soccer

12 major European clubs launch plans for breakaway Super League

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Sport is primarily about money. The days o.f a kid growing up wanting to play for his local club and doing so are long gone. Like so many aspects of our current society, once the money takes over the core reason for the sport/product/message gets trashed

11 ( +13 / -2 )

Arsenal and Spurs, currently mid-table EPL teams, would become bottom feeders in this proposed league. I for one, will refuse to watch this money driven farce. And I fully support the calls for all players in this proposed league to be banned from all other footballing events including the World Cup. This is based 100% on greed. On a positive note, if the Arab owned clubs join this new league the EPL (and other European Leagues), will once more be more competitive and interesting and not dominated by petro-dollars. teams.

3 ( +8 / -5 )

As if these 12 grubby clubs do not already earn more than enough! Sickening greed from every one of them. This competition will end up virtually destroying domestic trophies like the FA Cup which would be a tragedy.

I will probably be proven wrong, but I hope this thing is a disaster for them and all players who sign up are banned from the World Cup. Might make a few players think twice. At least the German clubs have so far refused to join.

5 ( +8 / -3 )

Excellent proposal, more in line with the US franchise style system. Soccer needs to move away from its inbred roots and get some glam and have only the best playing the best.

-13 ( +4 / -17 )

Excellent proposal, more in line with the US franchise style system. Soccer needs to move away from its inbred roots and get some glam and have only the best playing the best.

Mindless nonsense. One of the beauties of football is it’s community roots. It has more than enough glam already. I don’t know where you are getting ‘inbred’ from.

Gary Neville believes all these clubs should be fined and docked points.

I’d go along with that.

7 ( +10 / -3 )

disappointed with this. still remain hope its a massive bluff to pressure Uefa, and as much as I hate Uefa, its not looking good.

0 ( +1 / -1 )

All the money in the world, how much is enough?

How much does footy want to squeeze out of the business model.

The pardoner's tale, hypocrisy and greed “His beasts and all his store shall multiply

2 ( +5 / -3 )

Definitely aimed at the world market rather than home fans.

Can't see this being successful.

Would love to know what the players and managers think.

A disgrace in my book

-2 ( +3 / -5 )

If the European Super League achieves it goal, there is little doubt, financially, the revenue for UK domestic and European football leagues be significantly affected.

These 12 are the wealthiest clubs in Europe.

Nothing good can come of this.

The UK and European first/second leagues, smaller clubs will be decimated.

4 ( +6 / -2 )

This is shockingly shameful by these clubs, one of which is mine. If it goes ahead the domestic league format will be destroyed; there is no way these clubs can play 20 super league games, 38 domestic league games plus half a dozen domestic cup games.

I don't know if they underestimated the fury and disgust they are copping from absolutely everyone including their own fans. I see some harsh punitive measures coming to both clubs and players very soon.

3 ( +4 / -1 )

... my AC Milan is one of the clubs but I’m not supporting this cr-p.

3 ( +3 / -0 )

The aim is to make it end up like baseball in Japan, where a handful teams have a strangle-hold on the game, with no promotion or relegation, but suck up all the money.

England: 80-odd clubs playing professional football in a country of 65 million

Japan: 14 baseball clubs in a country of 130 million

3 ( +4 / -1 )

The European Super League (ESL) is a blatant cynical voracious rapacious leveraging of a business model at the expense of devoted fans/supporters.

There is the usual suspect banks and hedge funds involved, noses head down in the trough.

European Super League football: JP Morgan to finance Super League

https://www.insidesport.co/european-super-league-football-jp-morgan-to-finance-super-league/

There would be 20 participating clubs, with 15 founding clubs and a qualifying mechanism for a further five teams to qualify annually based on achievements in the prior season.

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Top European Soccer Teams Form Breakaway League

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/18/sports/soccer/super-league-united-liverpool-juventus-madrid.html

Football Supporters Europe, called the super league idea “illegitimate, irresponsible, and anti-competitive by design.”

“More to the point, it is driven exclusively by greed,” the group said. “The only ones who stand to gain are hedge funds, oligarchs and a handful of already wealthy clubs, many of which perform poorly in their own domestic leagues despite their inbuilt advantage.”

The reality though, European union employment law directives could scupper any attempt to, at least from articles informing & consulting practices of/to banning or restricting players from joining the ESL, or facing restrictive practices from federations.

These employment directives are in place for good reason.

It is so shamelessly cynical.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

There is a distinct lack of French or German teams in the press release, could be a sign that they don't agree with this either.

The big clubs have been threatening this separate league for years and it seems they have finally grown the balls to announce it. FIFA, UEFA and the local governing bodies of England, Spain and Italy need to come down hard on these clubs.

For now the clubs claim it will run alongside all the other competitions yet we know that eventually they will want to breakaway and form their own organisation.

It could die a death fairly quickly though if the big TV corporations don't throw money at it, after all, the revenue from subscription TV is a huge chunk of the money generated.

2 ( +2 / -0 )

You could have said no. You could have refused to spend your money. You could have got your footie fix elsewhere.

Much of what you said is true. but it ignores one thing; you can't give up the team you support quite so easily. You can't just change teams because it costs a few more quid every year.

Football hasn't managed to deal with the one thing that is driving this and the things that you spoke of, which is player salaries and the percentage of turnover that they demand from a club. Even wealthy PL clubs are spending 60-85% of their turnover on salaries. It's unsustainable and affects every other club in the land.

There is a distinct lack of French or German teams in the press release, could be a sign that they don't agree with this either.

German clubs are largely fan-owned, so they would be bound to lose a shareholder vote on this. PSG are Qatari owned, and with the World Cup there next year they probably don't want to upset FIFA, who are probably annoyed that this idea will usurp their evil planned Club World Championship world domination plan, yet might also be pleased that is screws UEFA. That's without mentioning that the Spanish clubs will have a hard time convincing their members to swallow it. And what about Ajax, or the other big clubs from Belgium, Holland, Portugal, Scotland, Russia etc. ?

I don't see how it can work, but it looks like a very good wrench to get UEFA to hand over more CL money to the elite clubs, which is what they have been demanding for several years anyway.

Either way, it's going to be a very interesting summer in football politics.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

There is intense disgust in the UK at this. The players and clubs will be locked out of internationals and domestic competition, and vanish from free-to-air TV screens. I doubt the scheme will survive the fan reaction. It doesn't take much for fans to turn on owners and things get ugly very quickly. The SL is basically a declaration of war on fans by owners. Most fans see this as the theft of their heritage by rich outsiders.

Check to see what happened when the owner of Hull City wanted to change the name of the club. That didn't go well.

The SL is a US-style money-making scam colonialising European sport. I doubt it will happen.

2 ( +2 / -0 )

No problem. I’m not affected as I only watch FIFA World Cups for a certain reason. And those SL clubs (from only three countries, really?) can do what they want. Maybe I could be affected, if their top superstars aren’t allowed anymore to perform at the World Cup. I think I can stand and survive that in any form too....lol

0 ( +1 / -1 )

I love to see the wealthy and privileged sticking to the man!

-1 ( +1 / -2 )

GBR48Apr. 19  11:33 pm JST

There is intense disgust in the UK at this. The players and clubs will be locked out of internationals and domestic competition, and vanish from free-to-air TV screens. I doubt the scheme will survive the fan reaction. It doesn't take much for fans to turn on owners and things get ugly very quickly. The SL is basically a declaration of war on fans by owners. Most fans see this as the theft of their heritage by rich outsiders.

Check to see what happened when the owner of Hull City wanted to change the name of the club. That didn't go well.

The SL is a US-style money-making scam colonialising European sport. I doubt it will happen.

Even the name 'Super League' sounds a bit pedestrian, childish at best. I remember as a young adult the USFL (United States Football League) which did attract a few star players. They got very cocky and filed an antitrust suit against the NFL. By early 1986 they were gone. Gone within two years.

I don't think the SL teams are going to fly, except back to their UEFA soccer mommies!

0 ( +0 / -0 )

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