends of mine had a hard time understanding why English sports had "draws" (that's ties for you North Americans) in all of their sports. Culturally they couldn't understand that for us winning wasn't the point of sport, only a target and not having a winner even after 5 days - like in Test Match Cricket - was not a problem for us.

In the states has there been a movement to get soccer to have extra time until a winner is found in each match?

[HIF]

Read on Twitter

[queridiculo]

im completley against it.

and check my team.

if we screw up one year and finsh 10th in la liga we DON NOT DESERVE to play european competition.
If Real Valladolid or Eibar goes on a monster season and finish top 4 then they DO deserve to play CL.

Plain and clear.

No to this b.s

you win your wings on the green you dont buy it with greens.

I mean, that's really the gist of it, and I'll take it a step further.

Even the current Champions League format is a watered down competition that was solely put in place to put more money into the pockets of the big name clubs that couldn't hack it in their domestic leagues.

Prior to the inception of Champions League the UEFA competition for the domestic champions was the pinnacle of football.

A ruthless 2-leg knockout competition that only featured the national champs where in any given matchup even the clubs from smaller leagues had a fighting chance to compete and advance.

Even the joke that is now Euro League had a tremendous amount of cachet when it was still the UEFA Cup because it featured a tremendous amount of competition that included the runner ups in the domestics.

All the Super League is going to accomplish is to dilute European club competition even further and take any meaning and glamor out of inter-league matchups for the sole purpose of marketing clubs, whose tradition has been rendered meaningless, to a global audience.

As if anybody really gives a flying **** watching Premier League imposters like Arsenal, Chelsea and Tottenham play meaningless September games against Atlético Madrid or the jokers from the Seria A.

It's a joke, and if you're not seeing it for what it is then you're part of the problem.

[Jack Dempsey]

I wonder what will happen if the uefa stands opposed and banishes clubs. All the transfers depend on the European laws which promote free quitting. That would probably mean that legally you could just offer better money to player and he could go to any direction without club compensation, which would be completely in line with European judicial system, Big 12 have more money than others, but others are many and if they do not need to compensate, a lot of teams could just offer a better salary to one player, if they can avoid compensation. This fight could be really interesting, but it depends on the proposition that UEFA really expels those clubs completely, and there is a question if italian or spanish leagues will have guts to stand out to big three of their countries.

The players would still have valid contracts with their UEFA teams. Voiding those contracts won't be that easy. NBA teams can't just sign Europeans whenever they want either. In most cases, the NBA teams pay the allowed amount of money (it used to be $500 000) as a compensation fee and the player pays the rest by himself to get out of his contract.

[Jack Dempsey]

Reading this thread I realized Americans do not understand the way us, europeans, feel about our teams. You guys seem to care only about Liverpool, Man Utd or Barcelona. In Europe, the average football fan cares about Sparta Prague, FC Copenhagen, Panathinaikos, etc. It's not that nobody cares about football anymore, it's just that we're getting bored of the same teams all over again. It's that the gap between the richest teams and the rest of Europe became way too big in the last 20 years. Last weekend I saw 5 football games. 3 of them weren't even from the Top 5 Leagues (Eng, Ita, Esp, Ger and Fra) and out of those 12 teams, only Inter participated in those 5 games I've watched. Yesterday I've talking to two friends of mine about football. They did watch a couple of games by themselves... different games. A West Ham fan could care less about City vs Chelsea, especially when his Team is playing at the same time. No Fiorentina fan is going to watch Juve vs Inter when his Team is playing Spezia.

It's different in the US. You guys have like 30 professional Teams you're rooting for. In Europe we have hundreds and everyone of them has his own fanbase. Football is still very popular.

[queridiculo]

I wonder what will happen if the uefa stands opposed and banishes clubs. All the transfers depend on the European laws which promote free quitting. That would probably mean that legally you could just offer better money to player and he could go to any direction without club compensation, which would be completely in line with European judicial system, Big 12 have more money than others, but others are many and if they do not need to compensate, a lot of teams could just offer a better salary to one player, if they can avoid compensation. This fight could be really interesting, but it depends on the proposition that UEFA really expels those clubs completely, and there is a question if italian or spanish leagues will have guts to stand out to big three of their countries.

The players would still have valid contracts with their UEFA teams. Voiding those contracts won't be that easy. NBA teams can't just sign Europeans whenever they want either. In most cases, the NBA teams pay the allowed amount of money (it used to be $500 000) as a compensation fee and the player pays the rest by himself to get out of his contract.

The UK in particular could make things very complicated for the British clubs via things like work permits, but given the monopoly status of UEFA it's going to be interesting to see what recourse the member associations have.

The foremost battle will be about the UEFA clause that gives the organization the sole rights to organize competitions between the member associations.

The associations that have Super League club members would be in breach of contract so it will be interesting to see the reaction of the domestic leagues to this open rebellion.

[Drax]

I must admit that when Leicester were in the second division I didn't watch the Prem very much and apart from when Leicester were in the CL I don't watch that very much either. I like to watch my team and the teams that we play against. I enjoy watching football at any level. Perhaps I'm abnormal but watching Messi and Ronaldo are fun but not as much fun as watching teams that I'm attached to.

You are not. Same here. I move on from any competition i've no rooting interest in.

[HIF]

I wonder what will happen if the uefa stands opposed and banishes clubs. All the transfers depend on the European laws which promote free quitting. That would probably mean that legally you could just offer better money to player and he could go to any direction without club compensation, which would be completely in line with European judicial system, Big 12 have more money than others, but others are many and if they do not need to compensate, a lot of teams could just offer a better salary to one player, if they can avoid compensation. This fight could be really interesting, but it depends on the proposition that UEFA really expels those clubs completely, and there is a question if italian or spanish leagues will have guts to stand out to big three of their countries.

The players would still have valid contracts with their UEFA teams. Voiding those contracts won't be that easy. NBA teams can't just sign Europeans whenever they want either. In most cases, the NBA teams pay the allowed amount of money (it used to be $500 000) as a compensation fee and the player pays the rest by himself to get out of his contract.

The UK in particular could make things very complicated for the British clubs via things like work permits, but given the monopoly status of UEFA it's going to be interesting to see what recourse the member associations have.

The foremost battle will be about the UEFA clause that gives the organization the sole rights to organize competitions between the member associations.

The associations that have Super League club members would be in breach of contract so it will be interesting to see the reaction of the domestic leagues to this open rebellion.

In England, I don't know about other countries, the city has allowed the team to use it's name but they could remove that right. That would mean perhaps the Red Mersey liver birds could be playing against the North Eastern Red Devils.

[Message Boar]

This would be the greatest tragedy in sports during my lifetime, if it were to happen as proposed. Like, I get that there's big clubs and smaller club and that money will play a role in football like it does in all things, but this is preposterous and I won't watch a minute of it in the proposed format (like I won't watch the world cup in Qatar).

My anger at the snake Perez, along with Agnelli and the others, caused me to go off on a bit of a rant under one of the articles on here. I'll post it below in spoilers, because it became a bit long-winded. I do feel like it reflects some of the feelings of many European football fans on the matter, so I do want to leave it in this thread for future reference.

Spoiler:

The snake finally shows his true face, along with Andrea Agnelli of Juventus. Those two, along with the Glazers of Manchester United are apparently the main masterminds behind this monstrosity of greed. The same people that recently leveraged the UEFA to give their competitions 4 guaranteed spots in the "Champion's" League have now decided that, 'nope, that's not quite enough, we need even more money, and we want it guaranteed every year, no matter what'. Of course -ironically- the UEFA has been creating the circumstances for this monster to emerge for years, by pandering to the richest and biggest clubs. It's only now that their own project (the Champion's League) is threatened that all of a sudden they are on the side of merit, competitiveness and an "equal playing field".

That being said, for all it's faults, I approve of the UEFA, FIFA and other governing bodies stepping in here and doing whatever they can to make sure this monstrosity never sees the light of day, certainly not in any form close to the one that's been "proposed". It goes against everything that football in Europe stands for. The fans almost unanimously don't want it, the players don't want it, the coaches and other employees of the clubs don't want it. The only ones that want it are the greedy, morally corrupt owners/chairmen of the teams involved. Because money. Money that they, especially the "southern" teams, claim to desperately NEED. But this is only because THEY decided that it was fine to pay exorbitant figures in transfer fees and salaries to build star-studded rosters. THEY decided to plunge themselves into massive debts with their fiscally unsound decisions and worry about the money later, as opposed to teams like Bayern München who don't spend money they don't have and publicize their financial bookkeeping yearly. And now -perhaps accelerated by the pandemic- these teams are willing sacrifice European football as we know it at the altar of their greed.

As for the "northern" teams, i.e. the 6 English teams, It seems more of a case of foreign owners (mostly American, but also Russian and Middle-Eastern) who want to make sure their toys get to play each other in their own closed league (and also $$$). They want an American-style league catered to American and Asian tv audiences, and are fine completely disregarding wishes of the die-hard local fans that bleed red, blue or white. Funnily, only 2 of the 6 English insurgent teams are currently in position to play European football at the highest level next season. These teams, for whatever reason, think they themselves should have the right to decide who gets to participate in this ostensibly lucrative, walled-off, elitist league. But at the same time they wish to stay within the normal national and international infrastructure and "compete" with teams that don't have access to $300 million on a yearly basis. It is this unfairness and disgraceful, shameful moral corruption that has caused the football-loving community to immediately revolt against this "super" league . To at least save some semblance of the sporting traditions that we love in the face of the ever-growing power of money and the elite.

Edit: also sad to see some North-American posters almost gleefully fine with pushing an American system on European football. I suppose caring only about money and your own happiness is the American way, but you should try caring about the lives and happiness of others sometime, it's great ! Cactus Jack, you in particular as a Sonics fan -A SONICS FAN-, should be able to recognize how the greed of ownership can destroy the happiness of a fanbase. Shame on you. Or are you fine with the Sonics becoming the Thunder?

[Rasho Brezec]

Majority of the arguments against clubs achieving independence from UEFA so far are blatantly ethnocentric and borderline xenophobic.

[Foye]

Majority of the arguments against clubs achieving independence from UEFA so far are blatantly ethnocentric and borderline xenophobic.

Wonder what you will say about this when Arsenal hover around the bottom of the Super League table for years.

[Rasho Brezec]

Majority of the arguments against clubs achieving independence from UEFA so far are blatantly ethnocentric and borderline xenophobic.

Wonder what you will say about this when Arsenal hover around the bottom of the Super League table for years.

Clubs have their legitimate owners and they should be able to freely decide who they want to cooperate with. Whether I like that or not is irrelevant.

[HIF]

Majority of the arguments against clubs achieving independence from UEFA so far are blatantly ethnocentric and borderline xenophobic.

Most of us don't care if your team leaves the prem. We just don't want them staying in and wrecking football for their own cause. Even your players don't want it and think your owner is just a greedy monster.

Kick them out EPL!

[HIF]

Read on Twitter

I knew we'd be able to count on Marcus. Now he needs to tell his owner to stick his contract and release him to play for a reasonable owner.