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

carvajal said:
Napoli would be amazing :D . And the same thing I asked @the_cliff ,why don't you like the super league idea, club management and an open competition favorably?. Is it because you trust Uefa, do you like the model and the drift of current football?
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I have no trust in UEFA but even less trust in a league run by a couple of "founding" clubs with its own set of referees. And the competition isn't open, it favours top clubs and makes it far more difficult for second tier clubs to have a fair chance since they won't be able to compete for a title or even face top teams even if they end up winning their league. "Oh great you beat Bayern Munich over a full season and think you can retain your top players with the idea of a C1 spot? Sorry but they have their spot in the star group you know but if you win in the blue one next season and the gold one after that maybe in 3 years you'll be there! Oh your top players will be gone by then, too bad" That's bullshit.
 
carvajal said:
Many English fans seem more interested in the competition than in the benefit of their team, and all this while City do whatever they want.
As I said in the previous point, beyond the fact that perhaps it is a strategic fight for the market, I see it as a replacement for the Champions League, not a war against the national leagues.
Why don't you see the super league favorably? assuming it is open which seemed to be the sticking point two years ago

Napoli would be amazing :D . And the same thing I asked @the_cliff ,why don't you like the super league idea, club management and an open competition favorably?. Is it because you trust Uefa, do you like the model and the drift of current football?
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It's technically open but not really. If making the top tier is based on domestic league performance (or winning tier 2 or tier 1) then fair enough but the way it's set up, you'll have teams like United doing feck all in the PL and finishing 13th in the ESL but getting to to stay in the ESL.

A season like this potentially putting Villa in tier too and Girona in tier 3 is a flawed model imo.

They've basically opened the door a crack in order to self preserve a position at the top of the pie and it's glaringly obvious.

UEFA has it's flaws but the ESL has seemingly failed twice now in it's attempts to revamp the game that the question for me is why would you trust the ESL to have the best proposal for football?
 
the_cliff said:
Except it's not open. If you read the rules properly a team in the 'star' league has to be outperformed by a lower team for at least 3 years before they can drop down a division. I'm a United fan but ultimately I love football and the fact that the team I love can be in the star league but a team like Girona won't be goes against the whole point of competitive sport. If I cared just about my team I'd love the super league to happen it'll probably be the only way we'll get European football next season but to me it feels like step 1 in turning our beautiful sport into an American franchise model of a certain few teams making all the money and the door shut on everyone else. Look at the @maniak s post above me as another example.

If it was truly open and the only change was no revenue given to UEFA I wouldn't mind. But an elite few clubs controlling a competition without a regulator will always end up in an NBA/NFL style American franchise system and that's what I'm against.
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Then we will celebrate the sporadic participation of Girona, Braga, Sheriff, etc., who do not make it past the group stage and we will swallow the same teams over and over again in the quarterfinals and Girona will have to sell their players.
Well, not Girona, because they belong to a national company that owns 13 teams, I think.
Certainly the emotion of participation is lost but it gives the possibility of entering a competition that gives you more future options. A matter of taste I guess.
 
We are commited to loadsamoney
And will remain that way as long as Glazers are in charge. ESL is obviously not gonna work now and supporting it will just cause problems with the current competitions the club is in
 
carvajal said:
Then we will celebrate the sporadic participation of Girona, Braga, Sheriff, etc., who do not make it past the group stage and we will swallow the same teams over and over again in the quarterfinals and Girona will have to sell their players.
Well, not Girona, because they belong to a national company that owns 13 teams, I think.
Certainly the emotion of participation is lost but it gives the possibility of entering a competition that gives you more future options. A matter of taste I guess.
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Yes, of course but at least they get to participate. They won't even participate in the Super league. If Girona won the league this season they'd be in the blue league next season and Barca can finish 5th in La Liga but as long as they finished 12th in the star league they're good to go. It's a joke.

It just shows that Madrid and Barca still haven't learnt what made the EPL go up another level despite the 2 of you having the 2 best players in the history of our game. If it does happen with the current rules it still won't overtake the epl in terms of revenue anyway because there's this thing called competition which is more entertaining than anything else.
 
Given that all the best English clubs have decided not to participate, is this an opportunity.
 
I bet those yo yo teams who will be for a decade or so playing 2nd and 3rd division will really enjoy it, never playing the european giants. Half of european fans get excited with the CL draw because if they did alright they get a chance to play real, barça, city, bayern, etc. Now copenhagem, galatasaray and sporting fans will have to be happy to play feyenoord and benfica for the 20th time in the last 10 years. Sounds really exciting.

The concept of a special european night will also become empty.

I honestly can't see how someone can find this prospect exciting in any way.
 
Oly Francis said:
I have no trust in UEFA but even less trust in a league run by a couple of "founding" clubs with its own set of referees. And the competition isn't open, it favours top clubs and makes it far more difficult for second tier clubs to have a fair chance since they won't be able to compete for a title or even face top teams even if they end up winning their league. "Oh great you beat Bayern Munich over a full season and think you can retain your top players with the idea of a C1 spot? Sorry but they have their spot in the star group you know but if you win in the blue one next season and the gold one after that maybe in 3 years you'll be there! Oh your top players will be gone by then, too bad" That's bullshit.
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The truth is that I don't know what exact merits would be taken into account when entering, but since you mention it, and considering that they have won 10 (¿?) consecutive leagues, it does not seem that the current model is very buoyant for German teams.
We can reward immediacy but personally it seems like the same movie by changing the supporting actors.
The thing about the referees doesn't make sense. It hasn't even started and you already think that Florentino is going to buy the referees :p
 
maniak said:
Of course it should be an argument. I have mates from Braga and it was the highlight of their year having the chance to go and watch their team at the bernabeu and getting real madrid play at their stadium. They loved it, it made all the effort they went through last season to finish above sporting worth it.

In this new system... well, they get to play 3rd division teams as a reward for an amazing achievement.

It's absolutely ridiculous and a complete disrespect for national leagues.
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???

I’m referring to the argument that somehow the ESL would lead to small clubs losing their best players if they have a good season. Something that has been happening for ages. That is the part that isn’t really a factor.

The other argument on small clubs not facing big clubs I did not refer to being invalid.
 
the_cliff said:
Yes, of course but at least they get to participate. They won't even participate in the Super league. If Girona won the league this season they'd be in the blue league next season and Barca can finish 5th in La Liga but as long as they finished 12th in the star league they're good to go. It's a joke.
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Not only that but you know the broadcast revenue will completely skewed towards that gold division. Imagine a team like Aston Villa winning the league, and their reward is only playing teams of the caliber of Copenhagen, Salzburg, and Young Boys.

I honestly believe the ESL is also meant to kill the commercial dominance of English football. Look at the number of matches alone. League Cup becomes a series of in-season friendly matches. FA Cup becomes the league cup. League matches will more regularly feature heavily rotated sides. The PL, as a whole, would be crazy to agree to this.
 
RG77 said:
???

I’m referring to the argument that somehow the ESL would lead to small clubs losing their best players if they have a good season. Something that has been happening for ages. That is the part that isn’t really a factor.

The other argument on small clubs not facing big clubs I did not refer to being invalid.
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Well, the two things came hand in hand, don't they? If you have even less money compared to the big clubs and you can't even offer these players top football, you have even less chance of keeping them, right?

So again, it's not irrelevant at all.
 
carvajal said:
Then we will celebrate the sporadic participation of Girona, Braga, Sheriff, etc., who do not make it past the group stage and we will swallow the same teams over and over again in the quarterfinals and Girona will have to sell their players.
Well, not Girona, because they belong to a national company that owns 13 teams, I think.
Certainly the emotion of participation is lost but it gives the possibility of entering a competition that gives you more future options. A matter of taste I guess.
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This is a complete straw man. No one is saying that the current system is a cause for celebration. They’re just pointing out that the Super League would be even worse.

A season in top tier European competition with the momentum of recent success and either the players who got you there or the money you received for selling them, could do wonders for a team. If Aston Villa, for example, finish in the top four, they could potentially keep their team together. They’ve already resisted Arsenal’s advances for Luiz and they’ll likely do so again with CL football on offer.

If the ESL was in operation, we’d have a much easier time signing him. In the short term that would benefit us, but in the long term, it’s actually better that we’re in a competitive league where teams can hang on to their players. And when they do sell, it’s at a price that helps them rebuild, like Brighton and West Ham.

Madrid and Barca have extracted virtually all of the revenue out of La Liga and devalued it as a result. Instead of trying to rectify that, they’re suggesting that everyone join a new league that they’re inventing. Why would any clubs trust that?
 
carvajal said:
As I said in the previous point, beyond the fact that perhaps it is a strategic fight for the market, I see it as a replacement for the Champions League, not a war against the national leagues.
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It absolutely is war against national leagues, as well as domestic cups. The number of matches and second-class status of league winners demonstrates this very clearly.
 
Daydreamer said:
You mention that there might be playoff for Champions. How many domestic champions would get a playoff?

There are currently spaces for 16 champions: 14 domestic league winners, 1 Europa League champion and 1 Champions League champion. (I forgot the champions of Denmark and Turkiye in a previous post - which is funny because they qualified for the knockouts and Europa League). Champions make up half of the group stage. Plus champions of weaker leagues at least get a chance to qualify for the group stage through play-offs.

A 16 team European league with only 2 relegation spots with is completely incompatible with qualification via domestic league through sporting merit. No amount of tinkering or modification will alter that because it is explicit what it is designed to do.

If people are excited by a closed shop with a higher number of matches between the top teams, that’s fine. It’s just weird to pretend the proposals and any iteration of them are not significantly different from what we have now. It is - by design.
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I’m just going to assume you want to discuss this in good faith. And not once again remove parts of my reply and then proceed to quote me and get your ‘gotcha!’ in there. All you posted here was pretty irrelevant to the original posts but okay.

No one is pretending all is the same. Just discussing what other modifications could be made to make this more attractive. Everyone knows it is about money.
 
UnitedSofa said:
This doesn’t seem that bad

Blue is ECL
gold is EL
star is UCL

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A UCL with 16 teams who are not required to be league champions. Currently, 80 teams start the competition.
A EL with 16 teams. Currently, 58 teams start the competition.
A ECL with 32 teams. Currently, 184 teams start the competition.

It's a joke of competition meant only to gatekeep and widen the gap between rich and not-as-rich clubs.
 
maniak said:
I bet those yo yo teams who will be for a decade or so playing 2nd and 3rd division will really enjoy it, never playing the european giants. Half of european fans get excited with the CL draw because if they did alright they get a chance to play real, barça, city, bayern, etc. Now copenhagem, galatasaray and sporting fans will have to be happy to play feyenoord and benfica for the 20th time in the last 10 years. Sounds really exciting.

The concept of a special european night will also become empty.

I honestly can't see how someone can find this prospect exciting in any way.
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But how many times Feyenoord played Champions in the last decades? What did they achieve? Their european football is Europa league.
Playing middle teams every year doesn't sound so bad, at least for me.
Sporting has reached the round of 16 twice in 30 years. A 0-5 from City in the top competition is not magical, simply two teams in different dimensions.
I understand the excitement of the Champions League and obviously the Super League is not going to turn them into massive teams overnight, but it could be an interesting attempt at change and retain talent.
 
RG77 said:
I’m just going to assume you want to discuss this in good faith. And not once again remove parts of my reply and then proceed to quote me and get your ‘gotcha!’ in there. All you posted here was pretty irrelevant to the original posts but okay.

No one is pretending all is the same. Just discussing what other modifications could be made to make this more attractive. Everyone knows it is about money.
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  1. I do want to discuss in good faith.
  2. I don't even know which part is supposed to be the "gotcha".
  3. No amount of modification will significantly alter the ultimate goal of severing the tie between domestic campaigns and the top tier of European football.
The current system saw Arsenal return to top-tier European competition after six years outside it. It saw Manchester United exit European competition altogether after only six games. And it saw Chelsea not participating in European competition at all. All three teams would almost certainly not have been relegated from the top tier had the ESL existed. We'd be part of the competition, not due to sporting merit, but because the system is designed so that it's almost impossible for us to fail.

The current system certainly has flaws. But for the founders of the ESL, removing virtually any sense of jeopardy for the top clubs isn't a flaw - it's a feature.
 
the_cliff said:
Yes, of course but at least they get to participate. They won't even participate in the Super league. If Girona won the league this season they'd be in the blue league next season and Barca can finish 5th in La Liga but as long as they finished 12th in the star league they're good to go. It's a joke.

It just shows that Madrid and Barca still haven't learnt what made the EPL go up another level despite the 2 of you having the 2 best players in the history of our game. If it does happen with the current rules it still won't overtake the epl in terms of revenue anyway because there's this thing called competition which is more entertaining than anything else.
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What competition, how many leagues have City/PSG/Bayern/Madrid/Barcelona won in the last ten years.
The 2d to 4th fight is an artificial invention that, due to the lack of competition, has become the sauce of the leagues, the debate of the fans.
Even that previous round that the third and fourth had to play was eliminated but suddenly the rating of a team in a specific year becomes fundamental to decide that the system is fair or unfair? It's pure hypocrisy.
And all this to qualify for a competition dominated by the same teams who win the leagues.
To be fair and democratic, we could return to a team classified by league
 
UnitedSofa said:
This doesn’t seem that bad

Blue is ECL
gold is EL
star is UCL

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This is awful :lol: and will likely impact domestic leagues negatively. To get in on the CL money train you have to at least - at the bare minimum - duke it out for top 4.
 
This is fecking horrible.. glad its dead ..

There wont be a Leicester city in the CL story with this format.. there wont be big clubs dropping out by having shocking league seasons.. its just going to be the same big guys at the top always.. No top side is getting down to tier 3.. no tier 3 club has a realistic chance of playing themselves into the top (not counting new ownership and spending $$$$)

Madrid and Barca can play with the Saudi clubs and have fun.
 
Been out of the loop with this. Which clubs have ruled themselves out?
 
There are already some SA cluba in FIBA. Its done.
Sport is gone.

I remember my time when I was young, and my parents always talked to me, be a good at school ans chase some sport.

I was pole vaulter for Bosnia. My kids would probatly laugh at me how much I did train and what I have to show. ( I wasn that good ).

Money is killing game.
 
carvajal said:
What competition, how many leagues have City/PSG/Bayern/Madrid/Barcelona won in the last ten years.
The 2d to 4th fight is an artificial invention that, due to the lack of competition, has become the sauce of the leagues, the debate of the fans.
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One of the good things of the current league system is the fact that most final standings count, so every point counts, so every match counts. Which is something that would get removed from the domestic leagues in the current proposal not only for the 2nd to 4th, but also for the 1st. Girona could win the league and get to the SL 3rd tier while Barcelona could be 10th and stay in the 1st tier. Which devalues the league and, as a medium term effect, devalues the super league. In the 1st tier at best we'd get the same 5 teams you mention playing to win, 5 teams playing for the reward of getting 2 extra playoffs matches with those 5, and 6 happy to cash in the check as long as they're not part of the back two. And in the 2nd and 3rd tiers (which are an afterthougth only there due to public backlash), with more teams, less money and less rewards, it's only going to get worse. What has changed?

carvajal said:
To be fair and democratic, we could return to a team classified by league
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Apart from the fact that it will never happen due to amount of games and money, maybe it is the best idea out there since the UEFA Cup for instance was pretty important back then before the UCL format changed at the end of the 90s. Mainly due to the tournament wanting to get more money and to hoard all of the big teams that weren't getting in due to their poor domestic campaigns. Is it possible there's a pattern there?
 
My take is that the bigger clubs will now go back to UEFA and FIFA asking for a bigger slice of the cash generated from the Champions League. A22 will get funded by the Saudis and at that point clubs will be desperate to join for the money. This whole project is money driven by the owners of the bigger clubs. People keep blaming Real and Barcelona but the reality was the owners of the top 6 clubs in England tried to join the Super League as well.

We’ve had our owners refuse to sell the club completely and the Liverpool owners also tested the market for a valuation in the last 12 months. These people don’t care about the fans, they care about money. This court case has given the green light to break away from UEFA and FIFA. The next step is to find the highest bidder for the breakaway and with the way the Saudis are buying up any sport possible this is their time to disrupt the monopoly.
 
carvajal said:
You have given me the answer. Will continental clubs accept being swept by the Premier or accept a different model that ensures more income.
Actually, for many teams, putting it into practice seems like the only solution. As long as the Premier's owners are able to maintain that level of losses.
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La Liga is losing interest because Real Madrid and Barcelona took the lion share of tv revenue and continue to do so which has made the league uncompetitive. This whilst consistently overspending anyway and now Barcelona are caught in a corruption scandal and looks like they’re getting away with it.. That’s not the Premier League’s fault. I don’t understand why it was okay for the Italian league to be the best in the 90s, Spanish league was the best in the early 2000s. Now suddenly the Premier League is the best things have to change. Maybe Real and Barcelona need to accept an even spread of funds across the league to make it more competitive.
 
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Oly Francis said:
You haven't read a single word of the tweet I posted didn't you
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I read it before you posted it here. Nothing it remotely answer my question, sane way you have just avoided it. What power does UEFA and FIFA have to stop a body and competition from existing when they are legally barred from using ANY sanctions against the constituting members that chose to defect to itand govern themselves?

If you can point out where in the entire X thread where "I missed the answer" I'm ready to stand corrected.
 
the_cliff said:
Ultimately Madrid, Barca and La Liga really only have themselves to blame. They failed to capitalise on the Messi/Ronaldo hype and instead of distributing the money more equally to create a hyper competitive league they preferred their own success. Barca then went on to waste most of that money on absolute shocking signings. At least Madrid were more clever in their handling of the money and are in nowhere near the precarious situation Barca is in.

Last season Southampton made 100 million pounds finishing bottom of the premier league and City made around 158 million pounds finishing top. In La Liga Barca made around 60 million euros finishing top and Elche made less than a million Euros finishing bottom. In England, bottom of the championship (2nd division) make around 2 million pounds. Not only is the premier league sharing the wealth at the top of the footballing pyramid the divisions below also get a slice of the cake.
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This is what annoys me about this ESL idea. Barca, Real and La Liga have fecked over the other clubs and ruined their own leagues and are paying the price for it. Why should English clubs be demonised for the advantages that they've reaped from making smart long term decisions?
 
Josep Dowling said:
La Liga is losing interest because Real Madrid and Barcelona took the lion share of tv revenue and continue to do so which has made the league uncompetitive. This whilst consistently overspending anyway and now Barcelona are caught in a corruption scandal and looks like they’re getting away with it.. That’s not the Premier League’s fault. I don’t understand why it was okay for the Italian league to be the best in the 90s, Spanish league was the best in the early 2000s. Now suddenly the Premier League is the best things have to change. Maybe Real and Barcelona need to accept an even spread of funds across the league to make it more competitive.
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Its all about envy.
 
Only Real and Barca want this to bail them out of debt. The rest of the leagues are not foolish enough to (openly) fall for this (especially if EPL teams stay out). I think this is Barca's last lever to clutch at.
 
NotChatGPT said:
At this stage, i can’t imagine how it can be any worse than the current situation with UEFA and FIFA behind the wheel. The only thing down the road is FIFA including more and more games to increase their revenue, like their revamped club world cup, more national team matches. Same with UEFA.
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Oh trust me. It can get worse.
 
Daydreamer said:
Madrid and Barca have extracted virtually all of the revenue out of La Liga and devalued it as a result.
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I don't think this is true. The draw to La Liga during the Messi/Ronaldo years was precisely because of those 2 teams. Would La Liga be better off today if the revenue split was more equitable? Debatable.

I think PL fans overrate the competitiveness of the PL as a draw for neutral watchers. Serie A has been more competitive than the PL in recent years but no one is flocking to see Napoli play Atalanta.
 
What could actually work, is a super league serving as the apex of a regional pyramid comprised of French, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian teams.

It would be revolting to see Barcelona and Madrid distance themselves from the bread and butter La Liga teams (ditto for other top teams) but if done right, such a league could rival the Premier League in terms of revenue and interest. Promotion and relegation (bottom 10 go down). Equitable revenue sharing. Squad limits.
 
Saudis will jump at this but then I don't think Madrid/Barca want to do it without a cap in place cos they'd be the Burnley of the league (financially)
 
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