Greedy City do not care about a pyramid that let them rise above.. playing Gillingham in the play-offs

SUNDAY’S news that Liverpool, Manchester United, Manchester City, Tottenham, Arsenal and Chelsea have signed up to a European Super League was a line-in-the-sand moment.

One about which I’m upset, angry and disgusted.

Three of those six — City, Arsenal and Tottenham — have no European pedigree whatsoever.

Two of them are struggling even to qualify for the second-tier tournament Europe has to offer next season, let alone the blue riband competition.

It’s pure greed from all of them.

A feeling of, ‘We were owed more money anyway and now the fact Covid is a thing we can cash in on and mop up, who gives a flying you-know-what about the pyramid we came from?’

Yet without that pyramid, City would still be playing Gillingham in play-off games, Spurs would probably be somewhere like 12th in the Premier League and Chelsea would still be playing behind barbed-wire fences with Ken Bates in charge.

These are not big clubs, just wealthy clubs and there’s a massive difference.

That’s why I’m most angry with my old club Liverpool and Manchester United.

They are big clubs and if they’d said they weren’t going then neither would the other four.

What will be fascinating now is how this ultimately affects the players and I’d like to think that if I were still playing, I’d be saying to my agent today, ‘I really don’t want to be a part of this, what are my options at the very least?’

I spoke out about racism and other issues at Nottingham Forest back in the early 90s. And when I signed for Liverpool I spoke about poverty and socialism, so I wasn’t afraid to take a stand for the things I believed in, even then.

However, the reality would probably be that if you’re playing for Liverpool, Juventus, AC Milan, United, Chelsea, any of them, you just have a working contract and if they tell you you’re playing in Madrid one week, Turin the next, even Moscow, Abu Dhabi or Sydney, then that’s what you do.

I know some people will hope the chance for a player to represent his country at a World Cup or Euros will mean more to him than money.

That one in 10, one in 20 – more like one in 50 – will say, ‘I’d rather stay loyal to the Premier League and my national team and pick up a great wage rather than a stratospheric one.’ But I fear that if you can go from earning £250,000 a week to £1million a week you’d just legitimise it as, ‘Well, I’m playing for the same club, it’s just my working conditions have changed.’

As sad as that sounds, let’s say I’m playing for Liverpool today and I decided to make a stand, where would I go? Would they sell me to another club not in the ESL? Will there be a moratorium on buying and selling between ESL and Uefa-sanctioned teams?

Players aren’t politicians, most would go, ‘Look, I’m just here to play football. I play for this team and until my contract runs out I’m going to do as I’m told.’

The fact is the 12 clubs who have signed up already, and the three others who will follow, are joining an American-style closed shop and it’s not like American football players worry about playing for their national team, or like NBA players think they lose out by only representing the USA every four years.

So it might be that footballers are happy to settle for All-star games featuring the best of an Eastern Conference against the best of the Western Conference, or Team Messi, featuring Lionel and 10 Argentine pals from the ESL, taking on Team Ronaldo or Team Kane.

Whatever happens, these past couple of days have been devastating for the game we love.