Europeans split over 12-club breakaway

A group of 12 LONDON — European clubs split soccer on Sunday, announcing plans to walk away from the Champions League and create a breakaway competition, drawing an angry response and the threat of legal action from UEFA.

The moves to quit the existing structures in an apparent grab for more money and power include Real Madrid, Barcelona and the American owners of Arsenal, Liverpool and Manchester United. No German or French clubs have signed up.

The other teams are Atlet- ico Madrid, Chelsea, AC Milan, Inter Milan, Juventus, Manchester City and Tottenham. The Super League organizers hope for three more teams to join. While they want to only play midweek and stay in their domestic leagues, the rebel clubs were warned that won’t be possible by those competi- tions and UEFA.

The Super League plans, first leaked in January, had escalated into a greater threat on the eve of UEFA’S planned announcement of a new fo r mat for the Champions League. While the long-standing existing competition that grew from the European Cup would increase to 36 teams and add more games as desired by the wealthiest clubs, they remained frustrated tha UEFA would not grant mor e control of the sale of TV an d commercial rights.

UEFA called the breakaway competition a “project that is founded on the self-interest of a few clubs” in a joint statement with the leagues and national governing bodies from England, Spain and Italy.

“We will consider all mea- sures available to us, at all levels, both judicial and sporting in order to prevent this happening,” the state- ment said. “As previously announced by FIFA and the six Federations, the clubs concerned will be banned from playing in any other competition at domestic, European or world level, and their players could be denied the opportunity to represent their national teams.”

Manchester clubs City and United, Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea and Tottenham are part of the Super League, which the Premier League said would “undermine the appeal” of soccer as it con- demned the new compe- tition.