Read on Twitter
non-football fans might've been insanely confused by everything going on over the last few days so let me explain what happened.
thread: understanding the european super league for dummies.
thread: understanding the european super league for dummies.
professional football is run by governing bodies. fifa is in control of the sport globally, while uefa runs football in europe. there are other organisations on other continents, but those are not relevant now.
late on sunday night 12 european clubs announced plans to form a breakaway competition called "the super league" and this idea was met with intense backlash for a number of reasons.
the involved clubs are from three of europe's five strongest leagues - italy, spain and england - and why they bandied together is because the owners (ceos, chairmen etc) are businessmen who make business decisions. so why this one?
the idea behind this is very simple. they, the people who run these world-famous clubs, believed that an easy way out of the financial struggle amid the coronavirus pandemic is to make football more lucrative by having the biggest sides in the world play each other every week.
this, in theory, is a fun idea. fans do love seeing the biggest clubs and players compete against each other, but those games must matter and one of the many problems with the proposed super league project is that there appeared to be no point to it.
it seemed clear as day that these club owners were only aiming to protect their pockets, to make football more lucrative for themselves as it is a closed competition, meaning not just any team from europe or the world can play in it, you don't get in on merit.
and this is what most of the backlash was centred around. how is it fair that 12 clubs can just break away to form a new competition that is governed by the owners of these clubs and that nobody else can be a part of? shouldn't there always be requirements?
it has been viewed as a money-grab, a greedy move that would probably change football forever. of course there would be big money in this in tv rights and sponsorship deals, but the danger it would pose to the leagues these clubs come from is huge.
another issue with this is that there already is the uefa champions league, a club competition made up of the best teams from around europe. to get into the champions league, you need to qualify, you need to be good enough to play with big boys. there are no handouts.
these rich businessmen were/are effectively trying to create their own "champions league" but make it more exclusive with fewer teams from some of europe's 'weaker' leagues which would essentially make the model more profitable.
it's in the best interests of manchester united's owners that the team plays against real madrid or barcelona every week instead of sheffield united and fulham. they don't want season ticket holders, they don't want the same person coming to their stadium with a shirt from 2007.
they want the sport to appeal to non-football people, they want people with no interest in football to go to games, to spend big money on tickets and merchandise. the loyal season ticket holder makes them far less money. think of non-Americans you've seen wearing NBA shirts.
fortunately it looks as if this won't happen or at least not yet. the discussions over the SL are far from over, despite all six England-based clubs having officially withdrawn from it, but there is hope that the sport won't be taken away from those who care about it most.
these owners forgot that without fans football isn't football. nobody, not even the supporters of these mega-rich clubs, wanted this. we all want fair competition or at least the illusion that there is fair competition (convo for another day).
this was a very brazen and arrogant attempt by 12 stupidly rich groups to turn the sport into something it isn't, but thankfully the millions of outraged football fans refused to allow that to happen. again, this isn't over, but this has demonstrated where the real power lies.
