Hi to “Mike ex Liverpool fan”!
“Last night my 13-year-old son said to me when the rumours were getting stronger: ‘if this happens my new team are Brentford’. He has been brought up a Liverpool supporter all his life through me and his grandad and I feel the same way. Strange to see no players reacting on social media. Have they all been given gagging orders not to say anything?”
I’ve been wondering the same thing, Mike.
Handing over now to Daniel Harris, who will see you through the next few hours of reaction.
National League side Bromley have offered a lifeline to displaced fans.
Twitter user gulmoher poses this mother of a question: “how do you see the players such as Kane responding to the potentiality of a ban on their international & domestic careers if they choose to play in super league?”
Well, as with most things in the financially inflated world of modern football, it could come down to money. Fifa has a powerful hand, and could yet threaten bans from international football for players who participate in the breakaway premier league, which could force a choice between said money and, say, playing at the World Cup. All speculation on my part, of course, but really anything can happen at this point.
Former Manchester United manager, Sir Alex Ferguson, has led criticism of the new proposals, telling Reuters that a super league would be “a move away from 70 years of European club football”.
“Everton are spending £500m to build a new stadium with the ambition to play in Champions League. Fans all over love the competition as it is,” he said. “In my time at United, we played in four Champions League finals and they were always the most special of nights. I’m not sure [if] Manchester United are involved in this, as I am not part of the decision making process.”
Like its Tottenham counterpart, the Arsenal Supporters’ Trust has released a statement which “deplores the announcement by Arsenal” that the club is involved.
“This represents the death of everything that football should be about. As fans, we want to see Arsenal play in competitions based on sporting merit and competitive balance.
“Not surprisingly, this action has been taken with no consultation or dialogue, continuing the silence and contempt that Kroenke has shown for Arsenal supporters since day one.”
The AST said it will do everything in its power to oppose the move.
“We urge all Arsenal fans and all football fans to fight this by speaking up and acting against. By standing together we can see off this greedy proposal.”
Leeds United chairman Andrea Radrizzani has backed Gary Neville’s furious tirade on Sky Sports (it’s here if you missed it), making clear his thoughts
Radrizzani has spoken previous about protecting the sanctity of the game, following renewed investment from San Francisco 49ers. “The domestic league has a value that is still important because it is what generates resources for all of the parameters in football,” he told Leeds Live in January. “All the clubs and the entirety of domestic football need to defend and preserve this value.”
“Morning,” writes Dan. “This is what happens when sporting institutions become financial behomeths loaded up on debt. Top football clubs are merely large companies with two revenue streams; sponsorship and broadcast content creation (what you and I might have once called a football match). These institions are hollowed out shells of what they once were. To support one is merely to find yourself cheering for the shirt, unless one is particularly motivated by the choice of exclusive club tyre sponsor.
“We all saw that ticket paying fans didn’t matter once games continued without them due to Covid. This is the logical end point of that. The broadcast deals are in place, the billions assured. Fans will tune in from Asia and America. The fan in the stadium, parting with their hard earned cash is meaningless and now, shown how much their clubs really think of them. Top level sport is merely a content creation toy for the billionaires.”
Hello, good morning. If you have just awoken to the apocalypse – and not, like me, already spent several hours contemplating this madness from Australia – take a walk down to your local newsagency and peruse the front pages of every newspaper. Easier still, we have rounded them all up for you right here. The headlines are a variation on a theme of “football at war”, embellished with references to the “shameless six”.
This certainly jars, now we know what we do.
And with that, I’m passing the batton on to my colleague Emma Kemp, who will be here for the next hour or so.
The Tottenham Hotspur Supporters’ Trust has put out a statement, accusing the club of a “betrayal” and saying “enough is enough”.
“Tottenham Hotspur was the first British club to win a European trophy,” it reads. “We blazed a trail that caught the imagination of fans everywhere. Yesterday, the current board of THFC betrayed the club, its history and the magic that makes this game so special when they put their name to a statement announcing the formation of a breakaway European Super League.
“This statement, signed by self-appointed ‘leading clubs’, was put out late on a Sunday night. It was made not only after no consultation with supporters, but in the face of clearly stated opposition to key parts of the announcement.
“We have always tried to maintain a pragmatic position of engagement with the board of THFC, even under the most trying of circumstances. But enough is enough. The current board is prepared to risk the club’s reputation and its future in the opportunistic pursuit of greed. One of England’s most famous clubs could find itself expelled from English league competition. Its players could be banned from international competition. And yet the current owners – mere custodians of a 139-year-old institution – are prepared to risk it all for avarice and self-aggrandisement.”
The THST goes on to demand the board “immediately disassociates itself from the breakaway league” or it will have “no choice” but to call for new owners.
“Morning Mike.” Morning reader David Wall. “Everyone has remarked on the greed of the people behind this, but what strikes me the more I think about it is their stupidity. You don’t announce that you’re going to carry out a coup in a few months, or even a year’s time, giving the people you’re acting against time to get their retaliation in first. You just do it when you’re ready to go. And this wasn’t a leak, it was an announcement. How did the English clubs think the Premier League was going to react? It gives the PL plenty of time to call an EGM, propose expulsion for any club acting against for a competitor league (and I’ll bet they can find the 14 clubs required to vote through new rules), and then bar the six clubs from next season. At least, that’s what the PL should do, and those clubs have made it easy for them. Like Jonathan Liew said, ‘the smartest guys in the room’.”
The Guardian’s own Jonathan Liew has written that the idea of a European Super League is one that could only have been devised by someone who truly hates football to its bones.
Who hates football so much that they want to prune it, gut it, dismember it, from the grassroots game to the World Cup. Who finds the very idea of competitive sport offensive, an unhealthy distraction from the main objective, which in a way has always been capitalism’s main objective.
More below:
But not everyone agrees:
On Uefa’s stance on all this: there’s an executive committee meeting today in Switzerland. Italian journo Fabrizio Romano reports Europe’s governing body is on the same page as Fifa, the Premier League, Serie A and La Liga in that teams will be banned from the Champions League and domestic leagues if they take part in the European Super League.
“Soulless”, “absolutely disgusting”, “bang out of order”... Danny Murphy and Dion Dublin didn’t hold back when airing their views on the BBC. Former Liverpool midfielder Murphy said he expected a backlash from managers and players, not least because of Uefa’s threat to ban European Super League clubs from domestic leagues. (There is also the previous threat from Fifa to ban participating players from World Cups.)
Former Manchester United captain Roy Keane has also weighed in, saying the new league was all about “money and greed”.
“Let’s hope it’s stopped in its tracks,” Keane told Sky Sports. “We talk about big clubs, Bayern Munich are one of the biggest clubs in the world. At least they’ve made a stance, which is a good start.”
Arsène Wenger knew this was coming.
And here’s Jürgen Klopp talking on the subject, from more recent times, in 2019:
“For me, the Champions League is the Super League, in which you do not always end up playing against the same teams. Why should we create a system where Liverpool faces Real Madrid for 10 straight years? Who wants to see that every year?”
No need for any further explanation on this post:
There’s a lot to take in about the proposed competition, but this says a great deal – and also gives an indication of just why people are spitting blood over it.
From the statement from the 12 clubs: “Founding clubs will receive an amount of €3.5bn solely to support their infrastructure investment plans and to offset the impact of the Covid pandemic.” It added: “The new annual tournament will provide significantly greater economic growth and support for European football … and [solidarity payments] are expected to be in excess of €10bn during the course of the initial commitment period of the clubs.”
Like it or not, the idea of a European Super League has been rumbling away for a while now, but for it to have transferred from the minds of fanciful super-rich club owners to an actual, tabled plan, it took a remarkably short period of time.
“Things that usually take years were done in hours,” a senior executive of one of European football’s biggest clubs told the Guardian. More from Sean Ingle below:
In case you missed it (handily, the news was confirmed by the clubs just after 11pm in the UK, so you may well have), the founding – and governing – members of the European Super League are (deep breath, boo, hiss) AC Milan, Arsenal, Atlético Madrid, Chelsea, Barcelona, Internazionale, Juventus, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United, Real Madrid and Tottenham. That’s six of the best from the Premier League, and three each from La Liga and Serie A. Notable omissions for now are PSG and Bayern Munich. A further three clubs are expected to join before the inaugural season, which is intended to start in August. Five more clubs can qualify annually based on achievements in the prior season. The Real Madrid president, Florentino Pérez, is behind the plan, along with Joel Glazer of Manchester United and Andrea Agnelli of Juventus.
Football in turmoil! So reads Monday’s back page of this publication – a sentiment echoed widely elsewhere – after 12 of Europe’s biggest clubs confirmed late on Sunday they are to establish a breakaway continental super league, the existence of which would threaten the future of the Champions League and could have wide-reaching impacts on the entire structure of the club game.
You could say the news has caused something of a stir in the football world.
Stay with us as Europe and the UK wake up and bleary-eyed fans ask themselves if the news was just part of a feverish Stilton dream or if, indeed, European football could really be about to undergo the biggest transformation seen in a generation.
Anyway, do drop me a line if you need to, either on email or Twitter - @mike_hytner. Strap yourselves in, wild times incoming.
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