Rich guys attempt cash grab in soccer
An alleged bribery scheme that funneled millions of dollars to FIFA executives probably helped Qatar land the 2022 World Cup. How’s it going in the desert? According to one recent report, at least 6,500 migrant laborers have died in Qatar’s effort to build facilities needed to host the world’s biggest sporting event.
FIFA can overlook slavery. What it can’t abide is a threat to its cash flow.
Over the weekend, a group of the most powerful owners in European
club soccer announced that they are forming a European Super League. FIFA is treating this like a robbery. Really, it’s more of a coup.
And it may be failing. Tuesday afternoon, news broke that Chelsea was pulling out of the Super League. It appears that revolting fans and revolted players brought those who run the club to their senses.
It may be that, by the time you read this, the whole grand plan will have crumbled in a span of 48 hours.
The teams that have gained the greatest wealth from the most powerful system under FIFA’S umbrella — the Union of European Football Associations, which runs the Champions League, which is the biggest annual cash cow in global sports — were making a play for a bigger piece of the action.
The Super League’s original dirty dozen included six teams from the English Premier League (Arsenal, Chelsea,
Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United, Tottenham Hotspur), three from Spain’s La Liga (Atletico Madrid, Barcelona, Real Madrid) and three from Italy’s Serie A (A.C. Milan, Inter Milan and Juventus).
Their aim was to play mid-week games beginning in August and end their season with a tournament (championship game in May). They will be governed by their founding members (free of any established federations). They hope to add three more teams before they kick off, and to rotate five additional teams into the league on an annual basis (through a qualifying process).
FIFA can overlook almost anything. Not this.
With FIFA’S backing, UEFA has threatened to ban the dirty dozen from all other competitions and to deny their players the opportunity to represent national teams. (No World Cup for you!)
That hard push-back from the authorities appears to be having the desired effect.
Maybe, just maybe, the wicked blowback from fans had an impact, too. Maybe this was like a continental — or even worldwide — version of Save the Crew.
Outside of the Super League owners, everyone hated this idea. Fans all over the world hated it. Fans of European clubs particularly hated it. Shoot, it’s fairly obvious that the players and coaches, not to mention the lockerroom attendants and groundskeepers who work for the 12 Super League owners hated it.
About 1 billion words have been written on the subject since the dirty dozen made their formal announcement Sunday. Another billion were written Monday, when FIFA, UEFA, federations throughout Europe (including the EPL) and even certain other powerful teams (Paris Saint-germain and Bayern Munich, notably) expressed their outrage.
James Corden, an Englishman and host of “The Late Late Show” on CBS (as well as a fellow West Ham fan), might have given the best summary of why the Super League concept sucks. He looked like a wounded child as he gushed from the heart amid his monologue Monday night:
Football is a working-class game, where anyone can beat anyone on their day, and it’s that that makes it incredible. It’s that that makes it the global force that it is today. Like, a few years ago Leicester City ... won the league. They won the Premier League. It was the most incredible thing to witness. It gave every fan hope. Everyone. They have as many Premier titles as Liverpool, they have one more than Tottenham, and they’re not invited into this rich boys’ clique because the wealthy teams, they got together to try to stop that achievement ever happening again. And that isn’t sport. …
I don’t want to be overdramatic, but that’s the end of the sport we love. It truly is. But what we can do is … we will remember the names of these owners that made this decision, how they hid behind a devastating pandemic, while the season’s being played . ... Don’t ever forget that it was them, those owners. They took something so pure and so beautiful, and they beat the love and the joy out of it, and they did it for money. They just did it for money, and it’s disgusting.
marace@dispatch.com