12 Teams Announce Breakaway Super League

[RealGM Wiretap]

AC Milan, Arsenal, Atletico Madrid, Chelsea, Barcelona, Internazionale, Juventus, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United, Real Madrid and Tottenham Hotspur released statements announcing their entry as founding clubs of a European Super League. 

\"We will help football at every level and take it to its rightful place in the world. Football is the only global sport in the world with more than four billion fans and our responsibility as big clubs is to respond to their desires,\" said Madrid president Florentino Perez.

The clubs are set to withdraw from the European Club Association, according to the statement.

Super League matches will be played in the middle of the week.

The founding clubs are set to receive $4.19 billion.

\"Our 12 founder clubs represent billions of fans across the globe and 99 European trophies. We have come together at this critical moment, enabling European competition to be transformed, putting the game we love on a sustainable footing for the long-term future, substantially increasing solidarity, and giving fans and amateur players a regular flow of headline fixtures that will feed their passion for the game while providing them with engaging role models,\" released Andrea Agnelli in a statement. 

No German or French clubs have joined the league as of yet.

Via ESPN

[SkyHookFTW]

They have been looking at college football in the USA for a while and saw powerhouse universities move conferences for their own advantage. Same idea here.

[Message Boar]

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.