It is hard to get soccer fans to agree on anything, but the dramatic move towards a renegade breakaway league featuring the world’s biggest clubs that emerged last weekend has united supporters around the world. Apart from those who dreamed up the idea and connected with it, it seems everyone hates the European Super League, with opinions ranging from anger to disdain to bemusement to utter loathing. The lowdown: a collection of European giants threw a grenade into their ongoing battle to receive even greater revenues by revealing a new competition, to start in 2023, that would feature 20 teams and from which the 15 core members would be guaranteed automatic entry every year. It was intended as a direct shot at European governing body UEFA and its flagship event, the Champions League, and is an attempted arm-twisting seeking a sweetheart deal even sweeter than the current arrangement. Let’s be clear here. European soccer is not particularly fair. There is no level playing field. The way things are already set up ensures the rich get richer. Take a look at the top leagues on the continent. With only a few recent exceptions that can be dismissed as magical flukes, the same teams win, time and again. Unlike American sports, there is no draft to try to provide some competitive balance. No salary cap to curb the muscle-flexing tactics of the wealthy. There is limited revenue sharing that might even things out. But what soccer does have in most parts of the world is the idea of having to continue to prove your worth, year in, year out. Promotion and relegation make sure smaller clubs have something to aspire to and that under-performing squads have to earn their way back. The Champions League, featuring Europe’s top teams each season, has a qualification system where clubs must finish high enough in their domestic league to get reinvited. And that’s the part that the breakaway group – featuring bluebloods like England’s Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United and Tottenham, Spain’s Atletico Madrid, Barcelona and Real Madrid and Italy’s AC Milan, Inter Milan and Juventus – don’t like. There are few direct comparisons to be made here to the North American pro leagues, which operate under a different, closed model. Perhaps the best example would be to imagine if a group of the top college football programs set up their own bowl system, which they would be assured participation in each season regardless of performance – while graciously allowing a handful of others to sometimes join the party. The United States, perhaps surprisingly given that this is a European argument, has been drawn into the backlash against the ESL idea. It would be challenging to find an article discussing (mostly lambasting) the ESL over the past couple of days that has not used the words “Americanized”. Though Real Madrid president Florentino Perez was named chairman of the ESL, the owners of Arsenal (Stan Kroenke), Manchester United (the Glazer family) and Liverpool (John W. Henry) are all American. The project is being fiscally backed by J.P. Morgan bank. And the concept of a closed entity is a hallmark of American sports yet is far less common everywhere else. UEFA responded with fire and fury, with its president Aleksander Ceferin threatening to ban players from ESL from participating in international events such as the European Championships and the World Cup. “UEFA and the football world stand united against disgraceful and self-serving proposal we have seen in the last 24 hours for a select few clubs in Europe motivated by greed,” Ceferin said. “We are all united against this nonsense of a project.” It is possible that, from the clubs’ perspective, it could all be a ruse. No one is quite sure. Could it really be just a strong-armed power play aimed at giving the leading teams a bigger slice of the monumental revenues that come in from the Champions League? If so, it is a mightily elaborate one. The statements put out by each ESL club contained, in essence, a fully-fledged proposal that had clearly been months in the making. For its part, UEFA backed up Ceferin’s statement by announcing a Champions League revamp involving an expansion to 36 teams, with more matches and a greater likelihood of enhanced profit. No one is quite sure who is going to blink first. Soccer, truly, is at war. Yet public opinion is squarely against the rebel clubs and the ferocity of the backlash also provides a test as to whether those organizations do actually care about the wishes of the supporters that follow them. “I’m disgusted with Manchester United and Liverpool the most,” former United defender Gary Neville told Sky Sports. “They’re breaking away to a competition they can’t be relegated from? It’s an absolute disgrace. We have to wrestle back power in this country from the clubs at the top of this league – and that includes my club.” The media has been unimpressed, too, largely eviscerating the ESL. In the Guardian, Jonathan Liew described the ESL as further evidence of how “the world’s most popular sport managed to hand over so much of its power and wealth and influence to people who despise it.” Liew added: “Make no mistake: this is an idea that could only have been devised by someone who truly hates football to its bones.” If the ESL does go ahead, it would be the ultimate and final proof that soccer has sold its soul. While the diehards might turn their back, there is no doubt the competition would be watched by millions around the world and would probably get the clubs the kind of revenues they are looking for. At the mere, tiny, insignificant cost of ripping up more than a century of history, culling soccer’s inherent principles of (relative) equality and sabotaging the competitions that made those clubs famous. Right now, it doesn’t feel like there is anything particularly beautiful about the beautiful game. Hopefully, the uproar to have spilled over the past days may throw the ESL off course. But this is modern soccer, 21st century style. And there is money at stake. So while we might wish for common sense to prevail, just as likely is that the mightiest and richest teams will get their way. Here’s what others have said … James Pearce, The Athletic: “Liverpool supporters’ group Spion Kop 1906 are removing all their banners and flags from the Kop in protest at the club’s “disgraceful” decision to sign up to a new European Super League. It means the iconic stand, which has been adorned with tributes to legendary players, managers and trophy successes during the pandemic, is set to be bare for Saturday’s home Premier League clash with Newcastle United.” Tariq Panja, New York Times: “The superleague the clubs have agreed to form — an alliance of top teams closer in concept to closed leagues like the N.F.L. and the N.B.A. than to soccer’s current model — would bring about the most significant restructuring of elite European soccer since the creation of the European Cup (now the Champions League) in the 1950s. … The damage to the prestige and value of the Champions League, though, would be immediate and run into the billions of dollars, turning what has for decades been club soccer’s elite competition into a secondary event, one that is unlikely to retain anything close to its current commercial appeal.” Brian Phillips, The Ringer: “As the explosion of derision and fury that greeted the Super League’s announcement on Sunday demonstrated, many people find these to be outrageously unsatisfactory answers to the question of what soccer should be in 2021. But at least they are answers. If the big clubs get their way and the Super League happens—that’s still a big if, for all that the press releases are treating it as a certainty—then we’ll be done with this weird hybrid version of the game in which raw commercialism exists in a confused muddle with concern for the little guy. … Don’t misread me here. All the criticisms of the big clubs are correct. They are greedy, bullying, self-interested, and perfectly happy to torch many of the attributes that make soccer wonderful if it means a tiny advantage for them. …On the other hand, I’m an American soccer fan who pays money to watch European club football on television. I am way more excited to watch games when the world’s best players are involved, which typically means when the big clubs play each other.” |
