The fact is they won’t be. A European Super League would need A) the ability to qualify for it and B) a wage and spending cap.
Deliver that and I’d listen, if you don’t there is no point. I don’t even care about a select group always qualifying but there has to be means to enter.
An absolute cap? As in not at all related to revenue? So that City has the same limit as say, Ajax? That would be the only way to have a chance of controlling City and PSG’s spending, and even then they’ll find a way around it. Bring revenue into it and they will continue to use fake sponsorship deals.
Cheaty and P$G (and Sandcastle) and their disgusting hydrocarbon scum need to be eliminated. Prefer something surgical but anything will do.
This is key. I don’t think a Liverpool fan of sound mind can both support a closed Super League and be disgusted with the likes of City and PSG cheating their way to the top. The exclusivity and unfairness created through City’s and PSG’s oil money is the exact exclusivity and unfairness that a closed Super League will promote. If the Super League clubs were to be allowed to remain in their domestic leagues, the gap between these clubs and the rest would just continue to grow.
There must be a means of promotion/demotion.
Why has this become Perez’s crusade? He’s in a one team domestic league where CL football is all but guaranteed so a Super League doesn’t have the same benefits as it does to a PL club for instance. Is it about the power? Or being in control of the money/tv deals etc? Or both? UEFA have shown over the last 12 months they absolutely don’t have LFC’s or any other club’s interests in mind, but would anyone here actually trust Perez to have our interests in mind either?
Exactly, it would have to be a cap on what you could spend, your squad would have to basically go no higher than a certain amount not sure how it works in practice but if you don’t it still not equal and they could basically outbid whoever is in it.
Its about share of TV revenue. He doesn’t like that the PL is much more lucrative than LaLiga and fears falling behind - not least in part due to the historical greater depth and variety of clubs at the top (another thing cheaty are fucking up).
ESL was an half-baked, incompetent idea itself. However, I don’t think things like the Paris Fiasco would have happened in ESL. UEFA doesn’t bother about such things since it doesn’t affect them. But such issues affect all clubs and ESL with more involvement/influence from the clubs would have clamped down.
What I think Perez is missing is the impact of American sports being a closed shop has on valuations. Industry will project valuations for American franchises and football clubs based on economic fundamentals of the sport and the relative strength of the club/franchise. This is really the only driver for the economics of football, but that isnt the case for American franchises. With these, the scarcity means that opportunities to buy one is extremely limited and it mean whenever one comes up for the sale, that scarcity means the sale is inevitably made at a price well above perceived market value. When those sales occur, the industry valuations for every franchise in the league takes a bump. Sales of football clubs are so fundamentally different (tend to only occur with distressed assets to owners who know there will be another opportunity if they cannot make the numbers work on any specific deal) that they dont experience those period recalibrations. I think that Perez is looking at changes in valuations in American sports recently that are more driven by that factor than based on economic fundamental that drives things with football.
EDIT: But maybe Perez is not overlooking this, and instead is looking at this very factor for why a ESL conducted in a closed shop is so critical for a club like Real.
This is the biggest challenge. CFG have found a loophole that means no mater what the restrictions, their structure has a way of getting around it safe in the knowledge the authorities dont have the power to dig far enough into their records. I genuinely think that it is national tax authorities that are more likely to rein in these clubs than any regulation UEFA of the national FAs can bring in.
Like I said, ESL was a half-baked, incompetent idea. I was surprised that they put forward such a wobbly plan. Promotion & relegation are fundamental to the competitiveness, and hence the attractiveness, of football.
They weren’t supposed to. Someone seemingly went rogue and released something that was only considered exploratory by the majority of the parties, which is part of the reason everyone was so quick to back out. I dont know that we ever got a clear answer as to why that happened.
Amazing arguments, especially on fans.
Make referee’s ex players and I’m all for it.
Oh and bring in promotion/relegation.
I assume that’s a joke, have you seen punditry in this country.
Irony is in Europe the refs are generally better so no super league would change that, unless they adopted carte Blanche the ones from England and if that happens it can die of a painful death.
Not sure who this guy is but he is spot on with point 2, not sure point 3 is correct, he says the clubs control things in their leagues but the PL sells the rights not the clubs.
As for point 1 the best games wouldn’t happen week after week and isn’t that the joy of football, if It was a big game every week I’d die of stress.
As I said point 2 is spot on, so they are getting something right. However I expect we will probably see these people ending up on the board of a new UEFA.
I think a lot of the identification of the problems are right and will probably generate a lot of sympathy and support. The problem is their diagnoses for why those problems exist and the solutions for them are terrible to the point that I think even they know it’s just PR and they’re just trying to find defensible sounding arguments to justify trying to squeeze more of the money out of the game for themselves.
since you’re discussing american francises, note that the NFL owners have to approve any new owners buying a franchise. Mansour et al will not be buying one of those anytime soon.
One thing they will have to nail down tight, is the hooliganism aspect of playing these matches… noticed already some of the European games are starting to get really feisty at the moment…
I’m all for it if they can get the format right and it works… I feel the referees and sports-washing agenda is really beginning to ruin the game as we know it.
Was wondering also, as most of the top teams in the PL have really deep squads with real quality in them, why not put a second 11 in the PL matches and keep another squad for the Super league… as in a reserve team/squad and first team squad…!
He’s more desirable an owner than Dan Snyder 
FWIW though I wasn’t suggesting Mansour had interest in the NFL. I was talking about how the league being a closed shop means purchases are very limited opportunities that tend to price them a cost above what you’d see if it was based on economic fundamental alone, and that makes comparisons with football challenging. The lack of relegation proposed does effectively create a closed ship for European football though and I wonder whether they think that will be a driver of valuation.
I have a massive problem with the established big clubs trying to create a closed shop to ensure that success only needs to be divvied up to a small number of parties and that small clubs remain small. Fuck that. That’s what makes the Super League so distasteful to many.
I’m not even against artificial growth through owner investment per se. After all, fundamentally what is the difference between £100m into our clubs coffers via sponsorship from a fucking betting agency/fast food/doughnut chain vs a £100m blank cheque from an owner. They are both seriously fucking greasy ways of bringing money into a club.
My one and only problem (beyond the sports washing issue) is that these clubs have no ceiling. Its not that they are going to reach our level, its that they are going well above and beyond it. City have spent £1,542m since Mansour took over and recouped £495m for a total spend of £1046m. Over that same time period, we have spent £883m, recouped £617m for a total spend of £266m (according to transfer league). Its not that they have artificially grown to our size. Its that they have blown us out of the water.
If in an alternate universe someone like Elon Musk bought Newcastle, we have removed at least the sports washing element of what makes the Saudi purchase so filthy. If Musk then artificially grew the club with his money, I wouldn’t have a problem with that. Provided there was a ceiling.
I am sure there are plenty of reasons why its a bad idea which I’m happy to listen to, but I like the idea of some sort of spending cap. Have an upper limit. How a club pays for things up to that point I don’t care.
You may ask who wants to watch a sport where every club is spending exactly £79.999m (random figure!) on player transfers each year? Well that’s when the qualities of a club’s recruitment, coaching, fitness come into play where they will prove decisive. That may seem like we would flourish in such an environment but it also means a whole bunch of those smaller clubs in the 6th-12th on the table region can flourish as well - those clubs with known great recruitment and up and coming coaches.
I’m of course oversimplifying in this idea. For example, of commercial is excluded from calculations, what is the tangible benefit of having high commercial revenues, bums on seats etc? Where does all the extra TV money go as that continues to grow every 4-5 years? Who knows? It would be nice to not be forcefully bringing in income through tyre sponsorships, doughnut sponsorships and better sponsorships just to balance the books though.
don’t kid yourself. a Saudi owning an NFL franchise would be the crown jewel, and a massive middle finger to the USA.
there’s no coincidence that the FIB hired Amanda Stavely as it’s token blonde-haired-blue-eyed British socialite as it’s figurehead for the Newcastle purchase, got herself a seat at the table and so did they.
PSG
Man City
Newcastle
Sheffield United