It occurs to me that due to how satisfyingly short-lived (48 hours) the proposed European Super League was, I never actually explained what was so utterly appalling about it. To be honest, I figured that I’d have a bit longer to get around to it.
Anyway, I’ll explain here why it was so loathed.
There were two broad reasons why the Super League was so universally rejected by football. The first (and lesser, although not by much) of these was the sheer arrogance of those who announced it; the billionaire club owners who thought that the fan bases would simply fall into line once they declared how things were going to be.
Not to mention that this was all done in secret. While they were arranging with UEFA for the Champions League to be expanded more to their liking, and while small clubs across the continent were folding due to the strain of the pandemic, the owners of these clubs were holding secret meetings to arrange their own little club at the very top of the game.
Shame on them for that.
But there was another, even bigger reason, for the Super League’s rejection being so utter, and so universal: it was to be a closed club.
The original twelve clubs – Real Madrid, Barcelona, Atletico Madrid, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal, Tottenham, AC Milan, Inter Milan and Juventus – intended that there be no relegation from the Super League – for them, at least, that is. They would sit at the top of the footballing pyramid for all eternity, picking and choosing which clubs were permitted to play with them each year.
To quote Italian newspaper La Reppublica, the proposed European Super League “eliminates the idea that merit is a prerequisite to participation.”
In a beautifully scathing piece, meanwhile, Il Fatto Quotidano writes that “the Super League is the antithesis of football: they want to kill the passion for the game in the name of profit… and to turn fans into mere consumers”. It goes on to compare the Super League to the NBA, in which “every match is an event, and the sport is the means rather than the end: a huge match every night, players who are paid tens of millions per season, extortionate tickets and audiences of billions of people. It’s the furthest thing from the European idea of football – and of sport.”
In short, the European Super League was totally anti-football. There was to be no competition any longer, and no upwards mobility for those outside the select club. They, and only they, would be able to sit at football’s top table. In fact, no, not only would they be able to sit there, they would be guaranteed a place there. Sporting merit be damned; they were the richest, and so they would be at the top no matter what.
The European Super League proposed to totally trash the footballing pyramid. Even the possibility of climbing to the top of the game would be totally gone, with any club not part of the original twelve permanently locked out of elite competition. All others – from the footballing institution of Leeds United to tiny Dagenham & Redbridge – would become but feeders for the Super League, with their aspirations quite literally unable to be any higher than to become a second-rate club.
Perhaps the most ashamed of all on this front ought to be Manchester City. Twenty years ago, they themselves were in the Third Division. Now they sit atop world football, gunning for the first Champions League and a near-certainty to close out their fifth Premier League title of the last decade.
And in joining the Super League, they aimed to pull that ladder up behind them. Absolutely shameful.
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