Did English football’s money men learn nothing from the recent Anfield walkout?

The mass exodus of Liverpool fans from the ground in the wake of a ticket price restructuring was supposed to be a victory for supporters against the increasing levels of corporate greed coursing through the veins of the game, lightening wallets of “customers” and generally attempting to milk human emotion for profit.

Liverpool backed down on that, but just this week chief executive Ian Ayre was pictured with four other members of the Premier League elite outside a London hotel as the latest threat to competitive football reared its ugly head.

Regardless of the specifics, the European Super League (or whatever horrendous name they choose to christen it) would have simple purpose – to protect the position of the chosen few and leave the great unwashed clawing at the door, desperately hoping for scraps.

As if that even wasn’t horrifying enough, Relevant Sports chairman Charlie Stillitano (the man behind the International Champions Cup, a bunch of preseason friendlies with an undeservedly prestigious name), who was part of these aforementioned talks, went on radio station Sirius XM this week to spit in the face of dignified competition even further by implying that clubs like Leicester have no place in this dawning of a new age, where money can be used as a barrier to keep out the riff-raff:

“What would Manchester United argue: did we create soccer or did Leicester create it?” “Let’s call it the money pot created by soccer and the fandom around the world. Who has had more of an integral role, Manchester United or Leicester? It’s a wonderful, wonderful story – but you could see it from Manchester United’s point of view, too.”

The self-interest and narrow-mindedness is astonishing; if Manchester United (or any other of the self-professed “big five”) were to agree with any of that, even for a second, then their sense of morality and connection to the game would be gone in an instant. Any semblance of these teams being sporting institutions – and not simply glorified cash machines – would be wiped out.

The thing is, even if the so-called big five don’t believe this, their counterparts across Europe certainly do. Barcelona president Josep Maria Bartomeu recently outlined his belief that the Champions League should have a wildcard system whereby the rich clubs who don’t qualify (e.g. Liverpool and AC Milan) would be given a pass into the competition, in a system that seems to be based purely on revenue.

It’s a system that these clubs across the continent are pushing for – that eventually there will be a certain amount of teams who are guaranteed entry every year while the rest can do whatever they want outside of the VIP area. The likes of Milan and Bayern have agreed with Bartomeu – if these people had their way then the concept of Champions League qualification wouldn’t even exist.

The sense of entitlement is astonishing. The idea that clubs who don’t perform well enough over the course of a season to qualify for Europe perhaps don’t deserve to be there seems to be lost on them.

And that’s where the billionaires come in, the likes of Stillitano who are more than happy to finance a 20-team tournament made up of superstar puppets, a hideous modernisation of the gladiator games of Ancient Rome as the players below dance to the tune of the various rich people in the crowds – all taking place in some hollow stadium in the heart of a Middle Eastern desert, because that would be the ultimate endgame.

“Fans? Fans can be bought.”

What these people don’t seem to realise is how utterly soulless it will be. Full of star names it would certainly be, but it would be so bereft of any emotion.

Part of the beauty of the Champions League and domestic leagues below is that teams like Leicester and Tottenham can defy the odds and produce seasons like the ones they are having now – closing that off to them kills the very nature of competition. It creates a barrier that can’t be breached by any sporting means, and that’s just not fair.

That’s not what football – any sport in fact – should be about.

It rewards financial growth above all else and that’s just not what kids get into the game for. They play football to escape the class structure, not to be embroiled in a whole new one.

Not to mention the rivalries. The cacophony of noise emanating from White Hart Lane this weekend as Tottenham take on Arsenal will be deafening. That can’t be fabricated, no amount of money can replicate that raw human experience of that.

So imagine, for a second, that these billionaires get their eventual wish of ripping the big five from the Premier League and making this vapid, tawdry spectacle of a “European Super League” into a full-time operation, separated entirely from the domestic structure. Now tell the Arsenal fans (all of whom in this scenario are now upper class members of society because the working class can no longer afford it). tell them that Benfica and Zenit are their new “hated rivals” and see how long it takes for the interest in it to die off.

So should this “European Super League” happen – be it now, in 2 years, a decade maybe – then that’s it. The second that clubs begin to close the doors behind them – all morality in the game will officially be dead.

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