Where does this leave power players in European football’s new civil war?

For Real Madrid’s president Florentino Perez, it is third time lucky for the plan he has championed for years which may finally be getting off the ground. Under a closed-shop plan, bankrolled by American investment giant JP Morgan, the teams involved will stay in their domestic competitions but play in a 20-team annual competition, with 15 clubs as permanent members. The five other teams would vary, although the qualification method has not been determined.

Each of the 15 founding members would get a share of more than £3billion in initial grants. Similar schemes had been detailed in the Football Leaks scandal more than two years ago and then in December 2019. This time, Perez seized upon Covid-19 turmoil and the fallout surrounding Project Big Picture last autumn to entice the elite to join him in what would amount to the most significant restructuring of elite European football for decades.

Rest of Premier League

Those with the most to lose will be the clubs who fall just outside the “Big Six” who are already fuming over Champions League reforms, from 2024, which offer a safety net for historically successful clubs.

The prospect of being potentially frozen out of elite European football will almost certainly hit potential revenues that the smaller clubs will generate from the next domestic TV rights deal. Those without a chance of making the five spare places across Europe for the super league each season would see their finances shrink as the new model would wall off the richest clubs in their own closed competition.

Premier League as an institution

Barely six months since England’s top tier saw off Project Big Picture, a European breakaway presents a threat almost as fundamental.

After urgent crisis talks between executives yesterday morning, the league said the plot would destroy the “dream” for teams such as Leicester becoming champions.

Domestic leagues would have to ratify the new competition for it to be launched, and it seems unfathomable that the Big Six will be able to persuade the other clubs that it should be voted through.

Money talks, however, and one

option for the clubs involved will be to pass on a fraction of the enormous profits they stand to make in a deal that sees the 15 founding clubs extract 32.5 per cent of all revenue.

The Premier League believes its best hope of torpedoing the deal is to join forces with other domestic competitions as well as international governing bodies.

Uefa

Uefa’s plans – to be rubber-stamped today – to increase the size of the Champions League from 2024 already represented a huge transformation, but it is believed that the big clubs still were not satisfied that profits were being maximised.

Ed Woodward, at Manchester

United, and Ivan Gazidis, of AC Milan, last month objected to the commercial arrangements, and it seems a Uefa offer of 49 per cent in voting share to the European Club Association was not enough.

The Champions League would implode without its biggest teams, and Uefa was quick to up the ante by threatening court action.

Fifa

In terms of undermining the rebellion, it is football’s global governing body that may yet have the most power. Despite talking with the plotters, Fifa has come out against the threat, and warned players that they would no longer be allowed to compete in the World Cup.