European Super League

It’s easy to forget sometimes that football clubs are businesses and UEFA was created along with individual organisations like the Premier League to house these businesses in sporting competitions.

Everything is very fragile outside of the history of football.

Should the biggest teams in the world decide to create their own league they could, and TV rights, players, fans and money would follow them. They certainly would not stay loyal to UEFA in the long term.

UEFA must be careful, they are 1 or 2 big bans away from triggering delibrate plans to finally put the European Super League wheels in motion.

Lets say City do get a 2 year ban, followed by PSG receiving the same treatment and perhaps Chelsea. It wouldn’t take much for these teams to start talking.

Each team has had their issue with UEFA, Chelsea vs Bayern and the referee scandal comes to mind, PSG’s constant court battles and City’s potential 2 year ban.

Should these teams decide to leave and create a European Super League, it’s likely that Monaco, Marseille and Lyon would immediately follow. With the lack of money in the Eredivisie Ajax and PSV would be happy to leave as would Benfica and Porto in the Portuguese league.

This is hardly all of the big guns, but it creates three issues for UEFA. The Premier League, Ligue 1, Primeira Liga and the Eredivisie would all suffer drastically. Issue 2, the new European Super League would gain significant traction and popularity year after year encouraging new teams to join. It would be impossible for world fans not to keep an eye on this league.

The biggest issue for Uefa would be the lack of rules. Teams in the European Super League could spend and pay players whatever they wanted like the Chinese League. Suddenly top players are leaving Real Madrid, Bayern and Barcelona and joining Ajax, Lyon and PSV, the opposite of what currenly happens. This power shift would encourage other teams to join the league.

Perhaps, Roma, Napoli and the still struggling AC Milan would see an opportunity. Celtic and Rangers might have their eyes on something more than Scottish dominance. Bayer Leverkusen who bring in big revenue would look to come out from Bayern Munich’s shadow.

All of a sudden you have 16 or so world class teams attracting the best players with the league holding the most attention.

It wouldn’t be long before either some of those smaller teams would be removed from the league in favour of Real Madrid/Barcelona or a second division would be created to house the smaller names as feeder clubs.

Divide and Conquer

In order to take down UEFA you wouldn’t have to convince every team, you’d simply roundup the misfits and frustrated also rans, to create enough disruption to the foundations of domestic football that UEFA would come apart at the seams.

A league containing; Manchester City, PSG, Chelsea, Monaco, Lyon, Marseille, Bayer Leverkusen, Celtic, Rangers, PSV, Ajax, Napoli, AC Milan, Roma, Porto and Benfica

– would comfortably gather more attention than a La Liga where only 2 teams can realistically win each year, a Bundesliga and Serie A where Bayern Munich and Juventus dominate and a Premier League that is currently seeing Man City and Liverpool rack up 100 plus points from teams they shouldn’t even be playing against.

Cristiano Ronaldo recently said it’s hard for him to “get up” for games outside of the Champions League, nothing else motivated him in domestic leagues. Players in the European Super League would be playing against the world’s best each week, get paid more money, get to travel the world and would receive more fame and attention than ever before.

Would fans, clubs and players allow this to happen?

Culture

The first complaint would naturally come from the fans. I myself remember going to games with my Dad at 4 years old and building rivalries with local teams.

The buzz of beating your friends team at school was fantastic, it’s hard to keep that same feeling when there are zero Napoli fans at school or at your workplace.

The culture would temporarily die along with the history of domestic leagues.

However like any disruptive process, the change is done for the future not for the past. Older fans may dislike the new league, but younger fans who live in an online world would welcome the modern coverage and interactions with international fans.

Having high profile fixtures every week would quickly soften the blow for many, with younger fans enjoying this the most.

Overtime like any disruptive change, the new league would become as normal as VAR, no back pass, the first £1m player, or fielding a weakened team in the FA Cup 3rd round.

Travel

Many have pointed out that such a league just isn’t possible due to the travel issues.

However people forget how small Europe is. US teams will travel 8 hours via plane from the West Coast to the East Coast on a regular basis with zero complaints. The furthest trip from our make believe league above would be 4.5 hours Glasgow to Naples.

Travel for fans would be tougher, perhaps creating an American style where the entire home crowd consists of home fans. However fans would be able to pick 3 or 5 away games per year to save up for and travel to, which is a much better experience than Stoke away on a rainy Monday night in Winter. I must admit I would miss the historic fixtures and domestic rivalries, but like any industry things change and evolve.

The Leagues and UEFA

Each teams requires a licence to be in their domestic leagues and UEFA competitions. It’s likely that these organisations will put punishments in place for teams and players that leave before their licensed agreements are up.

However once the licenses are up teams and players would be free to do as they pleased.

One of the biggest complaints is that the smaller teams would suffer from the larger teams not being in the leagues anymore. In truth this is not the bigger teams problem, the fact they have kept the smaller teams alive for so long may motivate them to leave more so. Yes you could argue they have a domestic responsibility to help the other teams, but in a world of businessmen I don’t think they’ll consider this option. A £500m prize for winning the Super League will outweigh an £80m domestic title win.

One positive could be, if the European Super League games are played on weekends as prime time TV, then domestic league games between Stoke City and Norwich can be played on a Wednesday evening increasing their tv time and attention very much like College football in the US.

College football is it’s own entity, it’s extremely popular as it has it’s own tv slot outside of the NFL and takes advantage of 9 to 5 working lives by giving people evening entertainment after a long day at work. This is wishful thinking, it’s also entirely possible that these teams die out completely which would be horrible to see.

The Players

Players would be the easiest to convince. If players in their prime are currently happy to leave for China in exchange for millions, then they’re sure to do the same for a European Super League.

Having the chance to travel the world, earn big money, play against the best players week in week out and be treated like superstars would certainly attract the biggest names.

The Future

This new European Super League has been spoken about for a while with no concrete plans to move forward.

Like the French Revolution, people will only ever take so much before they revolt. In this instance we’re talking about billionaire owners who always get what they want, do not have to answer to anyone and have made fortunes from disruption/making positive changes for future gains.

They will not worry about the fans because they know the fans will adapt. They will not worry about the domestic league’s and their history because in 20 years time the new league will have new history.

The Super League is coming. It may be 5 years, 10 years or 15 years, but one thing that is for certain is UEFA are currently giving Man City the motivation they need to drive the plans forward.

We may look back and remember the current events as the catalyst that changed world football forever, for better or for worse.