News broke this morning confirming that 12 of Europe’s biggest football clubs intend to form a breakaway ‘Super League’ just hours before UEFA are scheduled to announce an expanded Champions League format.
Among the clubs are England’s ‘big six’ (Liverpool, Arsenal, Tottenham, Chelsea, Manchester City, and Manchester United); Spanish giants Real Madrid, Barcelona, and Atletico Madrid; and Italian clubs Juventus, Inter Milan, and AC Milan.
Pundits and fans have rightly identified the motivation driving these clubs to be pure financial greed. American investment bank is JP Morgan is reported to be investing some US$5 billion into the project to get it going. UEFA is similarly reported to be threatening to bring a lawsuit of €50-60 billion against the breakaway clubs.
But what’s most astonishing about this deal isn’t the money involved, eye-watering as it may be.
Nor is it the sheer greed or total selfishness, grotesque and sickening as they may be.
What’s most astonishing is how much this agreement rips the soul out of football and violates the game’s promise of democracy.
The beauty of football is that it treats every person and every playing style with equal dignity, equal opportunity, and equal respect.
The game doesn’t discriminate between physicality in the way that rugby or basketball might. The two best players of the past decade (and perhaps ever) could hardly be more different in stature: one a towering specimen of pure physical power, the other a diminutive, smiling man who wouldn’t turn a head as he walks down the street but turns the world upside-down with the ball at his feet.
There is no ‘correct’ way to play football. We might say that one way is more beautiful or more pragmatic than another, but even the most casual fan would concede that the best way to play will vary between teams and players. Jesse Lingard might flounder at Manchester United, but at West Ham he is flourishing. Timo Werner was lethal at RB Leipzig but has been lethargic at Chelsea. Football expresses culture.
There is high drama on the game’s greatest stages, but anyone who has played even the most amateurish football on the weekend has access to the same storied emotion. The game doesn’t require expensive equipment or particular playing conditions – ‘two jackets and a ball’ is all you need.
There are financial inequalities in the game, to be sure, but miracles still happen. Claudio Ranieri’s Leicester City in 2016 and its bag of rag-tag players showed that money can’t buy everything. No doubt Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich and Manchester City owner Sheikh Mansour would offer similar sentiments.
What the game promises is that every player and every team is capable of rising through the ranks and achieving glory.
This so-called Super League is fundamentally opposed to the principles of equality that underlay the beautiful game. Entry to the Super League is not earned by playing good football, it is through being able to earn enough money to satisfy the greedy administrators.
Arsenal sit ninth in the Premier League and Spurs haven’t won a league title since 1961. Despite sitting ahead of four of the big six on the Premier League table, neither West Ham nor Leicester will be invited to play on the ‘biggest stage.’ Initial reports claim that additional spots will be opened up based on merit, but “merit” is surely a thinly-veiled euphemism for ‘the highest bidder.’
It’s clear that those behind the league don’t understand the game or the fans that cherish it. The presumption that the breakaway clubs can ‘win the argument’ against fans around the world is mind-boggling. Football fans support their clubs for a range of deeply personal, deeply emotional reasons that cannot be rationalised away with a paycheck and empty rhetoric of solidarity.
It might be because their parents took them to watch that team growing up. For many Australians who are children of immigrant parents, their allegiance to a particular club is owing to their parents’ heritage and is a tribute to their forebears.
Perhaps by chance they met a player from a team one day and have been passionate fans ever since.
My own support of Chelsea in the Premier League was due to the fact that after Guus Hiddink took the Socceroos to the World Cup in 2006 he next appeared at Chelsea, and so as an excitable nine-year-old I took the Blues on as my own.
Changes to the game always attract criticism but no change has ever attracted a chorus of outrage as uniform as this one – even VAR has its supporters.
The Super League squashes the promise of equality and the spirit of democracy that underpins our beautiful game. Fans can hope that FIFA or UEFA intervene, but the inmates running the asylum doesn’t paint a much more promising picture.
chris
Guest
haha Moneyarse
chris
Guest
Very good article and captures the essence of supporting a team. And it's not because a bunch of suits think that they can make a load of money.
Micko
Roar Rookie
But the premise is that the little guys still get a chance to beat these big guys. Now the big guys are ring fencing themselves off!
Indefatigable
Roar Rookie
A long bow to some I know, but I think this is the result of global central bank quantitative easing (AKA money printing). The result of which has been large pools of investment funds looking for deals - places to park their money that is otherwise earning zip. You heard this angle here first.
Munro Mike
Roar Rookie
The irony of this situation is it illustrates how via private ownership that big soccer has sold its soul. Seriously - when you go so far down the money line........where does the train end up at?? Soccer already is awfully 'biased' (in the sense of a lawn bowl). A small number of big leagues and even in the leagues such as Italian and Spanish; there's a peak couple of BIG teams and the rest are really just peripheral (get to bask in the glow of their mightier - better funded - opposition). In too many cases the fans have long since gone from being fans to being 'subscribers'.
Rellum
Roar Guru
I guarantee you that everyone will cry foul but as soon as it gets up most of them will switch on and lap it up.
Rellum
Roar Guru
Thank you for proving my point
elvis
Roar Rookie
The clubs will still have history etc, they don't appear to be starting up new clubs.
Blood Dragon
Roar Rookie
PSG's owner is the Chairman of Bein Sports and Bein Sports have the Broadcasting Rights for the UCL in a lot of countries
Max power
Guest
“ The beauty of football is that it treats every person and every playing style with equal dignity, equal opportunity, and equal respect.” - think you for the laugh with that statement If you watch basketball or rugby you might notice there are players of all shapes and sizes
Punter
Roar Rookie
I have no worries, I only watch these big clubs to watch the great players, I have never had any passion for these clubs. Give me Sydney FC anyday.
Micko
Roar Rookie
True, but one side has the history and heritage.
Micko
Roar Rookie
But like others have pointed out, this is a closed shop arrangement. For all their wealth & power, (and despite the completely unlikelihood of it happening) these huge clubs can hypothetically be relegated down the ladder. Whether big or small, a club is subject to the same league conditions that european soccer thrives on: the battle to get to the top, but at the same time avoiding the dreaded bottom. There is no "bottom" here though, just a closed club of self appointed elites.
Marcel
Guest
This mythical spirit of the game really hasn't existed since the 60s....that's the last time squads were substantially made up of locally bred players.. When Wolves were promoted last to the EPL they replaced 19 of their promoted squad with foreign players and started conducting training in Portuguese.
Winter A League is Awesome
Guest
Because Heart played way better football than City :happy: . When was Heart on top of the league. I am proud to take friends and family to City games now.
Winter A League is Awesome
Guest
Lol
Buddy
Roar Rookie
A European Super League will be all about television revenue and little else. The package will be sold globally for squillions or whatever terminology you care to use. If it gets off the ground, it will have “its day in the sun” but people will grow tired of it eventually and it will all change again or find the need to expand. Generally, the excitement of meeting Real Madrid, or a Manchester derby is that they don’t come around too often and that is what creates the excitement. If there are only 12 teams, the novelty will soon wear off but in the meantime, someone will make plenty of money. Ask the Packer family about World Series cricket!
Knocka
Roar Rookie
Obviously more money than sense.
Rellum
Roar Guru
I am sorry but this "Super League"(Nothing like history repeating itself even down to the name) is everything that professional football is. It is all about money and nothing else. I didn't see many fans of Man City crying foul when they were taken over by big money, they were all excited and didn't care where the money came from. I didn't see PSG or Monaco fans complaining either. I didn't see the fans of big teams or even lower league teams complaining or protesting over the absurd TV money their clubs got. I saw first hand how easily fans of clubs can be bought with a little promise of better things that big money provides when the Heart turfed out for City. Few of you ever wanted less TV money so the game and the fans had more control. Now that TV money, the obscenely wealthy owners and their big clubs want to take the process to it's organic next step. It may be bad for the game but this is what nearly every body signed up for either enthusiastically or passively.
Hudddo
Roar Rookie
Probably on the out side of the 12 and want solid incentives before jumping in. Also probably watching the response, and working out if the juice is worth the squeeze.