New Euro Super league to be announced Sunday

Mighty Joe Young

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They're not going to get kicked out of the CL either. Imagine if you were a broadcaster that bought the CL broadcast rights and then you found out UEFA had expelled the 15 most popular teams from the competition, who were setting up a rival tournament. it would take you about 30 seconds to file a massive lawsuit.
I can’t see how they could play in all three though .. the PL , Super League and CL seems one too many
 
A big difference between the NFL and European soccer is that there's little correlation in the NFL between being the richest team and the best team. The Cowboys are probably the richest team and they've been mostly mediocre for decades. Same with the Giants. Meanwhile last year's two super bowl teams were two of the league's smaller markets in Kansas City and Tampa, and one of its historically most successful and popular teams is Green Bay, by far the smallest market in the league. And the NFL, of course, has revenue sharing and a salary cap and a draft to maintain competitive balance.

A lot of this has played out in college football with conference realignment and the creation of the playoff in the past couple of decades. It's been really rough on the old Big East, and the SWAC schools who got left out of the Big 12, and a bunch of others. Many of those affected programs have suffered, and a lot of traditional rivalries have been lost (Oklahoma-Nebraska, for example). But it has hardly diminished interest in college football generally. College football is bigger than ever.

I would love some kind of salary cap + revenue sharing system that created competitive balance in Europe. But that's never going to happen.
I think you're missing my point. I'm not talking about competitive balance; I'm not a pipe dreamer who believes that a revenue sharing system is possible or even worthwhile in European football. I'm talking about fundamental revisions to the nature of the competition itself. All of the movement you've just described in college football hasn't fundamentally altered the nature of how college football works: teams play a conference schedule and a few non-conference games, and the best teams go to bowls and/or the playoffs, with a chance to compete for the national championship. If Alabama and Clemson and Ohio State and a handful of other teams decided they were too good for the NCAA system and broke off to make their own football Super League, that league would be interesting, and it would probably generate a lot of money...but what exactly would this Super League *be*? They wouldn't be playing for the "national championship". They'd be playing for the Super League title, nothing more. There wouldn't be any romance or history or tradition in that. And at a certain point, after LSU or Oregon or whomever went 0-11 several seasons in a row and stopped being able to recruit good players any more, we'd start wondering why they were included in the Super League in the first place, and if they were able to join because they happened to be good at a certain moment in history which is no longer particularly relevant to the league's raison d'etre.

In European football's current structure, it is theoretically possible for any club in any league to become the Champions of Europe, just as it's theoretically possible for Vanderbilt or Rutgers or Kansas to win the national college football title. Manchester City were in the third tier of English football as recently as 22 years ago. They had obvious financial help in getting where they are today, but fundamentally they got to where they are because they kept winning football matches. And much of the current system's legitimacy derives from this romantic notion that if you win enough matches, you can ascend to the very top of the European pyramid. (Why do you think the Football Manager series of computer games is so popular?) As soon as you close the system so that this is no longer the case, and there exists a glass ceiling through which your club may not pass, the nature of the system fundamentally changes. And I don't think the nature of that new system will endear any of the seceding clubs to any fans of the have-nots which the Super League would in theory be permanently leaving behind. Certainly, the winners of this Super League could no longer legitimately call themselves "European Champions". And when Arsenal and Tottenham or whomever else finishes bottom of the Super League for the Xth year in a row, playing a series of increasingly meaningless matches every year from January onward (under no threat of relegation), their existence within the Super League will likely raise questions about the entire enterprise.

I think a Super League can work - if it encompasses promotion and relegation. That structure would still be incredibly divisive, particularly if it caused clubs to exit their domestic leagues (although a case can probably be made that big clubs will probably have enough players to compete both domestically and in Europe, perhaps with separate managers and mostly separate squads for each competition). But if it is a closed system, it may come to feel too much like a glorified series of exhibitions than a competition worthy of the talent it encompasses. In particular, are fans of teams in the bottom half - or bottom quarter - of the Super League table really going to take kindly to seeing their clubs lose all the time? The Champions League is by definition a competition in which winners play other winners. Turn some of those regular winners into regular losers, what do you think you're going to end up with?
 

Dummy Hoy

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I mean, relatively to now, of course. Success breeds new fans, nothing new to that.

the lengths teddy goes to defend his clubs morale code is Liverpoolesque. Gotta love it.
They were putting 35K into Maine Road for years before their ownership change. Just because they were overshadowed by the biggest badwagon club in England doesn't mean they weren't a big club.

And that's the one thing I've always respected about United fans- they've never apologized for their arrogance or pretended they were anything more special that big spending winners. It's clubs that think they do things different or that it means more or they're more than a club...they're all just cash generating toys for billionaires too.
 
Incidentally:
ESPN has been told by a person familiar with the blueprint that the proposed framework involves a total of 20 teams, with 15 permanent members who cannot be relegated.

A further five teams will be rotated in and out of the competition, based on performance, but the permanent members will include six Premier League clubs, three from La Liga, three from Italy's Serie A, two from the Bundesliga and one from France's Ligue 1.
(Source: https://www.espn.com/soccer/uefa-champions-league/story/4363096/man-united-liverpool-among-clubs-in-$6-billion-european-super-league-talks-sources)
 

Morgan's Magic Snowplow

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Wait, isn’t the World Cup in Qatar next year? And beIN has those broadcast rights, too? What a crazy set of coincidences.
I know, crazy huh?

The good thing is that if we stop the European Super League then the average fan will be looked out for and we'll have kept greedy billionaires from ruining the game.
 

Mighty Joe Young

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So .. let’s pretend that neither side blinks and this actually comes to pass. So what will happen?

Domestically, (in England) not much. Any threat to expel the big six is meaningless. The League Cup will be probably eliminated - or , restricted to non big six clubs. CL qualification will still be a thing (if the CL still exists) - although it will be viewed as the new Europa League. Super League qualification (of the remaining five slots the PL will probably get one) will be the main target of the rest. Top Four (of the rest) get CL and the best of them get SL? My head is starting to hurt.

As for Europe .. who knows .. the break away clubs will initially be banned .. but after the war settles down I think UEFA relents and bygones will be bygones.
 

Phil Plantier

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I'm trying not to overreact, because this still may be a bluff, but if this actually moves forward it'll be a dark decade in football. I can see separate continental competitions, separate world cups, championships with asterisks...

It reminds me of the Champ Car/Indy Racing League split in 2003 that almost doomed open-wheel racing in the US.
 

Jimy Hendrix

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Was there was supposed to be some kind of actual announcement by now, or did I miss something in the reporting.

If there was and there hasn't been, then the longer we go without anyone involved actually saying things out loud the more this seems like a ploy.
 

Mighty Joe Young

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Was there was supposed to be some kind of actual announcement by now, or did I miss something in the reporting.

If there was and there hasn't been, then the longer we go without anyone involved actually saying things out loud the more this seems like a ploy.
I think theres been lots of media speculation about an announcement tonight .. none so far that I’m aware of (getting kind of late now) .. it’s a ploy. Not to say it‘s just a ploy.
 

SoxFanInCali

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They were putting 35K into Maine Road for years before their ownership change. Just because they were overshadowed by the biggest badwagon club in England doesn't mean they weren't a big club.

And that's the one thing I've always respected about United fans- they've never apologized for their arrogance or pretended they were anything more special that big spending winners. It's clubs that think they do things different or that it means more or they're more than a club...they're all just cash generating toys for billionaires too.
Newcastle puts 50K into the seats regularly, but that doesn't mean they have the kind of international following that earns them top sponsors, which is why they get a few million to put some Chinese betting site on their shirt. There is no question that during their rise City benefited from sponsorship deals that no company in the world that wasn't owned by their owners would have given them. For Teddy to pretend that every club had that same opportunity to raise their sponsorship revenues in the same way is laughable, but par for the course for him.

As for me personally, I don't like the idea of a Super League without relegation. One of the biggest reasons why Liverpool winning the CL in 05 and the recent success under Klopp has been so satisfying to me is because I've seen them struggle for stretches and miss Europe entirely and have to build back up. I only want to see them playing top European teams if they've earned it, and have a chance to win.

I'm still 95% sure this is nothing more than a bargaining tactic. The EPL owners are just jealous of the other leagues where Real, Barca, and Bayern (and in most years PSG and Juve) basically have a free pass into the CL even in down years, while at least a couple of them are getting left out no matter what. The pandemic and the corresponding crazy seasons that have put some big non-English clubs in jeopardy is the main reason this is getting any play outside the English Big 6.
 

bosox4283

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Atletico, as a team always teetering on the edge of financial security and always vying to be relevant in Europe, has no choice but to join Real Madrid and Barcelona in this farce. The team, for both good and bad reasons, wants to and needs to make money. The revenue has been incredibly important the last decade -- since Cholo Simeone arrived -- so that Atletico could pay off debt, compete with Real Madrid and Barcelona, and build a new stadium.

I hate the idea for the risk it poses to the health and quality of La Liga and its second division. At the same time, I hate the management and oversight of La Liga for not doing anything to stop a two-headed monster with a weird third appendage. Maybe Barcelona feels some historical magnetism to play Espanyol each year (when Espanyol is actually in first division), but I have to think that Real Madrid and Barcelona would rather seek more money through consistently more high-profile matches. Their desire to bail on playing the likes of Eibar and Elche stem, in part, from the fact that Eibar and Elche have budgets that are one-tenths of the two Goliaths. The Davids don't merely not stand a chance -- it is boring to play them if you're Goliath.
 

singaporesoxfan

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But that’s the whole point. This is all driven by 6 (maybe even 8 ) into 4. The Big Six want the certainty of CL money. The idea of promotion/relegation is foreign , if not complete anathema to modern (AKA American) sports entrepreneurship.
It's true, but these teams have hardly been in any danger of relegation; their financial risk each season has been getting shut out of the CL by the Leicesters and Evertons of the world.

Put against that is the risk that many of these teams have a fanbase that is largely international and have no geographical reason to love these teams through thick and thin, and part of their success in attracting fans had been a consistent diet of wins against smaller clubs. I can’t imagine the same fanbases – many of whom are the international equivalent of Yankees / Duke fans – are super thrilled to be supporters of middling mid table teams
 

teddykgb

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May be the death of football for me. Maybe just watch crap MLS matches. The whole thing is rotten. Only thing that could bring me back would be banning VAR in the competition
 

singaporesoxfan

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Titans Bastard

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May be the death of football for me. Maybe just watch crap MLS matches. The whole thing is rotten. Only thing that could bring me back would be banning VAR in the competition
If you are someone who turns up their nose at watching local soccer, you are part of the problem.
 

Vinho Tinto

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No Germans at the jump.

To compare, here’s the list of clubs that formed G-14:

Real Madrid (Spain)
Barcelona (Spain)
Manchester United (England)
Liverpool (England)
Internazionale (Italy)
Juventus (Italy)
Milan (Italy)
Marseille (France)
Paris Saint-Germain (France)
Bayern Munich (Germany)
Borussia Dortmund (Germany)
Ajax (Netherlands)
PSV Eindhoven (Netherlands)
Porto (Portugal)

Four clubs were added in 2002:
Arsenal (England)
Bayer Leverkusen (Germany)
Lyon (France)
Valencia (Spain)
 

teddykgb

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If you are someone who turns up their nose at watching local soccer, you are part of the problem.
I agree. I don’t turn up my nose but I have preferred the other product for a myriad of reasons. Our domestic league with lousy tv coverage and no pro/rel were chief among them. And the revs being an unambitious side project didn’t help. But the levers are changing
 
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SoxFanInCali

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If that UEFA threat to ban all participants is real, this feels like a poker game where the clubs are betting strong with a pair of threes, and UEFA just went all in over the top with King high.
 

Cellar-Door

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I mean it's clear that the driving force behind this is that some of the recent traditional powers are feeling the crunch... EPL has opened up in recent years, Inter is a clown car on fire, the Super League is basically a bunch of rich owners terrified of losing more money finding a way to ensure that their revenue isn't tied to their success... the best thing for American Sports owners has always been that owning the team is all that matters, no matter how incompetent you are you'll be fine, where in EPL, incompetence is met with consequences.

As for what the FA can do.... it's an interesting case. If they want to call the bluff it's a simple change... you don't expel teams, you just say that a team can't register any players for EPL and Super League, and that players registered in SL can't play for the English National team. You basically make it a player choice. Do you save your stars for the SL (which probably has it's own contract issues) and risk relegation trouble and fan anger, or do you play your start domestically and make the new league a mockery where big name clubs play their U-23 squads and cash checks.
 

swiftaw

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I also wonder specifically with England now out of the EU could they not issue visas for players from the european teams to play in super league matches on UK soil?
 

67YAZ

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Put against that is the risk that many of these teams have a fanbase that is largely international and have no geographical reason to love these teams through thick and thin, and part of their success in attracting fans had been a consistent diet of wins against smaller clubs. I can’t imagine the same fanbases – many of whom are the international equivalent of Yankees / Duke fans – are super thrilled to be supporters of middling mid table teams
I think the point of a Super League is that the projected revenue streams are so huge and so varied, you don’t have to sweat over social media engagement numbers in Indonesia anymore. You just have to play well enough to not get booted from the league.
 

teddykgb

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Why not Ajax and Feyenoord? Why not fucking Celtic and Rangers? If we are going to try to create a time machine to the last time a team like fucking AC Milan mattered why are we being selective?
 

swiftaw

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Of course, you know what the next step would be. Playing the matches all over the world, and not home and away.
 

Tangled Up In Red

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If that UEFA threat to ban all participants is real, this feels like a poker game where the clubs are betting strong with a pair of threes, and UEFA just went all in over the top with King high.
No way this can survive litigation, imo. Players (under contract) punished for the deeds of their clubs?!
 

Cellar-Door

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So, breach contract with your club? Or adhere to your contract and be banned for it?
I haven't seen the average contract, but the idea that the players could be forced to do an entirely new job (new league, more games etc.) that didn't exist when they signed the contract doesn't hold water. It would be a massive unilateral change to the contract by the club, any agent who isn't calling the club asking for a new contract and more money is committing malpractice.
What would be the enforcement if a player refused to play in the Super League? Go to court and tell the judge that you should be able to significantly change the terms of the contract to demand more work for the same pay? Good luck with that.

Edit- so this is from a law school class and is supposedly based on real PL contracts:
https://ipmall.law.unh.edu/sites/default/files/hosted_resources/SportsEntLaw_Institute/Agent Contracts Between Players & Their Agents/6_PREMIER LEAGUE PLAYERS CONTRACT.pdf

If that language is accurate the players can refuse to play in SL and not breach the contract, as the contract requires them to follow all UEFA, FIFA and domestic (In this case FA) rules and laws. If that is the case, the player can easily cite their contractual obligation to follow the rules in rejecting any request to play in, attend, or train for a SL match.
 
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Senator Donut

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I have a couple of thoughts about the Super League, the first of which is that I can’t believe the name wasn’t a placeholder. They really put it on press releases as is?

I feel like the 12 clubs have two goals: to free themselves from UEFA and FIFA by controlling the competition directly and to give themselves permanent spots in order to protect the clubs from lost revenue and getting into a Leeds worst case scenario.

I’m pretty sympathetic to the first goal. Bodies like UEFA and FIFA have proven themselves to be bastions of corruption and there is no logical reason why they should be sanctioning club competitions. Imagine if the IIHF ran the Stanley Cup playoffs, scheduled the matches, negotiated the television contracts, and distributed the money how they saw fit – after taking a cut off the top. That would never fly in any other sport and it’s crazy that soccer has put up with it for so long.

They other goal is quite less palatable, and honestly pretty brazen. There are several other better ways to ensure large payouts to big clubs while preserving the false facade of sporting merit. Mexico, for example, based promotion and relegation off a three year time period, ensuring no club could be sunk by one bad season. They could have easily presented something less odious, while still preserving all of their financial advantages.
 

Cellar-Door

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I for one would be SHOCKED if the notoriously totally stable and not at all a financial shell game Serie A clubs were not in good shape financially.
 

jose melendez

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I don't follow European football, or really the NCAA, but man they remind my of each other. These phenomenally corrupt cartels where there is very little true competition because the system is so unbalanced toward a few teams, and then those teams, despite all of the advantages they have, still have to stack the deck even more.

I can't imagine how pointless it would feel to root for, say and EPL team that's not one of the big six (is that the number?) Leicester City can happen once in a million years, but then meassures are taken to make it even harder for it to happen again.
 

teddykgb

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I just read a statement on the man city website which holds zero quotes from anyone at the club but does quote a fucking Glazer so that’s cool
 

SoxFanInCali

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In the last year, only six teams have one, save for the three anamloies of Leicster City, Blackburn and Leads. Is that right?
7 Teams have won the title since the Premier League started in 1992-93
Manchester United (13)
Chelsea (5)
Manchester City (4)
Arsenal (3)
Liverpool, Blackburn Rovers, Leicester City (1)

Before 2005, it was only 3, so the last 15 years have actually been more competitive than the first dozen.
 

teddykgb

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leeds won the last pre-premier league title.
Just made it back and congrats to them they’re now on the outside with no path forward. Sorry, Everton, you’re consigned to being second class citizens in Liverpool for all of eternity, neat little project you had going with Carlo too sorry about that.
 

Mr. Wednesday

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I don't follow European football, or really the NCAA, but man they remind my of each other. These phenomenally corrupt cartels where there is very little true competition because the system is so unbalanced toward a few teams, and then those teams, despite all of the advantages they have, still have to stack the deck even more.
I don't think this is a particularly apt analogy. The NCAA as a whole is not especially protective of the big teams; many of the rules tend to point toward evening out competition. Things like scholarship limits, limits on recruiting, limits on paying players... all of these tend to work more to the benefit of the smaller teams than the bigger teams.

The NCAA is more playing the role of FIFA or UEFA in this scenario, with the Super League more like the Power 5 and the BCS or the football playoff.