European Super League

• July 05,2019
• -
• Bruce Williams

European Super League

There has been a talk about a European Super League, a tournament which would consist of the wealthiest football clubs in Europe, since the early 1990s, but the proposal to do so could never really establish itself as a fully-fledged, concrete league.

But, a recent report by German newspaper Der Spiegel claims that this could soon be a reality. Documents that whistle-blowers allegedly procured detailed such plans from Football Leaks, who obtained this information from an email sent on October 22nd to Florentino Perez, Real Madrid’s President.

Similar rumors, that claimed that Europe’s most affluent clubs were planning the best way to leave their national competitions cropped up in 2016, but the parties involved allegedly decided not to go forward with anything.

There is even photographic evidence of a few officials of top Premier League teams – Ed Woodward, Bruce Buck, etc. meeting together with Stillitano, the man who proposed the idea of forming such a league.

The more recent reports state that 11 top football clubs, the founding members, as well as five guest clubs which are subject to change, could break away from their national leagues, and form a separate league of their own by 2021.

The core members consist of the top flight of European football - Manchester City, Liverpool, Chelsea, Arsenal, and Manchester United from England. Barcelona and Real Madrid from Spain. Juventus and AC Milan from Italy, Germany's Bayern Munich and finally, PSG from France.

These 11 members will be immune to the risk relegation for 20 years. The non-permanent members include Atletico Madrid, Borussia Dortmund, Inter, Roma and Marseille. The document stated that the members were to meet in November to make it official.

The European Super League would be available only to Europe’s most elite clubs, which would necessarily create a void within the game.

This move could affect not just domestic tournaments, such as the La Liga or the Premier League, both of which encourage the participation of smaller, less popular clubs, but several major competitions, like the UEFA Champions League.

We’re talking about the biggest names in football, which all generate massive amounts of national, as well as international viewership and revenue pretty much estranging themselves, and creating a competition that would be closed off to other teams.

This would mean huge benefit in terms of money and power, for the participating teams, as it would be very commercially successful, hypothetically, at the expense of the other leagues they pull out of.

Additionally, the more successful teams have been vying with UEFA for a more substantial monetary cut for a while now, but with the creation of a league separate from the jurisdiction of the UEFA, all of these problems would be avoided.

One plus point to this could be that it would make for more balanced competition. It would put an end to clear supremacy of some clubs in their domestic leagues. Juventus, Barcelona, Real Madrid, Bayern Munich, and PSG have dominated their national leagues for years.

These rumors, naturally, have been met with a lot of backlash and criticism. Fifa’s President, Gianni Infantino for example, stated that those players from clubs who took part in the European Super League would be reprimanded and banned from the World Cup.

This could potentially result in some significant players being able to participate in other major tournaments, like Qatar 2020. The UK government has also expressed their disapproval at the prospect of any Premier League club joining the Super League. Jurgen Klopp, whose team has been tied to such plans, has expressed his dissatisfaction with regards to the creation of such an inaccessible competition. FC Bayern has also denied taking part in such activities.

Having said all of this, despite all the concern that has been floating around, there is no guarantee that a European Super League will ever take flight. There is no definitive proof that the documents obtained are genuinely legitimate, or even if they are, there is no saying how lucrative such a breakaway league would be for the teams involved, given the massive amount of backlash the idea has received in light of recent events.

But Der Spiegel does have a reputation for reliability, so the threat of an eventual Super League that would replace the Champions League is possibly genuine.