So they are going to invite a team who hasn't won a trophy since 2005?
European Super League
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cityfanrob
Player Valuation: £225k
Good point well made, think some may have overlooked that!
I'm generally against it but tbh the CL has always seemed like a "made up" competition too. Lots of non-champions and a heavily fixed draw with the seeding and co-efficients system favouring the old guard. Then there's separating clubs from the same country and putting them in opposite sides of the draw for TV reasons. It's as far from random as you can get and makes the whole thing seem a bit of a farce. Most people would say the group stage is a total snoozefest so not sure a European super league could be worse on the proviso that there is promotion and relegation to/from it.
OneTrueLegend
Player Valuation: £35m
I think the reason this comes up so much is because they look at American sports and see how much money those organisations make. But that totally disregards over 100 years of professional football in Europe. We fans don’t follow teams in the same way American fans follow teams. Generally people are loyal to their team, they are not going to stop supporting their team and follow a team from the European super league.
So if this did happen I’m sure lots of people would watch it. But not more than those that watch the Champions league and domestic league. The amount of people that watch determines what sponsor will pay and ultimately what the teams earn. so technically the clubs would have less money than they already have.
What I can see happening is more of the top leagues getting assigned more places in the champions league and Europa league, making it virtually impossible for the top teams not to qualify and the top teams won’t have to go through knock out phases.
So if this did happen I’m sure lots of people would watch it. But not more than those that watch the Champions league and domestic league. The amount of people that watch determines what sponsor will pay and ultimately what the teams earn. so technically the clubs would have less money than they already have.
What I can see happening is more of the top leagues getting assigned more places in the champions league and Europa league, making it virtually impossible for the top teams not to qualify and the top teams won’t have to go through knock out phases.
Honestly, call their bluff. It's absolute hubris to think this will work. And who, of these teams, are going to be happy with finishing last?
Let them go I really don't care, but make it clear to those teams that leave the league that they will not be let back in under any circumstances not even into the lower leagues and we can all watch them fade into oblivion.
That is exactly what those clubs are hoping for. Not that it will happen, but that the fear of it happening will result in uefa begging them to stay with the promise of more / easier money
And what happened in the year or two before each of those changes were made? Oh, that’s right. A group of Europes clubs threatening to form a breakaway league
Chris O'Connor
Player Valuation: £35m
Very decent Times article worth reading, concentrates on Pochettino and Spurs and how its seen from their viewpoint of a 'top five' who have completely ignored and met in secret thus relegating them, new stadium and all to an 'inferior' status.
It does mention the staggering sums involved 400m guaranteed for the permanent members compared to the possible 90m for getting to the champions league final which has to be the driving force.
Although the premier league clubs domestic earnings generated from premier league TV rights in terms of earnings puts them at a substantial advantage when compared to the European clubs earnings from their leagues, you can see why the talks are advanced.
The prem clubs could see it as leverage to obtain a bigger piece of the pie at national and European level and have already obtained some concessions but 400m guaranteed will greatly interest foreign owners of the 'top FIVE' premier league clubs.
American owners especially like the no promotion and relegation, with finances guaranteed and TV rights exploding, the fans don't really come in to it much.
As this is a bit of a long post I'll put the article mentioned below in a separate one.. Its under a paywall so I'll print it in full below
It does mention the staggering sums involved 400m guaranteed for the permanent members compared to the possible 90m for getting to the champions league final which has to be the driving force.
Although the premier league clubs domestic earnings generated from premier league TV rights in terms of earnings puts them at a substantial advantage when compared to the European clubs earnings from their leagues, you can see why the talks are advanced.
The prem clubs could see it as leverage to obtain a bigger piece of the pie at national and European level and have already obtained some concessions but 400m guaranteed will greatly interest foreign owners of the 'top FIVE' premier league clubs.
American owners especially like the no promotion and relegation, with finances guaranteed and TV rights exploding, the fans don't really come in to it much.
As this is a bit of a long post I'll put the article mentioned below in a separate one.. Its under a paywall so I'll print it in full below
Chris O'Connor
Player Valuation: £35m
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/...ue-are-selling-the-soul-of-the-game-b0s9sd6pq
There is a story from Mauricio Pochettino’s 2017 book, Brave New World, that is hard to forget. Young Poch is 13 years of age, one of 3,540 people living in Murphy, a town in Argentina. His potential has been noted and once or twice a week he takes a bus to Rosario, 100 miles distant, to train with Central, a team in Argentina’s Primera Division.
He hates the three-hour journey but dreams are dreams and it’s a trade-off. One Monday evening there is a trial for young players at Villa Canas, a town 31 miles from Murphy. Not any old trial but one arranged by a local coach for the benefit of Marcelo Bielsa and Jorge Griffa, well-known coaches at mighty Newell’s Old Boys, Central’s big rivals in Rosario. Pochettino was invited to Villa Canas but even at 13, the boy had a mind of his own. He had had a long day at school that Monday and the tiredness from two weekend matches was still in his legs. He told his dad he did not have much enthusiasm for the drive to Villa Canas. His dad said that was fine.
The trial ended shortly before 10pm. Bielsa and Griffa sat down to eat with the local coach. Having assimilated the evidence of the evening’s trial, the visitors from Rosario asked the local man if there was any boy who had not played that evening but who might be one for the future. “There is one lad from Murphy, a kid called Pochettino, who is good.”
“Murphy,” they thought. “That’s not that far away.” It was after 11pm when they left Villa Canas, well past midnight when they got to a service station on the edge of Murphy and almost 1am when they knocked on the door of the Pochettino home. Mothers sleep lightly, so it was Amalia Pochettino who answered. They explained who they were. She refused to allow them in, returning instead to the bedroom, where she told her husband about the strangers.
“What, Bielsa and Griffa? I know who they are.” A minute later the Pochettinos sat with the coaches and heard what they had been told about young Mauricio. It made them proud. Fifteen minutes into the conversation, the coaches asked if they could see the boy. They would not wake him, just observe him while he slept. Inside his bedroom, the four adults gazed at the sleeping beauty.
“Would it be possible to pull back the covers,” asked Griffa, “so I can see his legs.” Amalia rolled back the covers. “He looks like a footballer,” one of them said. “Look at those legs.”
The boy became a man. Played for Newell’s Old Boys and Jorge Griffa became his football father. He spent most of his time playing at Espanyol in Barcelona and played 20 times for Argentina. It is, however, as a manager that he has built his reputation. Over the past four years his work with
Tottenham Hotspur has positioned him in the front line of the world’s best football coaches.
Bielsa and Griffa’s late-night visit to his home in 1985 struck a chord with Pochettino. For in them he saw reflections of his young self. Their passion was his passion; their obsession his obsession. He cried when his hero Diego Maradona spoke after his testimonial game at Boca’s stadium in 2001. “I’ve made mistakes,” said Diego. “I’ve paid for them. But my love for the ball is still pure.” So, too, it has always been for Pochettino.
With the cost of their new stadium, Tottenham do not have the hundreds of millions their rivals spend so freely. His job is to convince some of the best young players in Europe that there is more to football than the monthly transfer that swells their bank account. Convincing them of this is not as straightforward as getting them to press the opposition but, so far, Pochettino is winning. In the Premier League narrative, Tottenham have been one of the inspiring storylines.
So, put yourself inside the head of Tottenham’s manager travelling to the Black Country for yesterday’s match against Wolverhampton Wanderers. Sitting on the coach he searches for Der Spiegel’s English website and begins to read their long article about Europe’s biggest clubs forming an exclusive Super League. It would begin with seven clubs, the founding fathers: Manchester United and Arsenal, Real Madrid and Barcelona, Juventus and AC Milan, Bayern Munich. An American, Charlie Stillitano, is the entrepreneur driving the talks. His numbers had turned people’s heads, drawn them to clandestine meetings and got them asking big questions of their legal advisers. What can we do here? Would it be possible to just walk away from the Champions League? And domestic leagues? Could we exit La Liga, Serie A, the Premier League?
It was more than a year ago that he had seen a story in The Sun about one of those secret “European Super League” meetings in London. He wasn’t sure whether to believe it. But here in Der Spiegel’s well-sourced story, they reproduce a line from an email written by an adviser to Manchester City’s Abu Dhabi owners to the club’s chief executive, Ferran Soriano, concerning that story in The Sun. “We need to be very careful moving forward and avoid at all costs the perception of a cartel,” said the adviser. Soriano replied by saying that the clubs would have to find a more private venue for future meetings.
So it was true. These guys have been meeting, planning, deciding the best way forward. The original seven became 11. The two English conspirators were joined by Liverpool, Manchester City and Chelsea. Stillitano was telling them to forget the old Champions League model, with its paltry tens of millions of payments. He was talking of annual revenues of £440m-plus to clubs in the Super League and guaranteed inclusion for the first 20 years.
Of course 11 clubs would not be enough, so Stillitano and his cohorts were going to include Borussia Dortmund, Inter Milan, Roma, Marseilles and Atletico Madrid. These would be “guests,” not part of the cartel. There was talk of Schalke 04 and getting an 18th club from Holland, Russia, Portugal or Turkey.
And as Pochettino reads through to the last sentence of this story, your heart sinks as your anger rises. So much planning for this league, so many “secret meetings” and in this detailed report about what has been going on, there are two words never uttered. Tottenham Hotspur. The big six has been reduced to the big five, with the complicity of the big five. You think of the evening at the Etihad, January 2017. Son Heung-min’s 73rd-minute goal got you a 2-2 draw, probably more than you deserved but satisfying all the same. Afterwards Pep Guardiola came smilingly towards you and said: “Now, tell me all about Monaco.” You had played Monaco in pool matches and now Manchester City had them in the next round. Naturally you wanted to help because even though you are Premier League rivals, there is an affinity with the clubs in your league.
You think about Soriano wanting “a more private venue” for meetings to which your club will not be invited, you think about the people planning for this Super League and you feel betrayed. And you know that every manager and every chief executive of every Premier League club outside the conspirators will feel betrayed. The same for the excluded in Serie A, La Liga and the Bundesliga. In their thirst for ever more riches, the big money men sell the soul of the game. And you think of the little boy you were in Murphy, on the bus journey to Rosario that had so many stops you often likened it to a postman doing his rounds. It was hard back then but at least you could love the game.
How ‘Super League’ might look
Real Madrid are the key players in plans for a 16-team European Super League in 2021, according to a report from the German magazine Der Spiegel based on leaked documents. It claims:
■ Seven of the 11 ‘founders’ of the proposed league went behind Uefa’s back to discuss it: Real, Barcelona, Man United, Arsenal, Juventus, AC Milan and Bayern Munich
■ The other founders would be Man City, Chelsea, Liverpool and Paris Saint-Germain. The 11 founders could not be relegated
■ Another five teams would have ‘guest’ status for the opening season of the competition: Atletico Madrid, Inter Milan, Roma, Borussia Dortmund and Marseilles
■ Two more teams could join later: possibly Schalke from the Bundesliga plus a side from Portugal, Holland, Russia or Turkey. Bayern Munich said it was ‘unaware of recent plans for a so-called Super League’ and had not ‘taken part in negotiations relating to such plans’. The other clubs named above have not responded.
There is a story from Mauricio Pochettino’s 2017 book, Brave New World, that is hard to forget. Young Poch is 13 years of age, one of 3,540 people living in Murphy, a town in Argentina. His potential has been noted and once or twice a week he takes a bus to Rosario, 100 miles distant, to train with Central, a team in Argentina’s Primera Division.
He hates the three-hour journey but dreams are dreams and it’s a trade-off. One Monday evening there is a trial for young players at Villa Canas, a town 31 miles from Murphy. Not any old trial but one arranged by a local coach for the benefit of Marcelo Bielsa and Jorge Griffa, well-known coaches at mighty Newell’s Old Boys, Central’s big rivals in Rosario. Pochettino was invited to Villa Canas but even at 13, the boy had a mind of his own. He had had a long day at school that Monday and the tiredness from two weekend matches was still in his legs. He told his dad he did not have much enthusiasm for the drive to Villa Canas. His dad said that was fine.
The trial ended shortly before 10pm. Bielsa and Griffa sat down to eat with the local coach. Having assimilated the evidence of the evening’s trial, the visitors from Rosario asked the local man if there was any boy who had not played that evening but who might be one for the future. “There is one lad from Murphy, a kid called Pochettino, who is good.”
“Murphy,” they thought. “That’s not that far away.” It was after 11pm when they left Villa Canas, well past midnight when they got to a service station on the edge of Murphy and almost 1am when they knocked on the door of the Pochettino home. Mothers sleep lightly, so it was Amalia Pochettino who answered. They explained who they were. She refused to allow them in, returning instead to the bedroom, where she told her husband about the strangers.
“What, Bielsa and Griffa? I know who they are.” A minute later the Pochettinos sat with the coaches and heard what they had been told about young Mauricio. It made them proud. Fifteen minutes into the conversation, the coaches asked if they could see the boy. They would not wake him, just observe him while he slept. Inside his bedroom, the four adults gazed at the sleeping beauty.
“Would it be possible to pull back the covers,” asked Griffa, “so I can see his legs.” Amalia rolled back the covers. “He looks like a footballer,” one of them said. “Look at those legs.”
The boy became a man. Played for Newell’s Old Boys and Jorge Griffa became his football father. He spent most of his time playing at Espanyol in Barcelona and played 20 times for Argentina. It is, however, as a manager that he has built his reputation. Over the past four years his work with
Tottenham Hotspur has positioned him in the front line of the world’s best football coaches.
Bielsa and Griffa’s late-night visit to his home in 1985 struck a chord with Pochettino. For in them he saw reflections of his young self. Their passion was his passion; their obsession his obsession. He cried when his hero Diego Maradona spoke after his testimonial game at Boca’s stadium in 2001. “I’ve made mistakes,” said Diego. “I’ve paid for them. But my love for the ball is still pure.” So, too, it has always been for Pochettino.
With the cost of their new stadium, Tottenham do not have the hundreds of millions their rivals spend so freely. His job is to convince some of the best young players in Europe that there is more to football than the monthly transfer that swells their bank account. Convincing them of this is not as straightforward as getting them to press the opposition but, so far, Pochettino is winning. In the Premier League narrative, Tottenham have been one of the inspiring storylines.
So, put yourself inside the head of Tottenham’s manager travelling to the Black Country for yesterday’s match against Wolverhampton Wanderers. Sitting on the coach he searches for Der Spiegel’s English website and begins to read their long article about Europe’s biggest clubs forming an exclusive Super League. It would begin with seven clubs, the founding fathers: Manchester United and Arsenal, Real Madrid and Barcelona, Juventus and AC Milan, Bayern Munich. An American, Charlie Stillitano, is the entrepreneur driving the talks. His numbers had turned people’s heads, drawn them to clandestine meetings and got them asking big questions of their legal advisers. What can we do here? Would it be possible to just walk away from the Champions League? And domestic leagues? Could we exit La Liga, Serie A, the Premier League?
It was more than a year ago that he had seen a story in The Sun about one of those secret “European Super League” meetings in London. He wasn’t sure whether to believe it. But here in Der Spiegel’s well-sourced story, they reproduce a line from an email written by an adviser to Manchester City’s Abu Dhabi owners to the club’s chief executive, Ferran Soriano, concerning that story in The Sun. “We need to be very careful moving forward and avoid at all costs the perception of a cartel,” said the adviser. Soriano replied by saying that the clubs would have to find a more private venue for future meetings.
So it was true. These guys have been meeting, planning, deciding the best way forward. The original seven became 11. The two English conspirators were joined by Liverpool, Manchester City and Chelsea. Stillitano was telling them to forget the old Champions League model, with its paltry tens of millions of payments. He was talking of annual revenues of £440m-plus to clubs in the Super League and guaranteed inclusion for the first 20 years.
Of course 11 clubs would not be enough, so Stillitano and his cohorts were going to include Borussia Dortmund, Inter Milan, Roma, Marseilles and Atletico Madrid. These would be “guests,” not part of the cartel. There was talk of Schalke 04 and getting an 18th club from Holland, Russia, Portugal or Turkey.
And as Pochettino reads through to the last sentence of this story, your heart sinks as your anger rises. So much planning for this league, so many “secret meetings” and in this detailed report about what has been going on, there are two words never uttered. Tottenham Hotspur. The big six has been reduced to the big five, with the complicity of the big five. You think of the evening at the Etihad, January 2017. Son Heung-min’s 73rd-minute goal got you a 2-2 draw, probably more than you deserved but satisfying all the same. Afterwards Pep Guardiola came smilingly towards you and said: “Now, tell me all about Monaco.” You had played Monaco in pool matches and now Manchester City had them in the next round. Naturally you wanted to help because even though you are Premier League rivals, there is an affinity with the clubs in your league.
You think about Soriano wanting “a more private venue” for meetings to which your club will not be invited, you think about the people planning for this Super League and you feel betrayed. And you know that every manager and every chief executive of every Premier League club outside the conspirators will feel betrayed. The same for the excluded in Serie A, La Liga and the Bundesliga. In their thirst for ever more riches, the big money men sell the soul of the game. And you think of the little boy you were in Murphy, on the bus journey to Rosario that had so many stops you often likened it to a postman doing his rounds. It was hard back then but at least you could love the game.
How ‘Super League’ might look
Real Madrid are the key players in plans for a 16-team European Super League in 2021, according to a report from the German magazine Der Spiegel based on leaked documents. It claims:
■ Seven of the 11 ‘founders’ of the proposed league went behind Uefa’s back to discuss it: Real, Barcelona, Man United, Arsenal, Juventus, AC Milan and Bayern Munich
■ The other founders would be Man City, Chelsea, Liverpool and Paris Saint-Germain. The 11 founders could not be relegated
■ Another five teams would have ‘guest’ status for the opening season of the competition: Atletico Madrid, Inter Milan, Roma, Borussia Dortmund and Marseilles
■ Two more teams could join later: possibly Schalke from the Bundesliga plus a side from Portugal, Holland, Russia or Turkey. Bayern Munich said it was ‘unaware of recent plans for a so-called Super League’ and had not ‘taken part in negotiations relating to such plans’. The other clubs named above have not responded.
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roydo
in memoriam - 1965-2024
I was nodding in agreement there Roydo...then I remembered NFL
It crossed my mind, but the corporate structure of the NFL in the US is totally different to European football. The whole franchise structure, the draft, college football and the history has been that way for ever. Its engrained in the culture of the sport.
I certainly dont see Real Madrid or anyone else agreeing to let the lower ranked teams getting first dibs on the next Messi, for just one example.
roydo
in memoriam - 1965-2024
And thinking about it a bit more, having read The Times piece, what would be the point of it? They would be playing for one thing, and one thing only; the title.
No more CL/EL qualifying excitement.
No more CL/EL games.
No more FA Cup
No more League Cup.
95% of games would actually count for nothing. Who would pay to watch live, largely meaningless matches, against the same teams, week in week out?
And if they then see early interest fade, and the TV deals start to creak as folk tire of watching nothing games in front of uninterested half empty stadiums, what then?
No more CL/EL qualifying excitement.
No more CL/EL games.
No more FA Cup
No more League Cup.
95% of games would actually count for nothing. Who would pay to watch live, largely meaningless matches, against the same teams, week in week out?
And if they then see early interest fade, and the TV deals start to creak as folk tire of watching nothing games in front of uninterested half empty stadiums, what then?
It makes no sense. I think it's a group negotiating ploy for a bigger cut of domestic league money.
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