Is the European super league back? | United Statement: We remain committed to UEFA

gorky_utd said:
I am sure a lot of small clubs will be happy to join them. If it is merit based, I don't see the reason for backlash especially when UEFA themselves are changing UCL for more money. I don't trust UTD and Liverpool owners that they have no intention to join this league. Maybe they are just testing the waters. Interesting time ahead.
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I think it's probably more about how they got burned last time that they think it probably won't happen so there's no need for them to put their necks on the line for no reason.

If there was a bigger appetite for this change, they'd be on that bandwagon.
 
maniak said:
If a club like Braga or Girona or Aston Villa win their domestic league they would not compete against the best but would play in Blue League, an european third division? Is this it?

Those who say the ESL would be a good idea because things have become a bit stale haven't really thought it through.
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Anyone who supports this, club presidents aside, hasn't really thought it through.
 
Lay said:
Yeah. Whether there’s a ESL or not. This has opened the floodgates for other corporations to be formed.

Won’t be long until Saudi Arabia are involved
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This is the sneaky feeling I have. The Saudis are involved and want to plug into the European football system. That cannot be allowed to happen. They should grow the game in Asia instead and create a rival football system to Europe.
 
maniak said:
If a club like Braga or Girona or Aston Villa win their domestic league they would not compete against the best but would play in Blue League, an european third division? Is this it?

Those who say the ESL would be a good idea because things have become a bit stale haven't really thought it through.
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How many times has anything like this happened in the major football leagues in the 21st century?
 
Daydreamer said:
It’s not just a possibility - it’s virtually nailed on. A22 are funded by JP Morgan Chase with a multi billion investment. They aren’t pumping that money in out of the goodness of their hearts.

Starting with low or free pricing and then raising that once you’ve cleared out the competition is business 101. To the extent that it would be more of a challenge to name a company that hasn’t raised the prices once they achieved market dominance.

I mean, I’d be interested if you could think of a single example.

Football doesn’t lend itself to ads. 100 minutes where you can’t sell any inventory is a nightmare for advertisers. It’s the complete opposite of American Football in that sense. There’s a reason that the current deals are split between free to air with no ads (BBC), dedicated subscription (Sky / TNT) and bundled subscription (Amazon).

The only time ads work is when the matches feel like event television (UCL and international tournaments on ITV). But ITV eventually stopped bidding for UCL because it doesn’t make economic sense.

ESL will have to charge a subscription fee eventually. It wouldn’t even necessarily be about greed. It would be about survival.
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There's a channel - can't remember the name - that comes on those nasty river sites (horrible things, never use them myself). On this channel, every five minutes or so, the match screen is minimised so a big beer advert pops up in the left and bottom edges of the screen.

I fully expect that not only would this become a subscription based event, but you'd also get these intrusive adverts on top of it. Just to add to the soullessness of this fake competition.
 
Daydreamer said:
I can’t speak for anyone else, but if the “top tier” of European football was almost entirely detached from domestic campaigns, I’d be a lot less interested.

I got legitimately emotional hearing the CL anthem before our opening group game after so many years out of it. It was meaningful because we earned our way back in over 38 games. Being there because we finished 14th out of 16 teams the year before would have next to zero significance.
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A wise prophet once said the difference between the CL and the FA Cup is solely due to the presence of a classical music/opera anthem that plays before every game in the former
 
Iker Quesadillas said:
How many times has anything like this happened in the major football leagues in the 21st century?
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Lecester won the PL a few years ago. Boavista won the portuguese league. I'm sure there are many more examples I can't think of right now. These teams would've been deprived of the deserved reward for winning the league. Yay 3rd division for winning the league. feck off.

Also, without the top 4 meaning anything, clubs with a bad first half of the season can just quit and not give two fecks about the domestic league, ruining it's competitiveness.

I hate uefa as much as the next guy, but this competition is terrible for domestic football.
 
Not that I would want it to happen but think they would be better off fecking the smaller European nations and having a ESL tailored to say the top 5 or 6 leagues. That could be based on league performance and it could even be manipulated in a way that the big teams always stay in (i.e. top 6 in PL, top 4 in La Liga, top 3 in Bundesliga, top 2 Ligue 1).

Not saying I would want this but I think for them to get what they want they just need to completely feck or severely limit smaller nations participation (i.e. no Scottish teams only the Champion from Portugal/Netherlands).
 
Super League wont be a threat to Epl, not in the short term, at least.

If the first few seasons of the concept flops, it's not going to convince teams to join.
 
Rooney in Paris said:
It has happened, but even if it hadn't, it's entirely irrelevent. The principle itself is shocking enough.
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Exactly ffs. A small cabal of big clubs (including my own) hijacked a lot of what made football magical a generation ago, but that doesn't mean we have to completely obliterate the idea that it might exist.
 
Football’s already been ruined enough, we don’t need to be ruined even more by this ridiculous Super League.

It’s a silly idea, and the UK government banning British clubs from taking place in it is a very rare example of a good thing this government has done.
 
RG77 said:
Didn’t they say the ESL would have a host of different referees than the usual suspects and VAR would be implemented differently? Like with audio broadcast? I seem to recall reading that back with the original announcement.
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Actually the twats would probably want more VAR breaks for adverts, they might even build them in. I'm out again.
 
It seems coordinated (all the PL clubs have announced something like this). I don't think we'll be brave enough to just straight up reject it without asking anyone first - it's a wait and see statement.

Real and Barca seem pretty committed and they should because the current situation is an existential risk for them. There's no reason why they can't fall the way AC Milan or Juve fell, it's all about the money. So I think the league will start in some form - the private equity guys will juice it a bit with free revenues for participating clubs. Maybe Saudi clubs will be in and bring their star power (Ronaldo playing would be a decent draw). I don't think UEFA will ban Real from participating in the CL, so they'll probably field a 2nd string side in some cup competitions, manage their squad so they can play 20 games extra a season (La Liga, CL, ESL).

Eventually the outrage will die out a bit. If the pilot succeeds with Real and Barca and fans start coming in then we'll probably see a clamoring to get in.
 
RG77 said:
They’d just do the top 5 leagues. Again; not saying I have the answers. But adjustments will most likely be made to push this through.

_____
The ‘dreams cant be buy’ crowd do know how the current PL started yes? Kinda ironic all this hysteria.
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Sorry, I wasn’t meaning to have a go at you personally. Or expecting you to have the answers, obviously.

It’s more pointing out that the entire point of the exercise is to divorce European competition from domestic competition. Cutting out the Champions of swathes of countries does precisely that.

The original ESL had 12 teams sign up for it. That didn’t include PSG and Bayern. Imagine if all 14 joined this new iteration. None of them would ever get relegated - which is precisely what they want.
 
Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t the ESL idea supposed to run in connection with the PL? As in it replaces the CL and EL? There were no plans to actually take clubs out of the leagues they play in was there?
 
I wondered why Chelsea hadn’t released a statement like some other clubs, and I guess we now know why. Sigh :(

 
matt10000 said:
What has that got to do with it?
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Exactly. No smaller club has won the FA Cup and qualified for Europe on that basis alone since Wigan. However, it’s still a technical possibility. The ESL is designed to eliminate even the theoretical possibility of the top clubs do anything other than stay as the top clubs.

They really don’t want fans of smaller clubs to even have dreams of success. It’s actually kinda sociopathic.
 
Morty_ said:
Super League wont be a threat to Epl, not in the short term, at least.

If the first few seasons of the concept flops, it's not going to convince teams to join.
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That's why the English will try their best to kill it before it takes off. Billions are at stake here.
 
WeePat said:
I wondered why Chelsea hadn’t released a statement like some other clubs, and I guess we now know why. Sigh :(
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It also explains their utterly indefensible spending (with FFP in mind) of the summer, the expectation being that they can and probably will never have to deal with any such points deductions or fines by simply ejecting from the Premier League and Champions League completely and go all in with the European Super League.
 
Morty_ said:
Super League wont be a threat to Epl, not in the short term, at least.

If the first few seasons of the concept flops, it's not going to convince teams to join.
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Of course it is, top PL clubs playing the big clubs from Europe on a regular basis, the whole idea of the Super League is to replace domestic football as the primary entertainment product, ultimately.

Then the value of the domestic rights is going to fall.

A lot of the league in Europe are football backwaters now, which is why teams from those countries want the SL. Not in England though.
 
Mr Pigeon said:
There's a channel - can't remember the name - that comes on those nasty river sites (horrible things, never use them myself). On this channel, every five minutes or so, the match screen is minimised so a big beer advert pops up in the left and bottom edges of the screen.

I fully expect that not only would this become a subscription based event, but you'd also get these intrusive adverts on top of it. Just to add to the soullessness of this fake competition.
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I think that's when they're streaming some South African channel, SuperSport or something.

That spinning Guinness bottlecap thing is worse than Hitler.
 
Mr Pigeon said:
There's a channel - can't remember the name - that comes on those nasty river sites (horrible things, never use them myself). On this channel, every five minutes or so, the match screen is minimised so a big beer advert pops up in the left and bottom edges of the screen.

I fully expect that not only would this become a subscription based event, but you'd also get these intrusive adverts on top of it. Just to add to the soullessness of this fake competition.
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It’s like how NFL games are basically a massive advertisement interrupted by a sports game.
 
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List of clubs for and against of Superleague according to this Juventus fan account

 
WeePat said:
I wondered why Chelsea hadn’t released a statement like some other clubs, and I guess we now know why. Sigh :(

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It's hardly surprising, and it makes the lot of you Chelsea fans that were staunchly defending Boehly and his approach to revolutionising football in the PL look a bit idiotic. He doesn't understand football, he's a businessman, which is what was apparent from day 1 despite his pamphlet to fans carefully curated by consultant.
crossy1686 said:
“Perez, you had me at ‘mucho dollar’”…
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:lol:
 
A breakaway will happen eventually.

Sky are deluding themselves if they think the current PL format will remain intact.
 
GazTheLegend said:
It also explains their utterly indefensible spending (with FFP in mind) of the summer, the expectation being that they can and probably will never have to deal with any such points deductions or fines by simply ejecting from the Premier League and Champions League completely and go all in with the European Super League.
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I agree.
 
Red Indian Chief Torn Rubber said:
The E.U pretty much stripped UEFA and FIFA of actual power and has turned football into boxing that has W.B.O and W.B.C and whatever.
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I'm absolutely baffled by the way most media interpreted this morning's decision. It's FAR from the blow that is currently discussed from a legal standpoint.

What the decision basically says it that it's not impossible for FIFA/UEFA to have control over football competitions, but it's not possible to have it the way UEFA and FIFA did in 2021. UEFA knew that, that's why they changed its rules in 2022.

There's nothing definitive about this ruling, it still maintains a huge legal uncertainty that is likely to prevent investors from pouring billions they might loose.

This thread might enlight some :

 
saivet said:
Not that I would want it to happen but think they would be better off fecking the smaller European nations and having a ESL tailored to say the top 5 or 6 leagues. That could be based on league performance and it could even be manipulated in a way that the big teams always stay in (i.e. top 6 in PL, top 4 in La Liga, top 3 in Bundesliga, top 2 Ligue 1).

Not saying I would want this but I think for them to get what they want they just need to completely feck or severely limit smaller nations participation (i.e. no Scottish teams only the Champion from Portugal/Netherlands).
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Who wants to see the same old big teams circle jerking on their wads of cash every season?
 
Rooney in Paris said:
It's hardly surprising, and it makes the lot of you Chelsea fans that were staunchly defending Boehly and his approach to revolutionising football in the PL look a bit idiotic. He doesn't understand football, he's a businessman, which is what was apparent from day 1 despite his pamphlet to fans carefully curated by consultant.
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I’m not sure how many Clearlake fanboys we had here. I know some very specific Chelsea fans, or one in particular, was a staunch advocate for the ownership. Chelsea fans in general are way more critical of the owners than rivals are.
 
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