How would you structure European football? (Super League alternatives)

I thought about asking this question in the thread about the proposed Super League, but perhaps it would be better as a separate topic. How would you change the Champions League, Europa League and/or domestic leagues and cups to create the best competitive format? You can approach this from either or both of these two perspectives:

1) You're the czar of football and can draw things up on a blank sheet of paper, ignoring the past and creating a brand new future.
2) You're a mediator between UEFA, the domestic leagues and the big clubs and want to create a realistic solution that is potentially workable and palatable for all parties - including the fans.

You don't need to present fully formed solutions - ideas on what you'd want to see in a competition (e.g., promotion/relegation, league vs. playoffs vs. knockout, salary cap, etc.) are fine too.

(I have many thoughts and will post some of them presently.)
 

luckiestman

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As a super casual I need help, can you tell me what is broken about it now?
 

Awesome Fossum

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This feels like a stupid American question, but what would be wrong with a true European league (as opposed to a UCL-style cup) with open promotion/relegation? Basically, the current structure with one more tier on top. The heavyweights get to play all killer/no filler matches on weekends and everyone still has a theoretical chance to ascend to the top of the sport. The domestic cups are probably elevated in stature? And life maybe even becomes more interesting for the middle class.

Ownership still wouldn't have the revenue predictability that they crave, and in some seasons for some clubs you'd lose things like the twice annual derbys (although is there any reason these couldn't be played anyway?), but it seems like it would still fit into the existing ecosystem and abide by the culture of merit that everyone values.
 
This feels like a stupid American question, but what would be wrong with a true European league (as opposed to a UCL-style cup) with open promotion/relegation? Basically, the current structure with one more tier on top. The heavyweights get to play all killer/no filler matches on weekends and everyone still has a theoretical chance to ascend to the top of the sport. The domestic cups are probably elevated in stature? And life maybe even becomes more interesting for the middle class.
This is definitely one of my preferred solutions. But I'm not sure it fits in the "practical" bucket of solutions (option #2 in my OP) - I don't think the domestic leagues would allow the big clubs to leave without a massive fight.
 

SocrManiac

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This feels like a stupid American question, but what would be wrong with a true European league (as opposed to a UCL-style cup) with open promotion/relegation? Basically, the current structure with one more tier on top. The heavyweights get to play all killer/no filler matches on weekends and everyone still has a theoretical chance to ascend to the top of the sport. The domestic cups are probably elevated in stature? And life maybe even becomes more interesting for the middle class.

Ownership still wouldn't have the revenue predictability that they crave, and in some seasons for some clubs you'd lose things like the twice annual derbys (although is there any reason these couldn't be played anyway?), but it seems like it would still fit into the existing ecosystem and abide by the culture of merit that everyone values.
Domestic league tv rights become worthless internationally as the big clubs exit.
 
As a super casual I need help, can you tell me what is broken about it now?
Depends who you ask. The big clubs obviously think something is wrong with it, because otherwise there would be no Super League proposal; they want more money (of course), cost certainty (which is anathema to open competitions), and fewer clubs in their domestic leagues (here I sympathize with them somewhat). Many fans think the current Champions League is bloated and has too many meaningless matches, while the Europa League is kind of a joke. Nobody seems to like what has happened to domestic cups. And so on.
 

67YAZ

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This feels like a stupid American question, but what would be wrong with a true European league (as opposed to a UCL-style cup) with open promotion/relegation? Basically, the current structure with one more tier on top. The heavyweights get to play all killer/no filler matches on weekends and everyone still has a theoretical chance to ascend to the top of the sport. The domestic cups are probably elevated in stature? And life maybe even becomes more interesting for the middle class.

Ownership still wouldn't have the revenue predictability that they crave, and in some seasons for some clubs you'd lose things like the twice annual derbys (although is there any reason these couldn't be played anyway?), but it seems like it would still fit into the existing ecosystem and abide by the culture of merit that everyone values.
A few quick thoughts:

It would really depress international broadcast rights revenues for the national leagues. What's La Liga worth outside Spain if you don't have Madrid and Barca to draw eyeballs? Even if in theory, Madrid and Barca could be relegated back to La Liga, broadcasters aren't going to pay for that remote possibility - they're going to value the rights based on the teams present at the moment.

European politics are trending nationalists and against pan-European projects. There would be a lot opportunistic politicians happy to make hay railing against this assault on national sovereignty and blah blah. I mean, look at how quickly Boris Johnson threw himself into this issue as if it is a fraction as important as COVID, EU negotiations, etc.

Third, how would it work? Is the new league only made up of the top-5 leagues? If so, what's the criteria for getting in - would it be the same squishy "elite" criteria the ESL is using or something more objective? And then who gets relegated? Say if in the first season 2 Italian and a French side finish bottom 3, does Serie A get to send 2 and Ligue 1 send 1 club the next year to retain the national representation? Because that could mean you could go many, many years without any new Spanish teams joining the league if Barc, Athleti, & Madrid don't falter. Or is there a new version of the Europa league where the finalists of that competition, drawn from all national leagues, get promoted?
 

Morgan's Magic Snowplow

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Good thread idea.

I don't have a fully formed answer. My initial thought is simply that any good answer needs to start by diagnosing the root of the current dysfunction in the game. In my view, that means thinking about the global commercialization of football, how the sport is marketed and sold around the world as well as how the gains from that global commercialization are distributed.

Right now European football sort of has the worst of both worlds occurring, in that the competition is marketed incompetently but the commercial gains are realized incredibly unequally. Only a few clubs are really capable of driving big commercial revenue growth through global activity, so the degree of competition has become terrible within the big domestic leagues. But even though they're mainly in different countries those clubs are still pitted in this brutal competition against each other to individually grow their global club brands, which is largely done by winning things and signing big expensive players, so many of the richest clubs are actually losing money (even pre-Covid).

So a good solution is going to:

1) Be run in a way that better brands, markets, and sells European competition itself around the world. This effectively means taking it out of the hands of UEFA.

2) Distribute the money realized from global commercialization in a more egalitarian way, so that within individual countries there is a more level playing field. This effectively means taking it out of the hands of just a few big clubs.

Therein lies the rub. Can we have both 1 and 2?
 

Kliq

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Not counting the events of the past week, my number one issue as a fan of soccer is the disparity in spending between the top teams and the lower teams. In particular, smaller clubs that do a great job developing young players not being able to retain their players once they become good enough to star against top competition, which continually handicaps those clubs from competing at the highest level. The idea of a salary cap and a more American-based revenue sharing would be ideal; but the problem is that the big clubs would never go for it, and the current system has allowed the big clubs to grow so large that they have gained leverage over leagues and organizing bodies so that they can muscle around all the smaller clubs to make sure that the big clubs stay big. This is why I have no problem with City sitting at the table (geo-politics aside) because they found a way in despite navigating a system that is specifically designed to keep them out.

The NFL has a lot of problems, but a big reason for the league's success has been the fact that fans of all 32 teams can actually dream of winning the Super Bowl, as long as they draft well and their coaching is strong.
 

teddykgb

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I’d start by completely renovating FFP. I have moaned on here for years that the only purpose of FFP was to lock in the status quo and prevent challenges to the clubs who were in this cartel. These Leopards have clearly shown their spots. By not including debt in the financial checks, uefa spent a ton of time hassling City over the valuation of sponsorships while Madrid and Barca turned themselves into debt piles which they could only cure by forming a new league.

Tying spending to revenue will always be anti competitive. It prevents investment. They almost got there by letting non CL teams violate FFP but the league itself has FFP and if you make CL you have to almost immediately comply. All of that is broken. If some rich bastard wants to buy Newcastle or Villa and pour money in you should encourage it. I wish to god some rich bastard would buy Ajax and restore it to former glory.

I have no problem with curtailing spending at the top. City today should not be able to spend a billion dollars and render competition obsolete. I don’t think tying it to revenue makes sense still as it turns the competition into a board room competition for who can make the most sponsorships. I don’t think salary caps are realistic pan Europe even legally but I think they should look at how baseball tackled this. I really wasn’t a fan of the luxury tax approach but having gone through all of the other approaches in the US it seems the most implementable in Europe to me. If Mansour wants to spend a billion dollars on City, make each dollar spent cost more than a dollar and pour that money back into the pyramid. We have seen in baseball that eventually it just makes no sense to make the incremental investment. In Europe Wes have the added bonus that you can’t “tank” a year because of CL spots and relegation to reset any tax burden.

If it were up to me we’d restore the Wuropean Championship and stop qualifying teams for the CL who arent actually Champions. I think the Europa League could be a really class tournament if the other big clubs went into it and it played out more like the revamped CL format does making it more of a league structure. I think that would be optimal for us as consumers but the money aspect of it won’t work. I think the only part of the SL that is unfortunately correct is that there’s more money to be made by making the big teams play each otherand that’s fundamentally why the CL has screwed up football. Teams do not worry about missing Europe because of the reputational damage — it’s entirely about the CL prize money which gives them additional spending power. The CL and EL prize money almost needs to be reduced in order to stop incentivizing the CL to be a keyinstrument in any clubs finances. Again, FFP as it is today has created a straight jacket where the teams need the CL revenue guaranteed to balance their books otherwise they need to take on unmonitored debt in order to stay competitive or risk a death spiral of selling to cover debts but then being unable to requalify. It’s the same problem relegation teams face butat way higher sums with compounding interest.
 

swiftaw

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I'd add, ban loan moves. This will stop big clubs buying up every youth prospect and then loaning them out until the decide if they are good enough.
 

Awesome Fossum

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Domestic league tv rights become worthless internationally as the big clubs exit.
I get why the leagues would hate it. I guess I am curious if that hatred would extend to the teams and the supporters in the middle tier of the domestic leagues. I guess if the lack of TV revenue cripples those teams' ability to compete, it would.

Third, how would it work? Is the new league only made up of the top-5 leagues? If so, what's the criteria for getting in - would it be the same squishy "elite" criteria the ESL is using or something more objective? And then who gets relegated? Say if in the first season 2 Italian and a French side finish bottom 3, does Serie A get to send 2 and Ligue 1 send 1 club the next year to retain the national representation? Because that could mean you could go many, many years without any new Spanish teams joining the league if Barc, Athleti, & Madrid don't falter. Or is there a new version of the Europa league where the finalists of that competition, drawn from all national leagues, get promoted?
No idea. Great questions. If I'm the czar, I definitely wouldn't want it to be exclusively top-5 leagues -- no reason that a team from Belgium or Scotland or wherever shouldn't be able to get in and conquer Europe. In terms of relegation, I think it would have to be some sort of hybrid model -- bottom three or so teams are relegated no matter what. In addition, for any country that has two or more teams, the bottom finisher is automatically relegated in favor of the domestic league's champion, maybe with top three or so protection. And if Barc, Athleti, & Madrid finish top 3, then it seems like it's time for Spain to get one of England's extra spots.
 

Ale Xander

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I find the whole transfer fee thing off-putting. Get rid of all it. Loans/transfer fees, etc.
 

teddykgb

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I think you could ban loan moves but have to seriously consider allowing PL2 teams into the pyramid. That’s a really controversial topic and I think lower tier teams have a legitimate gripe there but it’s very hard to develop talent who can actually play in the PL when they’re only playing in the current youth setup. The gap is just too big for most youth to make the jump. Maybe a really high Hg quota on pl2 teams could bridge that gap.

To add on to my previous post, consider West Ham and Leicester. Both clubs are on the verge of making a leap domestically. Last time Leicester got here they aged out quickly and had their team picked apart. From a capitalist kind of standpoint, those clubs should be great investments and getting to that door should be an opportunity for them to bust in with a little extra spending. You need to have a way for them to be able to keep the teams they have assembled and add on to them without rules which invalidate them from the competition.
 

Cellar-Door

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I would keep essentially the same structure, but implement rules for inclusion that trickle down... including limits not just on registered players for the competition but total over 18 players owned, number of loans out as well as in, and the key one... transfer debt limits on a rolling 3 year basis. If you exceed the maximum allowable debt on transfers in a 3 year period you suffer an automatic expulsion from Euro competition and a 3 year ban.
 

coremiller

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I’d start by completely renovating FFP. I have moaned on here for years that the only purpose of FFP was to lock in the status quo and prevent challenges to the clubs who were in this cartel. These Leopards have clearly shown their spots. By not including debt in the financial checks, uefa spent a ton of time hassling City over the valuation of sponsorships while Madrid and Barca turned themselves into debt piles which they could only cure by forming a new league.

Tying spending to revenue will always be anti competitive. It prevents investment. They almost got there by letting non CL teams violate FFP but the league itself has FFP and if you make CL you have to almost immediately comply. All of that is broken. If some rich bastard wants to buy Newcastle or Villa and pour money in you should encourage it. I wish to god some rich bastard would buy Ajax and restore it to former glory.

I have no problem with curtailing spending at the top. City today should not be able to spend a billion dollars and render competition obsolete. I don’t think tying it to revenue makes sense still as it turns the competition into a board room competition for who can make the most sponsorships. I don’t think salary caps are realistic pan Europe even legally but I think they should look at how baseball tackled this. I really wasn’t a fan of the luxury tax approach but having gone through all of the other approaches in the US it seems the most implementable in Europe to me. If Mansour wants to spend a billion dollars on City, make each dollar spent cost more than a dollar and pour that money back into the pyramid. We have seen in baseball that eventually it just makes no sense to make the incremental investment. In Europe Wes have the added bonus that you can’t “tank” a year because of CL spots and relegation to reset any tax burden.

If it were up to me we’d restore the Wuropean Championship and stop qualifying teams for the CL who arent actually Champions. I think the Europa League could be a really class tournament if the other big clubs went into it and it played out more like the revamped CL format does making it more of a league structure. I think that would be optimal for us as consumers but the money aspect of it won’t work. I think the only part of the SL that is unfortunately correct is that there’s more money to be made by making the big teams play each otherand that’s fundamentally why the CL has screwed up football. Teams do not worry about missing Europe because of the reputational damage — it’s entirely about the CL prize money which gives them additional spending power. The CL and EL prize money almost needs to be reduced in order to stop incentivizing the CL to be a keyinstrument in any clubs finances. Again, FFP as it is today has created a straight jacket where the teams need the CL revenue guaranteed to balance their books otherwise they need to take on unmonitored debt in order to stay competitive or risk a death spiral of selling to cover debts but then being unable to requalify. It’s the same problem relegation teams face butat way higher sums with compounding interest.
Only a City fan would blame everything wrong with modern football on FFP, as if that were the cause, and not a symptom.

The underlying problems here are much more structural. Organizing the main league competition along national lines makes no sense in an increasingly globalized game, especially in a relatively economically integrated Europe (Brexist notwithstanding). If we were starting from a blank slate it would never be set up that way. It's pure inertia/path dependency that the domestic leagues take such priority.
 

Cellar-Door

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I think you could ban loan moves but have to seriously consider allowing PL2 teams into the pyramid. That’s a really controversial topic and I think lower tier teams have a legitimate gripe there but it’s very hard to develop talent who can actually play in the PL when they’re only playing in the current youth setup. The gap is just too big for most youth to make the jump. Maybe a really high Hg quota on pl2 teams could bridge that gap.

To add on to my previous post, consider West Ham and Leicester. Both clubs are on the verge of making a leap domestically. Last time Leicester got here they aged out quickly and had their team picked apart. From a capitalist kind of standpoint, those clubs should be great investments and getting to that door should be an opportunity for them to bust in with a little extra spending. You need to have a way for them to be able to keep the teams they have assembled and add on to them without rules which invalidate them from the competition.
I think what a lot of people think is that if you ban loans then promising players won't sign with the big 6. So for example an 18 year old who currently signs with City knowing he'll be immediately loaned out, instead signs with Leicester who can offer him a squad place.
 
Third, how would it work? Is the new league only made up of the top-5 leagues? If so, what's the criteria for getting in - would it be the same squishy "elite" criteria the ESL is using or something more objective? And then who gets relegated? Say if in the first season 2 Italian and a French side finish bottom 3, does Serie A get to send 2 and Ligue 1 send 1 club the next year to retain the national representation? Because that could mean you could go many, many years without any new Spanish teams joining the league if Barc, Athleti, & Madrid don't falter. Or is there a new version of the Europa league where the finalists of that competition, drawn from all national leagues, get promoted?
I'm pretty sure the answers to these questions revolves around either a) an end-of-season international playoff system of some sort, or b) using the Europa League or whatever you want to call the second-tier European competition to determine which teams are eligible for promotion. Or possibly a combination of both.

One thought I've had from a practical perspective: if relegation from the top tier of a pan-European structure involves a promotion/relegation playoff (of the sort that exists in many European domestic leagues), that would make relegation and promotion possible but significantly less likely, which is the sort of thing that ought to work pretty well for the super-big clubs.
 

swiftaw

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I think what a lot of people think is that if you ban loans then promising players won't sign with the big 6. So for example an 18 year old who currently signs with City knowing he'll be immediately loaned out, instead signs with Leicester who can offer him a squad place.
Exactly, and then if City want to sign his later (when he's good enough), the transfer fee will have to recognize that. Rather than buying 20 16-year olds for $1 million each in the hope that one of them becomes a superstar and saves you a $100m transfer fee.
 

Morgan's Magic Snowplow

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I think you could ban loan moves but have to seriously consider allowing PL2 teams into the pyramid. That’s a really controversial topic and I think lower tier teams have a legitimate gripe there but it’s very hard to develop talent who can actually play in the PL when they’re only playing in the current youth setup. The gap is just too big for most youth to make the jump. Maybe a really high Hg quota on pl2 teams could bridge that gap.

To add on to my previous post, consider West Ham and Leicester. Both clubs are on the verge of making a leap domestically. Last time Leicester got here they aged out quickly and had their team picked apart. From a capitalist kind of standpoint, those clubs should be great investments and getting to that door should be an opportunity for them to bust in with a little extra spending. You need to have a way for them to be able to keep the teams they have assembled and add on to them without rules which invalidate them from the competition.
Development in the youth academies of big clubs followed by loan moves to Championship, First Division, or Second Division sides followed eventually by permanent moves on small money is also a very common career path for huge numbers of players who will never sniff the Premier League. If you ban loans, you basically kill a lot of player development.
 

coremiller

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I'm pretty sure the answers to these questions revolves around either a) an end-of-season international playoff system of some sort, or b) using the Europa League or whatever you want to call the second-tier European competition to determine which teams are eligible for promotion. Or possibly a combination of both.

One thought I've had from a practical perspective: if relegation from the top tier of a pan-European structure involves a promotion/relegation playoff (of the sort that exists in many European domestic leagues), that would make relegation and promotion possible but significantly less likely, which is the sort of thing that ought to work pretty well for the super-big clubs.
Aren't there European-wide leagues in other sports? How does the European basketball league work? I know they have one but I'm not familiar with the details.
 

Kliq

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Development in the youth academies of big clubs followed by loan moves to Championship, First Division, or Second Division sides followed eventually by permanent moves on small money is also a very common career path for huge numbers of players who will never sniff the Premier League. If you ban loans, you basically kill a lot of player development.
Loaning players is also a viable way for lower league sides to compete without having to break the bank. I actually really enjoy the system, and one of the reasons WHU have found their way into a UCL spot at the moment is because of how great Lingard has been for them.
 

swiftaw

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Development in the youth academies of big clubs followed by loan moves to Championship, First Division, or Second Division sides followed eventually by permanent moves on small money is also a very common career path for huge numbers of players who will never sniff the Premier League. If you ban loans, you basically kill a lot of player development.
Ok, how about this. If they come through your academy you can loan them out. If you sign someone after 18, you can't
 

teddykgb

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Only a City fan would blame everything wrong with modern football on FFP, as if that were the cause, and not a symptom.

The underlying problems here are much more structural. Organizing the main league competition along national lines makes no sense in an increasingly globalized game, especially in a relatively economically integrated Europe (Brexist notwithstanding). If we were starting from a blank slate it would never be set up that way. It's pure inertia/path dependency that the domestic leagues take such priority.
Address the post, not the poster. My post is saying that the combination of FFPs structure and incentives with the CL money results in a toxic stew that produces what wehave been asked to eat this week. If you don’t think the current version of FFP has led to this, I’d love to hear why.

I don’t agree with your take on the national alignments, or at least I don’t think I do. These clubs are fundamentally gigantic expansions of local projects. It is hard for those of us here in the states to really get this but they are more like family traditions and far more integrated into their communities than we are used to here. A lot of my views are colored by having grown up going to social clubs watching crap Portuguese league matches on even crappier feeds but those teams meant something to those guys. You find real, legitimate supporters of impossibly bad teams because that team is from their village or principality or whatever. I’ve had a lot of good fortune in my life and I’ve made probably a dozen trips or more to Manchester over the years anew it’s impossible to describe how improbable it is that two world powerhouses came out of such a small working class City. City are not heroes and everyone else villains in this play, I always need to disclaim that, but that club matters to the people in that City and the renovation of East Manchester that has occurred in the last decade is hard to believe. I don’t mention all this because I think I have some unique insight or that my stories aren’t common— I just think that the leagues almost always need to have that local connection because it has always been there and it’s what gives the fans extra passion. Much of the outcry of the lastfew days is fans feeling as if their local club is turning into an American franchise which could be relocated on a whim to Shanghai or New York. Going pan Europe even in a league structure would just serve to sever the ties between the local people and their domestic leagues. Mancs want to go to the pub and have blood feuds over City united and Scousers want to do the same on Everton and Liverpool. Separating them into economic leagues doesn’t help those people and they’d all be miserable without those more native rivalries
 

swiftaw

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Loaning players is also a viable way for lower league sides to compete without having to break the bank. I actually really enjoy the system, and one of the reasons WHU have found their way into a UCL spot at the moment is because of how great Lingard has been for them.
Loaning of established players is a little different, and I don't really have too much of an issue with it. My issue is clubs signing players that they have no intention of using in the short term, if at all. Chelsea are particular offenders.
 

swiftaw

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Also, if starting from scratch, there would have to be some recognition that clubs cannot just be regular businesses, and thus not run that way. Perhaps the German model should be universal?
 

Cellar-Door

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I htink with loans there are 3 types:

1. Youth loans
2. Young over 18 player loans
3. Established player loans

#2 is the problem area... that's where the big clubs are just hoarding (and often wasting) talent. Those players would find places with clubs if they weren't on the books.

You can handle it one (or both) of two ways... limit outgoing loans (incoming already are) or limit the number of non-youth player contracts a club can have at any time.
 

teddykgb

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Loaning of established players is a little different, and I don't really have too much of an issue with it. My issue is clubs signing players that they have no intention of using in the short term, if at all. Chelsea are particular offenders.
It isn’t clear to me that Chelsea’s loan army has worked out all that poorly for anyone. As said above, a lot of players develop pro careers this way even if they don’t develop into PL stars. It’s not clear to me that those players would have had better outcomes being at other PL teams or would be at other PL teams at all if they weren’t allowed to have them. Chelsea have offered jobs to these players and while their path is a difficult one with a lot of loans are we sure it’s meaningfully damaging other clubs all that much? I have no doubt that a promising youth product or two have been plucked but alternatives to me seem like locking young players into playing for sides which may not develop them as well. We don’t really need something more like the NCAA to me where the players lose agency over their own careers
 
Aren't there European-wide leagues in other sports? How does the European basketball league work? I know they have one but I'm not familiar with the details.
The Euroleague in basketball is actually a lot like the proposed Super League in football: there are 18 teams, 11 of which have "permanent licenses" and can't be relegated. Of the rest, 5 go to the winners of the big four leagues and last year's EuroCup (Europa League equivalent), and then there are 2 wild cards. Not exactly the best model for what we're talking about.

There are other pan-European leagues in sports like handball, for example, but the money involved in them is so much less that they're hardly worth comparing to football.
 

swiftaw

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It isn’t clear to me that Chelsea’s loan army has worked out all that poorly for anyone. As said above, a lot of players develop pro careers this way even if they don’t develop into PL stars. It’s not clear to me that those players would have had better outcomes being at other PL teams or would be at other PL teams at all if they weren’t allowed to have them. Chelsea have offered jobs to these players and while their path is a difficult one with a lot of loans are we sure it’s meaningfully damaging other clubs all that much? I have no doubt that a promising youth product or two have been plucked but alternatives to me seem like locking young players into playing for sides which may not develop them as well. We don’t really need something more like the NCAA to me where the players lose agency over their own careers
But it is virtually risk free for the big clubs, because they can use quantity to mitigate quality. They don't have to be good at scouting, they could just sign 20 18-year olds for peanuts in the hope that 1 or 2 are good enough to make their senior squad eventually. In the mean time, everyone gets loaned out, and the ones that aren't good enough will eventually be sold. probably for more than they were bought for because they now have senior experience.

Edit: I guess my issue is, whats the incentive for non-big clubs to spend time and energy on their academies, when the big clubs can come along and pluck these players for peanuts at 18, not having to worry if they may not turn into good enough players because they can just loan them out and still make a profit later.
 
I don’t agree with your take on the national alignments, or at least I don’t think I do. These clubs are fundamentally gigantic expansions of local projects. It is hard for those of us here in the states to really get this but they are more like family traditions and far more integrated into their communities than we are used to here. A lot of my views are colored by having grown up going to social clubs watching crap Portuguese league matches on even crappier feeds but those teams meant something to those guys. You find real, legitimate supporters of impossibly bad teams because that team is from their village or principality or whatever. I’ve had a lot of good fortune in my life and I’ve made probably a dozen trips or more to Manchester over the years anew it’s impossible to describe how improbable it is that two world powerhouses came out of such a small working class City. City are not heroes and everyone else villains in this play, I always need to disclaim that, but that club matters to the people in that City and the renovation of East Manchester that has occurred in the last decade is hard to believe. I don’t mention all this because I think I have some unique insight or that my stories aren’t common— I just think that the leagues almost always need to have that local connection because it has always been there and it’s what gives the fans extra passion. Much of the outcry of the lastfew days is fans feeling as if their local club is turning into an American franchise which could be relocated on a whim to Shanghai or New York. Going pan Europe even in a league structure would just serve to sever the ties between the local people and their domestic leagues. Mancs want to go to the pub and have blood feuds over City united and Scousers want to do the same on Everton and Liverpool. Separating them into economic leagues doesn’t help those people and they’d all be miserable without those more native rivalries
I read the below submission on The Guardian's live blog today covering the latest ESL reaction. It's a good primer for American fans which I think sums up what the current system means to fans of not-big clubs - basically, it's like The American Dream, that every club could *potentially* make it big even if the odds are very small that any specific club will do so:
“In 1986 Middlesbrough FC were in the old third division and 10 minutes from liquidation, the end of a club that was formed in 1876,” recalls Richard Horrocks. “Just under 10 years later we signed a certain Juninho, then the fifth-best player in the world, with recent Champions League winner Ravanelli following shortly afterwards. In just under another 10 years we were in the Uefa cup final against Sevilla. Had we won that game then we would have played Barcelona in the European Super Cup. That’s Middlesbrough FC versus Barcelona FC in a legitimate competitive game of football. THAT is the dream. That game was so close to a reality for no other reason than merit ... we earned that position, and without a doubt, if that dream is possible for a club like Middlesbrough, who only twenty years previously were 10 minutes from non-existence, then it is a dream that is possible for anyone. I think it was a couple of years later that Middlesbrough was voted the worst place to live in the UK on a live countdown television show. And that is the context in which these dreams take place...the mundane, painful, exhausting slog of daily life interrupted ever so briefly by the magic of a dream. This battle is so much more than a game. We all know that. They don’t. Let’s make sure that this is one battle we win.”
(Middlesbrough were certainly funded by a very rich man - Steve Gibson - to help make all of this possible, of course. But at least Gibson was local to Middlesbrough.)
 

coremiller

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Address the post, not the poster. My post is saying that the combination of FFPs structure and incentives with the CL money results in a toxic stew that produces what wehave been asked to eat this week. If you don’t think the current version of FFP has led to this, I’d love to hear why.

I don’t agree with your take on the national alignments, or at least I don’t think I do. These clubs are fundamentally gigantic expansions of local projects. It is hard for those of us here in the states to really get this but they are more like family traditions and far more integrated into their communities than we are used to here. A lot of my views are colored by having grown up going to social clubs watching crap Portuguese league matches on even crappier feeds but those teams meant something to those guys. You find real, legitimate supporters of impossibly bad teams because that team is from their village or principality or whatever. I’ve had a lot of good fortune in my life and I’ve made probably a dozen trips or more to Manchester over the years anew it’s impossible to describe how improbable it is that two world powerhouses came out of such a small working class City. City are not heroes and everyone else villains in this play, I always need to disclaim that, but that club matters to the people in that City and the renovation of East Manchester that has occurred in the last decade is hard to believe. I don’t mention all this because I think I have some unique insight or that my stories aren’t common— I just think that the leagues almost always need to have that local connection because it has always been there and it’s what gives the fans extra passion. Much of the outcry of the lastfew days is fans feeling as if their local club is turning into an American franchise which could be relocated on a whim to Shanghai or New York. Going pan Europe even in a league structure would just serve to sever the ties between the local people and their domestic leagues. Mancs want to go to the pub and have blood feuds over City united and Scousers want to do the same on Everton and Liverpool. Separating them into economic leagues doesn’t help those people and they’d all be miserable without those more native rivalries
FFP didn't start until 2012. The forces at work here date back at least to the early 90s, the creation of the Premier League and the modern Champions League format, and Manchester United figuring out how to market itself globally. FFP may have influenced the timing to the extent it encouraged the big Spanish clubs to load up on debt, which after COVID forced them to seek the ESL for the immediate cashflow boost. But FFP has almost nothing to do with the underlying structural dynamics.

I think the ties between a club and its local community, and between the club and the domestic league, are very different things. Nobody's talking about moving Man City to Shanghai (or Abu Dhabi). And most domestic league games are not derbies. I doubt City fans going to miss playing Burnley or Crystal Palace twice a year.
 

coremiller

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I read the below submission on The Guardian's live blog today covering the latest ESL reaction. It's a good primer for American fans which I think sums up what the current system means to fans of not-big clubs - basically, it's like The American Dream, that every club could *potentially* make it big even if the odds are very small that any specific club will do so:

(Middlesbrough were certainly funded by a very rich man - Steve Gibson - to help make all of this possible, of course. But at least Gibson was local to Middlesbrough.)
This meritocratic dream is even more of a farce than the American Dream. "Our little local club can become the best in the world purely on merit as long as some other country's sovereign wealth fund decides to sportswash its crimes by pumping billions of dollars into us!" Spare me.
 
This meritocratic dream is even more of a farce than the American Dream. "Our little local club can become the best in the world purely on merit as long as some other country's sovereign wealth fund decides to sportswash its crimes by pumping billions of dollars into us!" Spare me.
The scenario you're describing fits Manchester City. (But not its fans.) It doesn't fit Middlesbrough, or Blackburn Rovers, or Leicester City, or other rags-to-riches stories who in their own way are no different from American teams who find new owners that suddenly want spend money that their predecesors either didn't have or didn't want to spend.
 

teddykgb

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FFP didn't start until 2012. The forces at work here date back at least to the early 90s, the creation of the Premier League and the modern Champions League format, and Manchester United figuring out how to market itself globally. FFP may have influenced the timing to the extent it encouraged the big Spanish clubs to load up on debt, which after COVID forced them to seek the ESL for the immediate cashflow boost. But FFP has almost nothing to do with the underlying structural dynamics.

I think the ties between a club and its local community, and between the club and the domestic league, are very different things. Nobody's talking about moving Man City to Shanghai (or Abu Dhabi). And most domestic league games are not derbies. I doubt City fans going to miss playing Burnley or Crystal Palace twice a year.
I didn’t mention FFP because I thought it was root cause. I mentioned it in the context of fixing it all because I don’t think the current FFP allows it to be fixed. I understand that spending can’t be unlimited but in this case the cure is not even better than the disease. You are absolutely correct that the original PL breakaway and all the CL modifications since are what started this ball rolling but I don’t think there’s any solution that just rolls it back to how it used to be.

And I think you’re wrong about City fans and Burnley. They want that match. And they want to get on the train for away days and to banter with opposing fans in these other locations while returning home the same day on the train. Your club is a part of your domestic identity, there is no changing that and they don’t want to recreate that with someone from Milan. They don’t even speak the same language
 

coremiller

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The scenario you're describing fits Manchester City. It doesn't fit Middlesbrough, or Blackburn Rovers, or Leicester City, or other rags-to-riches stories who in their own way are no different from American teams who find new owners that suddenly want spend money that their predecesors either didn't have or didn't want to spend.
But all of them involved massive external investment. Even Leicester, which are the best fairy tale story in sports in a long time, are owned by a Thai business conglomerate with close ties to the Thai government.

This has nothing do with "merit" in any meaningful sense. It's just money. If the system being defended here is that any club could stumble into its own treasure chest and use these newly found riches to put together a winning team, how is that any better than the ESL? At least Manchester United built its wealth and power through shrewd business management and executing a long-term growth strategy, not because they were some rich guy's vanity project.
 

coremiller

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I didn’t mention FFP because I thought it was root cause. I mentioned it in the context of fixing it all because I don’t think the current FFP allows it to be fixed. I understand that spending can’t be unlimited but in this case the cure is not even better than the disease. You are absolutely correct that the original PL breakaway and all the CL modifications since are what started this ball rolling but I don’t think there’s any solution that just rolls it back to how it used to be.

And I think you’re wrong about City fans and Burnley. They want that match. And they want to get on the train for away days and to banter with opposing fans in these other locations while returning home the same day on the train. Your club is a part of your domestic identity, there is no changing that and they don’t want to recreate that with someone from Milan. They don’t even speak the same language
Counterpoint: Geordies don't speak the same language either.
 

Titans Bastard

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I htink with loans there are 3 types:

1. Youth loans
2. Young over 18 player loans
3. Established player loans

#2 is the problem area... that's where the big clubs are just hoarding (and often wasting) talent. Those players would find places with clubs if they weren't on the books.

You can handle it one (or both) of two ways... limit outgoing loans (incoming already are) or limit the number of non-youth player contracts a club can have at any time.
This conversation rang some bells for me about something I read in the recent past about loan army rules.

FIFA announced some limitations on the quantity of loans or year or two ago, that are supposed to be implemented next year and will become slightly harsher a few years after that. They would mostly address #2. In a few minutes of googling I didn't find a great source that truly has all of the nitty-gritty details though, so I'm not speaking authoritatively here.

https://www.transfermarkt.us/new-rules-fifa-put-cap-on-loan-deals-limit-to-go-down-further-in-2022/view/news/355880
 

teddykgb

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It’s hardly a surprise that Manchester United succeeded in starting a league as the richest club and creating a bunch of rules which it would be best at leveraging. That’s not even an angry take at United it’s just how it went down in the first place. It would be a bigger surprise if they hadn’t succeeded by the structure they set up
 

Zososoxfan

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Just spitballing here, but I wonder if there's a way to implement rules about players that compete internationally versus domestically. Currently, most players at the megaclubs are registered for all competitions. The exception to this is winter transfer window loans (and that one time Real Madrid (I think?) had a hilarious gaffe of playing an unregistered player). But what if England Megaclub X had to register players for EITHER ESL OR EPL/FA Cup? England Megaclub X can still participate in all competitions, but they have to choose whether to register any given player for ESL or domestic competition. Any club can apply to the ESL for admittance (perhaps looking a year or 2 ahead for planning purposes), and the ESL can set their own criteria for entry (e.g. stadium size, revenues, squad management rules, etc.). ESL can then setup their own structure, including pro/rel potentially. Assuming the ESL is the premier competition with the biggest money on the line, this will of course dilute England Megaclub X's domestic squad. But at least they will still participate in that pyramid.

I think this totally parallel structure (at least organizationally) allows for the megaclubs to do what they want and allows them to continue competing domestically, albeit in a less active way. So yes some of the luster comes off domestic competitions, but I think we're heading there anyway. The devil would be in the details though (like the registration issue I mentioned above).
 
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But all of them involved massive external investment. Even Leicester, which are the best fairy tale story in sports in a long time, are owned by a Thai business conglomerate with close ties to the Thai government.

This has nothing do with "merit" in any meaningful sense. It's just money. If the system being defended here is that any club could stumble into its own treasure chest and use these newly found riches to put together a winning team, how is that any better than the ESL? At least Manchester United built its wealth and power through shrewd business management and executing a long-term growth strategy, not because they were some rich guy's vanity project.
If you have an alternative solution which has any chance of being accepted by the people who do have money and influence in the game, by all means I'd love to hear it.

Money will always exist in sports. And unless you can create a closed system, the teams with the most money to spend will always have a significant competitive advantage. (The NFL, NBA, MLB and NHL are so much richer than any other leagues in their sport that exist, they are effectively closed systems, of course.)
 
So, here's an alternative proposal which may fall within the realm of plausible, workable solutions given the way things are right now. Domestic leagues and cups would continue to function as they currently do - this is all about midweek European competitions:

SUPER LEAGUE: 20 clubs
--One round-robin league: 19 matches in total (9 home, 9 away, 1 neutral site)
--Top four clubs advance into playoffs: #4 at #3, winner of that at #2, winner of that at #1 (one-off matches only, not over two legs)
--Bottom four clubs get relegated (into the Champions League if champions of their domestic league, or into the Europa League if not)
--Four clubs get promoted into the Super League: 1) The Champions League winner; 2) The Europa League winner; 3) The club finishing highest in the domestic league of the Super League champion's country that isn't already qualified; 4) The club with the best UEFA Club Coefficient that isn't already qualified

CHAMPIONS LEAGUE: Open to all European clubs who have won their domestic league that aren't already qualified for the Super League (likely around 48 clubs in any given year, plus or minus)
--Preliminary round(s) to get down to 32-team group stage (four groups of eight), then proceeds like the Champions League currently does

EUROPA LEAGUE: Same format that it currently has

Advantages of this format: 1) The Super League should have very few meaningless matches, as clubs race to finish in the Top 4 or avoid the Bottom 4, and the playoff format is designed to maximize TV ratings and interest (and can be squeezed into one week after all domestic club seasons are over). There's also the neutral site game for each club - necessary for fairness in the context of a league without home-and-home fixtures, but also another potential money spinner. 2) The Champions League reverts to being for domestic champions only - possible now that the biggest clubs are likely in the Super League - and likely becomes a route into the Super League for a club from a smaller league. 3) The Europa League should have pretty deep lineup of clubs - deeper than it would normally have, I think, and would likely become a route into the Super League for a club from a bigger league.

FWIW, here is the current list of UEFA Club Coefficients. Take the top 20 clubs in that list for the initial Super League, and you'd have a pretty good-looking field (and also a potential glimpse at the final league table) - it includes every club that had signed up for the €uropean $uper £eague except AC Milan and Inter Milan.
 

coremiller

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So, here's an alternative proposal which may fall within the realm of plausible, workable solutions given the way things are right now. Domestic leagues and cups would continue to function as they currently do - this is all about midweek European competitions:

SUPER LEAGUE: 20 clubs
--One round-robin league: 19 matches in total (9 home, 9 away, 1 neutral site)
--Top four clubs advance into playoffs: #4 at #3, winner of that at #2, winner of that at #1 (one-off matches only, not over two legs)
--Bottom four clubs get relegated (into the Champions League if champions of their domestic league, or into the Europa League if not)
--Four clubs get promoted into the Super League: 1) The Champions League winner; 2) The Europa League winner; 3) The club finishing highest in the domestic league of the Super League champion's country that isn't already qualified; 4) The club with the best UEFA Club Coefficient that isn't already qualified

CHAMPIONS LEAGUE: Open to all European clubs who have won their domestic league that aren't already qualified for the Super League (likely around 48 clubs in any given year, plus or minus)
--Preliminary round(s) to get down to 32-team group stage (four groups of eight), then proceeds like the Champions League currently does

EUROPA LEAGUE: Same format that it currently has

Advantages of this format: 1) The Super League should have very few meaningless matches, as clubs race to finish in the Top 4 or avoid the Bottom 4, and the playoff format is designed to maximize TV ratings and interest (and can be squeezed into one week after all domestic club seasons are over). There's also the neutral site game for each club - necessary for fairness in the context of a league without home-and-home fixtures, but also another potential money spinner. 2) The Champions League reverts to being for domestic champions only - possible now that the biggest clubs are likely in the Super League - and likely becomes a route into the Super League for a club from a smaller league. 3) The Europa League should have pretty deep lineup of clubs - deeper than it would normally have, I think, and would likely become a route into the Super League for a club from a bigger league.

FWIW, here is the current list of UEFA Club Coefficients. Take the top 20 clubs in that list for the initial Super League, and you'd have a pretty good-looking field (and also a potential glimpse at the final league table) - it includes every club that had signed up for the €uropean $uper £eague except AC Milan and Inter Milan.
I like this idea but I think it may be just too many games. The most any team can currently play in the CL is 13 (6 group stage, 3 two-legged ties, 1 final), and that's only the teams that make the final. 19 European games + a full domestic league slate + domestic cups is probably too much, if you could even find time to play them all. I don't think anyone wants to force soccer clubs to start practicing NBA style load management.

Maybe you could do it if you cut the League Cup and cut the EPL to 18 teams from 20. But the rest of the EPL will never go for that.

Also I much prefer two-legged ties, if only because they are a lot less likely to go to penalties. But that makes the fixture congestion even worse.
 
The most any team can currently play in the CL is 13 (6 group stage, 3 two-legged ties, 1 final), and that's only the teams that make the final.
In the new Champions League format that UEFA agreed yesterday, the winning club can potentially play up to 17 matches en route to the trophy. I picked 19 because I think that's where the big clubs want to end up, not because that's the number that I think necessarily makes the most sense. I also think that the big clubs will eventually find themselves fielding multiple sides and even having a second match-day manager, so that a Manchester City or Chelsea can play an EFL Cup tie on a Tuesday night and then a Super League match a day later on Wednesday night with different squads and different managers...but we'll see about that.
Also I much prefer two-legged ties, if only because they are a lot less likely to go to penalties. But that makes the fixture congestion even worse.
I've come to rather dislike the first legs of two-legged ties, because nothing definitive ever happens in them: you're basically watching the first half of a 180-minute match. There are other sports in which single competitions take multiple days (e.g., stroke-play golf tournaments, test cricket matches), but usually those days happen consecutively; waiting several weeks for a second leg just doesn't really do much for me any more, particularly when the first-leg result can make the second leg pretty much dead. You can keep the two-legged affairs for the Champions League and Europa League, but in the Super League, the top teams are always playing each other anyway, so there's no need to stretch out any one matchup into two matches.
 

singaporesoxfan

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FFP didn't start until 2012. The forces at work here date back at least to the early 90s, the creation of the Premier League and the modern Champions League format, and Manchester United figuring out how to market itself globally. FFP may have influenced the timing to the extent it encouraged the big Spanish clubs to load up on debt, which after COVID forced them to seek the ESL for the immediate cashflow boost. But FFP has almost nothing to do with the underlying structural dynamics.

I think the ties between a club and its local community, and between the club and the domestic league, are very different things. Nobody's talking about moving Man City to Shanghai (or Abu Dhabi). And most domestic league games are not derbies. I doubt City fans going to miss playing Burnley or Crystal Palace twice a year.
I'm pretty sure Man City fans (the ones that are actually in Manchester) enjoy playing Burnley. Certainly there's no evidence attendance ever dips for Burnley games. It's not *the* derby, but it's a local game between the big city and the nearby mill town 20 miles away, and in the 50 minutes on the train for the away game you get in some banter. Plus, it's usually a game City dominates, and I think the "fans really want to see the best play the best" is an American point of view. I think fans want to see the best play the best some of the time, and want to see their team utterly dominate minnows other times.
 

wade boggs chicken dinner

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they want more money (of course), cost certainty (which is anathema to open competitions), and fewer clubs in their domestic leagues (here I sympathize with them somewhat).
Interesting topic to read. I don't know enough about European Football to weigh in but did want to point out one thing you left (it was mentioned by someone named Mike Ryan on the DA show this morning; I guess he covers Chelsea).

I think while the three things you list are certainly items the Big Clubs want, the #1 thing they want is revenue certainty. They don't want a system where you have to win every year to maximize revenues. They want a system like NFL football - where inclusion in the league guarantees a certain level of revenues (mostly broadcast revenues).

This article - https://www.thenationalnews.com/sport/football/why-12-big-football-clubs-are-joining-the-european-super-league-in-six-charts-1.1207372 - has some interesting charts about revenues for the European soccer clubs. As I mentioned before, the big names are all looking at the NFL's $10B a year media rights revenues and wondering why they can't have a share of something like that since they bring the most eyeballs to any match.

Even with the implosion of the Super League, I'm sure the big clubs are going to find a way to make this a reality in the next decade or so. For better or for worse.