Boehly’s no lover of the Super League

THERE continues to be a lot of discussion about Todd Boehly’s top-of-the-head thoughts at a sports business conference. Much of it centres on his failure to give a ‘hard no’ to any future Super League.

Yet why would he? If there is any skulduggery going on, he would want Chelsea to be part of it, rather than shut outside. And it’s football, so there is always skulduggery going on.

At the next meeting of europe’s elite clubs — in Istanbul later this week — Paris Saint-Germain are proposing taking Champions League games outside the continent. Not the showpiece final, but group matches — the bread and butter of the competition for ordinary fans. It’s a plan at its formative stage, and may provoke sufficient outrage to not be worth the while — but Chelsea’s new owner wouldn’t want to make any statement that excluded his club from the meeting. This is why he said what he said. And what did he say? A little more than is widely reported. here’s Boehly on the Super League. ‘The Champions League has a big component of that already. You have the best clubs throughout europe playing in the best competition. We believe very much that the Champions League has a lot of that. The passion the fans have for the sport is so strong, it’s hard to envision it changing. There is a reason that if you win the Champions League you make over $100million. You win the Masters and you make a couple of million bucks. I never say hard nos. I like to keep options alive but it’s not something we’re talking about at all.’ Slightly different than reopening the door. And certainly no argument to go charging towards Government regulation. Not least when this Government cares so deeply for sport that it hasn’t even got around to appointing a new Sports Minister — or reconfirming the old one.