Super League: offside by a mile

The threat to establish a closed European Super League of 20 teams, unveiled by Joel Glazer, US owner of Manchester United, has struck at the integrity of the game. According to the outline presented, 15 members of the breakaway Super League will be granted membership in perpetuity. Each participant would receive over £300m on joining and access to a multibillion-pound infrastructure fund. For supporters, the sense of jeopardy on which meaningful sport depends will be removed, turning elite football into a soulless series of repeat episodes. For those clubs and fans outside the gilded aristocracy, national competitions and more than a century of tradition would be devalued.

This venal, self-serving plan has not come out of the blue. In the Premier League, laissez-faire ownership rules, spiralling player salaries and booming broadcasting fees have distorted competition and corrupted the values of the game. The top clubs have become rapacious, profiteering institutions. As football has replicated growing inequalities in the wider economy, a damaging gulf between the ‘‘big six’’ English clubs and the rest has emerged.

It must be hoped that the brazen effrontery of this attempt to stifle sporting competition will prove a case of overreach – and a turning point. The wider football world has united to condemn the plan. The government is exploring legislative possibilities to scupper it, and on Monday announced a fan-led review into the governance of the game. After decades of money-grabbing at the top of the game, a new settlement for football is indeed required. But it is not the one envisaged by Joel Glazer and his unscrupulous allies.