Conflicts heat up over European Super League
Plans for a Super League announced by 12 of European football’s most powerful clubs plunged the game into an unprecedented crisis on Monday as the UK government threatened to invoke competition law to block a breakaway.
Six Premier League teams — Liverpool, Manchester United, Arsenal, Chelsea, Manchester City and Tottenham Hotspur — joined forces with Spanish giants Real Madrid, Barcelona and Atletico Madrid as well as Italian trio Juventus, Inter Milan and AC Milan to launch the competition.
Britain’s Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden said the English clubs could find themselves subject to a formal review under British anti-trust law, which prevents the formation of monopolies or corporate cartels.
“We will put everything on the table to prevent this from happening,” the minister said, vowing a “very robust response”.
Champions League reform
European football’s governing body is pressing ahead with the new format from 2024 onwards, which will see the number of clubs involved increase from 32 to 36 with each team guaranteed 10 games.
UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin lashed out at the breakaway plan, calling it a “disgraceful self-serving proposal from a select few clubs purely fueled by greed”.
The Slovenian added that European member associations were
“all united against this nonsensical project” and said players involved would not be allowed to play for national teams, effectively banning them from taking part in European Championships and World Cups.
However, organizers of the Super League said they would file a motion “before the relevant courts” to stop players being banned and “ensure the seamless establishment and operation” of the competition, according to a letter seen by AFP, addressed to Ceferin and FIFA chief Gianni Infantino.
Backed by JPMorgan
The breakaway league is being
backed by U.S. investment bank JPMorgan, which confirmed to AFP that it was “financing the deal”.
The founding clubs will share 3.5 billion euros ($4.2 billion) for infrastructure investment and to offset pandemic costs, and are expected to receive a further 10 billion euros in “solidarity payments” over the life of the initial commitment — much more than in the current Champions League.
The reaction from fans and pundits across Europe has been furious.
“It’s the death of football. Football is based on the concept of competitive balance, sporting competition and qualifying on merit,” Tim Payton, head of the Arsenal Supporters
Trust, told AFP.
Supporters from both Leeds and Liverpool protested outside Elland Road ahead of Monday’s Premier League match.
FIFA’s disapproval
World governing body FIFA expressed its “disapproval” and called on all parties “to engage in calm, constructive and balanced dialogue”.
The Premier League, the richest in Europe, issued a furious statement to say “the concept of a European Super League would destroy” the dream that any team could “climb to the top and play against the best”.
Created ‘to save football’
MADRID (AP) — Florentino Perez, the founding chairman of the Super League, on Tuesday said the new competition is being created to save football for everyone, not to make the rich clubs richer.
The president of Real Madrid, one of the 12 clubs behind the breakaway competition said it’s “impossible” that players from the participating teams will be banned by UEFA. Although he said the new league likely won’t start next season if no deal is reached with European soccer’s governing body.
He didn’t completely rule out the possibility that the new league won’t get started at all, but indicated that the clubs were prepared to go all the way to make it happen.
Perez, the first of the club presidents to speak publicly after the proposed new league was announced on Sunday, said clubs were “ruined” financially by the coronavirus pandemic and the Super League was the solution to “save football in a critical moment.” “We are all going through a very difficult situation,” Perez said in an interview broadcast after midnight on the Spanish television program El Chiringuito de Jugones. “When you don’t have revenue, the only way to change that is to try to have more competitive games, more attractive games.”
Perez said the new Champions League format proposed by UEFA for 2024 won’t produce enough revenue to help save the sport.
“With the way the revenues are now in the Champions League, all clubs will die,” Perez said. “The big ones, the medium ones and the small ones. By 2024, the clubs will all be gone.” He said the greater revenue brought in by the bigger clubs in a competition like the Super League would benefit the football industry in general.
“This is what is profitable, and this money will end up reaching everyone,” Perez said.
“When you don’t have revenue, the only way to change is to have more attractive games. ”