If our greedy, pampered clubs want to join a super league, call their bluff
HERE is what the Premier League should offer to ward off the threat of a European super league. nothing. Actually, not quite nothing. Less than nothing. A pay cut, in fact.
Industry experts say the threat of a breakaway is only a means of negotiation for Europe’s elite clubs, seeking a larger share of football’s riches. Well, if it’s negotiation they want, let’s negotiate.
Here’s our position. If you want to be part of a European super league, go. Just don’t think you can be part of our league, too; or the FA Cup; or any other domestic competition.
And when your league fails, as it will because it is artificial and boring, in essence non-competitive and the fans will hate it, don’t think you can come back to us on the same deal as before.
Junior partners. That is what you will be. Half a vote at the meetings, half the money when we divide the spoils up at the end of the season.
And you’ll have to take it, because the alternative will be to go back to your empty, meaningless league, or to tour the world like the Harlem Globetrotters playing exhibition matches for Charlie Stillitano against all the other clubs too greedy to know they were on to a good thing.
It shows the absence of imagination at the top of football’s pyramid that these threats are not put to bed in 24 hours.
One concerted effort from FIFA, UEFA, the national associations and domestic leagues, and this could be over by tomorrow afternoon. The reason it won’t be is that the people at the helm of those organisations are too busy figuring out what’s in it for them to come up with a coherent initiative that makes the problem go away.
If FIFA said any players participating in a breakaway league would be banned from competing in international football, that would make the stars of the show think again.
If UEFA announced that the club members of a breakaway league would be banned from all European competition for 10 years, starting from the date they reapply to join — as they will when their league fails — the risk would need to be re-evaluated.
And if the collective associations and leagues made plain the punitive measures that would greet the rebels, stripping them of their influence, their most significant revenue streams and their status in the game — surely a club that resigns from the Premier League does not return at the top, but the bottom of the league pyramid — it would serve as a reminder where the power really lies. In the collective, and that includes the fans.
For you, the people, could stop this before any momentum has a chance to build. not the armchair fans who invest nothing more than subscription fees and the click of a remote control handset, but the ones who fill stadiums with noise and colour and who can be relied upon to stay loyal, even when their team is mid-table or failing.
The 74,525 who made it to Old Trafford for the match against Everton on October 28 — the 60,000 who regularly consume the most expensive tickets in Britain at Arsenal, a club that hasn’t won a league title in 14 years.
If the supporters make it plain that they are not buying the European super league, then the European super league cannot fly. And just in case anyone is foolish enough to have their interest piqued by the prospect of a breakaway, here is what will happen: you will lose your club.
You will lose your Saturday afternoons, you will lose your away days, you will lose community and companionship and all the positives you currently take for granted as part of football’s package.
This is because the league is in part the work of Stillitano and he already runs a football tournament for Europe’s elite clubs, the International Champions Cup.
And where does it take place? not near you. Chicago, Klagenfurt, Charlotte, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, East Rutherford, San diego, Carson, Singapore, Harrison, nice, Ann Arbor, Miami, Pasadena, Minneapolis, Arlington, dublin, Faro, Lecce, Landover, Santa Clara and Madrid. These were the venues for the International Champions Cup in 2018.
Chelsea got to draw 0-0 at home to Lyon, the only game played on English soil.
And you think any breakaway league is going to be different? Old Trafford might host a derby or a game against a club making up the numbers, but when Manchester United play Real Madrid it will be classed as a global event, and could turn up
anywhere across five continents.
This is a made-for-TV league and requires a made-for-TV global audience. It will be sold at a premium, like boxing. It will be hawked to the highest bidding cities, too.
When Milan played United in Carson, just 21,742 turned up, so that is the type of match that will be laid before a home audience, preying on their loyalty to fill the hall. But 101,254 watched Manchester United and Liverpool in Ann Arbor, so what are the chances of that staying removed from East Coast prime time?
And when the deal is done it will be too late to protest. By then, your club will be just another American franchise in a league without relegation — for some — and if the crowds aren’t turning up, they can move the matches to somewhere that they will.
Why does Manchester need two clubs anyway? If the Jacksonville Jaguars can come here, why can’t a Premier League club go there? Certainly one whose fans are not buying into our brave new world.
Any season-ticket holder who thinks the European super league will be like our own, but more exotic, hasn’t thought it through. Just as the clubs haven’t if they think fans will not feel betrayed by the loss of some of their most treasured matches in a season.
This would be a Liverpool campaign that will not feature a game against Everton, for the first time since 1961-62; an Arsenal schedule that would not include a North London derby against Tottenham, a fixture that has missed one season since 1950-51.
These are huge matches with the anticipation of next season’s game beginning almost at the blowing of the final whistle on this season’s encounter.
And what of meetings with rivals from around the country? Manchester United would never play Leeds again. Nobody with any feeling for football’s soul would sanction a change that ends visits to St James’ Park, Elland Road or the home of Leicester’s miracle.
And no relegation for the chosen few. The leaked version of the super league proposal contains the idea that the 11 founding clubs — all the usual suspects from across Europe, plus Chelsea, Manchester City and Paris Saint-Germain, who should all be ashamed of themselves — would be immune from relegation for the first 20 years.
In other words, it is a license to be ordinary. United could be as mediocre as they have been this season, with no fear of consequence. The same for AC Milan and Real Madrid.
It is football with a giant safety net, and therefore not real football at all. It is a blueprint drawn up by careerists, executives with no feeling for the sport, or those who play and love it. They think you are suckers, that you will pay for any old cabbage as long as there are star names attached.
Heaven knows why they keep having meetings because this is a simply avaricious plan that could be jotted down on the back of a fag packet. It is football with all the danger and unpredictability taken out, and therefore football that is of no interest at all.
FITTINGLY, the prime movers here are a cabal of greedy clubs who have already destroyed competition in their own leagues and, for that reason, now seek a way out.
Their broadcast revenues are drying up because no- one wants to watch a procession, and they think a European league will shake the money tree again.
In reality, they are trapped. Juventus have turned Serie A into a crashing bore, but would not be good enough to win a continental league — they haven’t won a trophy in Europe since 1996. How long, then, would their fans tolerate alsoran status in a new European league, bearing in mind only first place will count as success, with no Champions League consolation prizes for those coming between second and fourth?
How will fans brought up on trophies react when it transpires there is just one cup to go around between Real Madrid, Barcelona, Bayern Munich, PSG, Juventus — and five Premier League clubs.
Even if they have the end-of-season play-offs found in American sport — just because you win the league, it doesn’t mean you win the trophy — there is still only one prize. These clubs are allied by nothing beyond their pursuit of money. Once pitted against each other with a single prize at stake, they would be weasels in a sack.
The myth then, is that the change is inevitable, or that the pilots of such an empty vessel need appeasing. Call their bluff. Bid them farewell with the reminder of what life is like on the outside. It’s tough out there. Far tougher than the charlatans of this greedy, pampered elite know.
Offer them a taste of it and you won’t hear a peep from them again.