This would be a brilliant opportunity for football to reset.
I seriously don’t know how you do it and I seriously have no optimism this will happen
2 Likes
Juventus chairman Andrea Agnelli says the European Super League project cannot proceed following the withdrawal of the six Premier League clubs.
Agnelli was one of the chief architects of the breakaway plans, which involved 12 clubs from England, Spain and Italy.
However, with teams withdrawing, he accepts it cannot now go ahead.
“To be frank and honest no, evidently that is not the case,” said Agnelli, when asked whether the Super League could still happen.
“I remain convinced of the beauty of that project, of the value that it would have developed to the pyramid, of the creation of the best competition in the world, but evidently no. I don’t think that project is now still up and running.”
Agnelli was described as a “snake and a liar” by Uefa president Aleksander Ceferin on Monday after the announcement of the breakaway plans on Sunday evening.
Agnelli resigned his position as chairman of the European Clubs’ Association on Sunday and refused to take calls from Ceferin.
The six Premier League clubs involved all withdrew within hours of each other on Tuesday following a furious backlash to the plans.
Manchester City were the first club to pull out after Chelsea had signalled their intent to do so by preparing documentation to withdraw.
The other four sides - Arsenal, Liverpool, Manchester United and Tottenham - then followed suit late on Tuesday evening.
Italian side Inter Milan are also set to withdraw as they no longer wish to be involved with the project.
BBC Sport understands bosses at the Serie A club are preparing for their exit following Tuesday night’s dramatic developments.
- ‘Owners of big six must beg for forgiveness’
- Super League unravels; Woodward to resign - how dramatic evening unfolded
The 12-team Super League, set up by the six English teams and Inter, plus Spain’s Atletico Madrid, Barcelona and Real Madrid and Italy’s AC Milan and Juventus was announced on Sunday to widespread condemnation.
“Despite the announced departure of the English clubs, forced to take such decisions due to the pressure put on them, we are convinced our proposal is fully aligned with European law and regulations,” the ESL said earlier on Wednesday, adding it was “convinced that the current status quo of European football needs to change”.
“Real Madrid president Florentino Perez is insisting on the idea of keeping the group together to push for change,” says Spanish football expert Guillem Balague.
“Barcelona say they agreed to the ESL, but only if the season ticket holders’ assembly approve it, which could be their way out.”
Balague also says Atletico Madrid are meeting on Wednesday morning to review their position.
Imagine how toxic the atmosphere is going to be (if we make it) in the champions league next season if we draw Real, Barca or Juventus… plus others but they seem to be the main players in pushing this for their own agendas
1 Like
Barca have seemed baffling really, “oh we didn’t sign up we need to ask the fans anyhow” but that came out way before we pulled out.
Couldn’t care about Juve or RM and their toxicity anyhow, and Chelsea are about to square off against them anyhow.
As for UEFA’s changes, it’s not 12 teams fucking off and joining their own exclusive league and inviting a further 5 teams every year from the whole of Europe. Yes I hate the way you only play a selection of clubs of the 10 in your group, but if your a Leicester, Atalanta, Ajax,Porto and so on you still get the chance to qualify, that was at the behest of the 12 clubs under these new plans, say Leicester pissed off Man Utd in that season, would they turn around and go well this season we only see it fair to pick a Turkish club.
UEFA’s leader needs to shut his gob, the fans who were against this aren’t interested in his platitudes and the EU and other governments need to work together to force changes on UEFA, if they won’t change themselves.
3 Likes
1 Like
For Real, Barca and Juve this is nakedly about fixing their catastrophic mismanagement of their clubs. They are the real bad guys here.
I get why people focus on John Henry, but I see FSG as in this because they see it as a way to keep LFC competitive and exert greater influence on the sport, through cost control mechanisms like a salary cap or similar.
6 Likes
Life is never fair, but sometimes you can make it fairer, or at least stop it from becoming manifestly unfair.
3 Likes
All great but these people are businessmen if they are that dumb at Business then I’d worry for their clubs.
In fact from that I’d probably take at least our owners had a vision of what they wanted and how this will work, which is better than the three others.
Alternatively it’s called saving face and they’ve believed it like the idiots they are, it seems pretty obvious that even our top brass this side of the Atlantic hadn’t a clue.
2 Likes
The football bubble has gotten out of hand and needs to be reined in to survive, in my view. Players on 1/2 million a week regardless of form, transfers > 100 million; it simply can’t go on. Creating a super league will not necessarily address these problems. Some clubs have bet the house on continued success, not unlike Leeds a few years back. This is a risky strategy which the pandemic has clearly exacerbated. .
2 Likes
Is it really over!
Guys like Agnelli and Perez aren’t any upstarts, they have been around for ages and know all the alleys and streets of sports politics. Guys like Abramovich and Mansour may have kept a low profile, but they would love nothing more than a glitzy thing like ESL. Guys like Rummenigge and Al-Khelaifi may have pretended the moral high, but they are all about monopolizing the gold-pot.
Add to that the seemingly endless ineptness and greed of UEFA, broadcasters, national associations etc.
3 Likes
It was fun whilst it lasted, can’t wait for the highlights reel
1 Like
Magic cards and road cycling. Is there no end to your renaissance man talents SBYM?
2 Likes
He didn’t know either because Henry apologised to him as well
3 Likes
Exactly, instead most actively invest it to avoid paying tax
1 Like
An article from the Wall Street Journal.
"The audacious plan by Europe’s top soccer clubs to form their own U.S.-style tournament lies in tatters just days after it was launched. But that might not stop some eventual Americanization of the world’s most popular sport.
The six English clubs that had supported the new European Super League pulled out Wednesday, all but sealing its fate. The proposal for a “closed” league inspired by U.S. franchises, featuring weekly face-offs between powerful teams that couldn’t be relegated, would have torpedoed the existing Champions League run by European soccer’s governing body UEFA. It sparked immediate outrage from national leagues, clubs, fans and governments.
What the near-universal criticism glossed over is the inadequacy of the status quo—and not just for the most popular clubs’ billionaire owners. The collapse of the Super League might not take much pressure off UEFA to fix problems it has failed to address for decades.
Although soccer has a bigger fan base than any other sport globally, the National Football League, Major League Baseball and the National Basketball Association all recorded more revenues than any European soccer competition in 2019. This is in part because the MLB and NBA have more matches per season. But the NFL still collected $60 million a game, compared with about $25 million for the Champions League.
More than half of that income comes from media companies like Sky—owned by U.S. giant Comcast —paying for soccer broadcast rights. The Super League expected a more popular format to double the value of these rights, helping soccer clubs plug the financial holes caused by the pandemic.
Investors in the few publicly listed clubs, such as Manchester United in the U.K. and Juventus in Italy, should be under no illusion that money alone can improve a flawed business model: Extra funds have a history of ending up in the pockets of stars rather than shareholders. Also, if broadcasters bid more for a Super League, they might pay less for domestic competitions—which is why the English Premier League in particular was up in arms.
Still, the Champions League is likely leaving a lot of money on the table by offering a subpar product. Its group and knockout format means that many of the most popular matchups don’t happen in a given tournament, or even for years. Changes recently announced by UEFA don’t fix any of the key issues, which only underlines the need for deeper reform.
Whatever comes of the Super League gamble, a tournament in which top European teams regularly face one another is likely to happen in the end, because it is in the interest of clubs, broadcasters and, yes, viewers. Media-industry analyst Ian Whittaker suggests that a more commercial arrangement could help bring U.S. streaming giants like Amazon.com and Disney into the mix—probably even if the contentious “closed” format were dropped.
Critics of soccer’s commercialization make little sense with their appeals to the grass-roots game, which has already been marginalized by high ticket and pay-TV prices, schedules that hurt game attendance in favor of overseas viewership and, above all, massive financial inequalities. A franchise like the Super League, with U.S.-style revenue sharing and spending caps, would at least address imbalances at the very top.
European soccer has long been a product, just a badly run one. It seems inevitable that an American sense of spectacle will eventually shake it up."
6 Likes
And all of our games with the other 14 PL clubs. We are fucked for a good few years
Stop wetting yourself.
It’s not as though the team has got shit over night…
Once Anfield re-opens you’ll see us fly again…
FSG are for things on the pitch irrelevant and those who stuck with the fans i.e. Klopp and the players will get our support… And that’s all they ever needed.
3 Likes
Haha - what total nonsense.
1 Like