Clubs deny knowing Super League plan at UEFA meeting
NYON: European football leaders came to UEFA seeking answers about Real Madrid’s plan for a breakaway Super League that threatens the game’s historic structure.
They got no new details from officials representing top clubs, according to people familiar with the meeting of UEFA’s strategy council.
Instead, the latest plans for an elite breakaway league – which were revealed Nov 2 in the Football Leaks series – were said to be driven by “one and a half clubs”, referring to Real and Bayern Munich, multiple sources said.
They spoke on condition of anonymity because the meeting was confidential.
Bayern’s internal documents from 2016 detailing an earlier breakaway plan was revealed by German magazine Der Spiegel, which has spearheaded the publication of confidential documents and e-mails from clubs and football bodies.
UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin was joined on Wednesday by players’ union officials and European league delegates asking questions about the Super League plans at the most significant European football meeting since Football Leaks started.
Still, the sources said leaders of the European Club Association (ECA) – from Juventus, Barcelona, Manchester United, Paris St Germain and Celtic – claimed in the meeting that they had not known of the Super League proposal being drafted in Madrid.
No one from Real attended the UEFA-hosted talks, though the club’s vice-chairman, Pedro Lopez, is a vice-chairman of the 232-member ECA group.
Juventus president Andrea Agnelli, the ECA chairman, declined to comment after the two-hour meeting.
The FIFPro union and European Leagues group had previously criticised the Super League plan, which was revealed in e-mails from Realbased consultants to the Spanish club.
It suggested a 16-team line-up to kickoff in 2021, with 11 founding clubs to get ownership stakes and risk-free membership for 20 years.
Five more clubs would be invited to play in what would effectively be a replacement for the Champions League, which shares more than US$2bil (RM8.4bil) each season among 32 clubs but is controlled by UEFA.
The plan seemed to betray ECA leader Agnelli’s repeated promise of no changes being made to the Champions League before 2024.
“All parties underlined their commitment to working together towards the development of club competitions under the leadership of UEFA,” the European football body said in a statement about Wednesday’s meeting, which did not mention the breakaway project.
European media reports have also detailed how some clubs – including Manchester City and PSG, backed by owners from royal families in Qatar and Abu Dhabi – evaded UEFA rules on sponsor deals and spending on transfers and wages.