Why the reaction to the new European Super League is well over the top!

The reaction to the formation of the new European Super League has been quite astounding, really.

Every man and their dog has expressed outrage – ex-players, pundits, bloggers, supporters, radio stations, fans groups… the list goes on. But it strikes me that people are being outraged without understanding what is actually happening.

Which is some of Europe’s biggest teams have decided to start their own competition. That’s literally it.

They haven’t said they would leave their domestic leagues (in our case the Premier League) so what’s the problem? That Arsenal might not participate in the FA Cup? Well that hasn’t been decided yet has it? People are completely freaking out for no reason!

This is a model Arsene Wenger said 11 years ago that would happen “within 10 years”, and as usually Arsene was pretty much on the money.

The argument about greed is just laughable. The boat sailed a long time ago, back in 1992 when the Premier League was formed. Did anyone care about the negative affect it would have on lower leagues? No. Did they care that the extra money used to buy foreign talent would stifle our English youth? No. The hypocrisy is real.

The bottom line is the Premier League and UEFA let this happen with the way they behaved, and a European Super League should be no surprise – Arsene Wenger knew this would happen over a decade ago!

The Premier League let clubs like Chelsea and Manchester City have owners that had questionable backgrounds come in and splash obscene amounts of money so that they could get the best players and increase the viewership worldwide. You realise the PL make insane money from worldwide TV rights don’t you?

And UEFA? They pretended to implemented FFP (Financial Fair Play) but let the richest clubs (Manchester City, PSG, etc.) break these rules time and time again without punishment.

Why? Because UEFA are corrupt and again, all they want is the best players so they have the highest viewing figures possible.

This is something which has been on the cards for a long long time, and the hypocrisy and outrage from these so called pundits is laughable.

 

8 thoughts on “Why the reaction to the new European Super League is well over the top!

  1. What gives us and the other 5 clubs the absolute right to enter a closed competition? It sounds like American Football Franchises. We’re not exactly elite at the moment are we? We’re not a European “super” power by any stretch at the moment. We’ve never won the Champions League (European Cup) for starters. When was the last time Juventus won it? 1996. United? 2008. Inter 2010, Milan 2007. Ajax have won it four times, where is there invitation? Benfica twice, Forest twice, Porto twice. We can certainly agree on UEFA as you quite correctly point out. It just doesn’t sit right in the current climate.

     
    • We haven’t won the champions league but we have won the old European cup winners cup check your club history

       
  2. There is way too much money around elite sport including our game. TV rights and betting companies reign over everything that happens in sport. Unless these powerful bodies can find that such a plan will increase their bottom lines it will not happen.

    And to anonymous who called you a donkey, easy to throw stones under the mask of anonymity.

     
  3. It will be the end of Arsenal football club for any decent arsenal fan. We will no longer have a club.
    But football fans who vote for a free market laissez fair governments have themselves to blame.
    We need to organise 2 years of demonstrations, boycotts occupations if we loose the real supporters of so called big six won’t have a club.
    If any politician had a brain they should have targeted fan ownership of clubs years ago.
    We must fight this . We must organise the way our for fathers and mothers fought for the right to vote and the right to be treated with dignity

     
  4. I think this short post is spot-on. I am still undecided about the the ESL proposal, but I do think that much of the reaction is self-interested (UEFA) and hypocritical (UEFA, PL, FA…). The football clubs are commercial organisations who have long sought new ways to maximise their revenue. UEFA has been complicit in this, by creating a Champions League that has mangled everything else: the old Fairs/EUFA and Cup Winners’ Cups were strong and prestigious competitions that were badly devalued by the creation of the ECL; the Europa League is not as highly regarded an achievement as either of its predecessors were. What is more, the ECL has undermined domestic cup competitions, because qualifying for it by finishing in the top 4 of the PL is a bigger ‘trophy’ than winning the FA Cup (let alone the League Cup). TV contracts and global marketing have dominated the actions of the major clubs, UEFA, FIFA and the FA for the past 30 years, so the idea of the ESL is just a logical extension of this approach. Frankly, on first hearing, the ESL proposal doesn’t sound any worse to me than UEFA’s plans for a revamped ECL. UEFA are just pissed off because they won’t be running the biggest competition anymore. As for the international ban on players involved in a new ESL, my guess is that, were it to be implemented, it would just lead to the creation of a new world championship organised by the ESL for their leading players. I wonder whether the TV companies would pay FIFA as much for a weakened World Cup as they would for a new ESL world championship? The fact that that these 12 clubs have gone public with their proposal, and their representatives have all resigned from positions at UEFA suggests that they are very serious about this idea, and think they have the whip hand. Which leads me to the further conclusion that EUFA/FIFA etc, will eventually have to compromise.

     
  5. Finally someone with some sense, no was complaining when players are getting paid 500k a week and transfers fees in excess of 100mil, the hypocrite former players leading the criticism of this all enriched themselves from the obscene amounts of money in the game, this was inevitable, all the pratts talking about grass roots and pyramid system etc, utter nonsense, what they believe football to be died decades ago, football is a business and you do whats best for business.

     

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