New European Super League

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UEFA cares about the environment. Only 8k plastics got approved. See, good guys always!

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This is crazy talk. If the ESL talk - which wasn’t going to impact the PL directly and only meant that these 6 clubs wouldn’t represent the PL in UEFA competitions - amounts to a 20 point penalty then Manchester City should be paying a death penalty for the systematic financial cheating they have been carrying out. Would need to deregister the club; raze the stadium and stop their players (current and past) from ever playing in England at any level again to be on par with your 20 point ‘fair penalty’ for deigning to try and reform European football. Coming on top of the bullshit from most of the PL about not renegotiating a deal that would have helped out the rest of the football league to the tune of 250m then I say quite simply Fuck off!

From a self interest perspective, the PL would be foolish to go so hard here as they would really incentivise the clubs to plan toward a complete break away. Make no mistake, if the ESL had got Bayern and PSG to go public and dumped City and Chelsea who apparently killed it, then it would be going ahead. While it is on the backburner right now, it wouldn’t take much in the way of overly punitive behaviour to get the clubs back to the table.

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I don’t think for FSG this was about wanting to claw more money. They are smart enough to understand that any windfall coming their way is just going to end up on player salaries anyway.

I think for them it is about creating certainty in cash flow and exercising control over costs through mechanisms like FFP and Salary Caps.

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I agree Mascot, which is why I find it strange that city were invited.

Once within that structure they can be controlled. Also I think City want FFP. Now they are part of the elite, they don’t want another City turning up and rocking the boat.

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Yeah, that was the cornerstone of the Project Big Picture.

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Sam Wallace at the Telegraph reporting the six are due to be hit with “significant” fines from the Premier League but there’s no appetite for points deductions. Who knows what qualifies “significant” in Premier League terms. The West Ham and Tevez saga is about as big as they’ve gone before and that was £5m if I recall. Might be payable all up front, might be taken against future TV revenue.

Another blow to the revenues of four of the six clubs, all of whom will already be suffering big drops. Oligarch and Oil State run clubs will probably pay it out of owners pocket change and therefore not really be punished at all.

UEFA punishments are also likely to follow too.

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This times infinity.

A fine is no punishment or deterrent whatsoever to those with bottomless pockets.

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Also be really interesting to see what the Premier League plans to do with the money. Does it sit in their coffers? Does it get spread out amongst the other 14? Does it get filtered down the league or into grassroots. Perhaps they could invest in some actual initiatives for the fans maybe or perhaps fund Kick It Out.

Going to be very keen to see where it goes.

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Also being reported by Tariq Panja in the New York Times that Real Madrid, Juve and Barca are threatening the other ESL clubs with damages for going back on the idea.

Really starting to show how desperately fucked those three are through their overextending and general shitty management at the top.

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Unfortunately the only way the clubs can be punished - if at all is to either be pulled from Europe for a season or 2 (will UEFA do that and weaken the lot competition - doubt it) or a points deduction

The only people who deserve punishment are the owners why are you so intent on rules that don’t exist being created so the fans and players and Klopp (all innocent and those that stopped it going ahead) to get punished? Rules forcing the owners to change aspects of how they run their clubs would ACTUALLY be a way in which the real “guilty” parties can be punished. If anyone can legally be punished anyway.

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There was a report recently that Barca needed an influx of cash about 150 million with immediate effect. It was partly related to La Liga rules over a sort of escrow payment new presidents have to make, but I think also due to their overall debt obligations. I imagine they factored in immediate downpayment from JP Morgan (they were the funding entity, right?) as their solution to that problem and are now scrambling

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Unfortunately, you can’t separate the owners from the club given they own it. The PL can only punish member clubs and therefore any sanctions are likely to impact players, staff and fans alike.

I’m guessing the idea of taking it from future broadcast revenue is to try and ensure it impacts revenue coming in rather than a cost an owner could pay directly themselves. Tries in some way to make sure it’s factored into FFP calculations.

Whether it’s fines or a ban, it’ll be more of a punishment to the club and therefore players, staff and fans than it will be on the owners. Unless they’re willing to personally cover those losses in line with FFP, which FSG won’t.

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That Kaveh really is a massive gobshite.

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UEFA withholding 5% of European competition revenue for one season for the 9 of 12 who have renounced super league. Plus €15m collective contribution to grassroots football initiative.

Barca, Madrid and Juve facing disciplinary action now.

If we ended up in the Europa conference and played the kids so we went out early that’d cost us about £12.50.

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Careful; that’s 25% of our transfer budget.

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Yeah it’s actually now probably beneficial to qualify for it instead of taking the hit if we were to qualify for the CL next season.

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If UEFA are heavy handed with punishment they will end up losing, as the underlying causes for the ESL have not gone away.

From a Liverpool perspective we look at UEFA and note that they are unable to enforce their own FFP rules, thus we have been blown out of the water, unfairly, by Man City. So the ESL was an attempt - albeit an unsporting cack-handed one - to take better control of a game UEFA is not running very well.

Besides the above, I would imagine we are not impressed with more and more competitions and matches, as well as the other aspects of corruption rife within UEFA.

UEFA are not fit for purpose. They are not good custodians of the game and they take far too much money out of the game for a mere administrative function.

The clubs can do better, and I’m certain the ESL will come back in another guise.

The biggest surprise for me is how poorly executed the initial attempt was. As such I tend to think it was mostly an effort at gauging the temperature for such a thing, as well as to see what needs to be addressed for when it comes round again in another guise.

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