Billionaires Want To Turn Football On Its Head. Game On.
The European Super League is an existential threat.
April 18th, 2021. 12:58 PM. Notification from iMessage. Karan sent you a link.
Nothing about it was out of the ordinary. My best friend had texted me a link to a tweet with some football news. I talk to him every day, and we often send each other sports news and funny content from various social media sites. Normally we react, make a few jokes, and after a few minutes it’s back to the responsibilities and rhythms of daily life.
This was different.
The tweet he sent concerned the developing story that twelve of the biggest football clubs in Europe were set to announce that they were breaking away from the rest of the sport and starting their own competition, a so-called European Super League of 20 footballing behemoths. 15 clubs would serve as permanent fixtures in the Super League, and there would be an annual qualification process for the remaining 5 spots. It’s not a tectonic shift in the sport, it’s an earthquake registering a 9.0 on the Richter scale.
It does away with the core notion of openness in football, wherein any club (on paper) can start in a lower-tier division in their country, play well enough to secure promotion up to the first division, and then finish at the top of the table to earn a spot in the next season’s continental competitions, the most prestigious of which is the UEFA Champions League. On the flip side, there is real pressure to deliver results year-in and year-out, no matter how successful your team has been in the past, because clubs must earn their place in the Champions League every season, and if they have a really poor season they can be relegated to the lower leagues. The footballing pyramid, as it has come to be known, is a truly remarkable specimen.
The Super League, as a closed competition, does away with all of that risk (as the owners of the financial superpowers in the sport see it) by guaranteeing a place to the clubs that have joined hands in this mutiny against the established order. Financially speaking, they would be, barring a change to the structure, completely immune from the consequences of their own results. They are in the league, so they share in the revenue. If that sounds familiar to fans of American sports, it should.
Florentino Perez, the nominal President of this new body, and the current man in charge at Real Madrid, was the prime mover behind the Super League, but this does not happen without Manchester United and Liverpool, both of whom were sold into American hands in the last two decades. To John Henry, the Glazer family, and Stan Kroenke (who finished the Yankee heist of the three most prestigious clubs in England by taking over Arsenal in 2007), the notion that their investment could plummet in value due to poor performance on the pitch — as it does if they miss out on European football or worse, relegated — has always been completely alien. Now, finding themselves at parallel-interest with big clubs from other countries, who have looked for years with greening envy at the Premier League’s growing global popularity and income, they have pounced on the chance to rectify that excess of parity, and Americanize the game.
It is, as mentioned before, a radical idea, but not one that has come completely out of the blue; proposals for a version of this surfaced as early as a decade ago, and likely have been shaking around for decades, as the decision makers of the sport watched as the game grew in popularity around the world and the European Cup (now known as the Champions League) grew in prestige. And amidst the financial disquietude of the pandemic, the chatter about a reoriented model in which the big clubs took home more of the pie and controlled more of the decisions grew louder and louder.
The tweet, however, was not a rumor, or a midweek subplot coming out of the regular meetings the clubs have during the year. This was a reputable source saying in no uncertain terms: this is not a drill, this is happening.
Like a prescription drug with a delayed release mechanism, it took a moment for the panic to set in.
European football, more than any other game in the world, is loved not just because of the spectacle or the game itself, but the traditions and legends that surround it. Diehard supporters of the clubs, young or old, can tell you stories of the greatest triumphs, the ignominious defeats, and the players who wore the shirt on those nights under the bright lights. The history is all around you as a fan; go to the stadiums when things open up and see for yourself (assuming that violent mobs haven’t torn them to the ground in righteous anger). The stands are draped in banners and flags that serve as monuments to their proudest moments and most adored players. Nowhere is this more true in England, where the unique ethos of each team is captured by the images that surround you as you cast your eyes around historic grounds like Old Trafford, Anfield, and Highbury.
As Manchester United legend Gary Neville pointed out on Sky Sports last night, by breaking away completely from the model that has been developed over the past century of football, the clubs involved in this decision (which include United) are effectively throwing away all of that history and tradition in one fell swoop. Yes, the names of the competitions have changed before; the first division of the Football League became the Premier League, the European Cup became the Champions League, and the Football League Cup changed monikers too many times to mention, but the essential nature of the fight stayed the same. A small group of (primarily) foreign billionaire owners now threatens to throw all of that out and start footballing history at 0 A.D. Why? So that they can control the revenue, and enrich themselves further. It cannot be allowed to happen.
We must not lose focus on that core fact. This really is about a group of laughably privileged individuals, who you could fit in a cramped conference room in Rome, as they no doubt have, setting their own financial interests ahead of quite literally everyone else. The fans don’t want this, the pundits don’t want this, the players don’t want this, the managers don’t want this, the owners of the other clubs don’t want this, the domestic leagues don’t want this, UEFA doesn’t want this, FIFA doesn’t want this, Boris Johnson and Keir Starmer don’t want this, Kensington bloody Palace doesn’t want this. But 12 people do, and that, seemingly, is enough to set the ship in motion.
This is, as Neville also said in that clip, a war. This announcement is the invasion, a multi-front act of aggression against everything the sport stands for, and it is now our moral obligation to fight to save the beautiful game from itself. Of course, much remains to be seen, and the artillery of resistance still lie in the hands of those who have a vested financial and political interest in keeping the status quo, such as the aforementioned leagues and administrative bodies, who have already begun preparations to fight this move in court. The other side would have been preparing for that response, and as fans, we have no control over the outcome on that front. We can simply pray that those who do are up for the fight. What we can do is what we’ve already been doing, which is to organize, voice our opposition, and vote with our pocketbooks. Because this is it. This is the turning point, the climax of the film, when everything to come will be decided by what happens now.
If and when the fight is won, and the enemies of fairness in football are defeated, we must also look at the institutions that failed us by allowing this to happen in the first place. Much as with the Allies in World War II, we will be forced to take a hard look at our temporary allies once the bullets have stopped flying and the bombs are no longer exploding all around us. UEFA, for one, was clearly asleep at the wheel. And to keep with the war analogy, simply beating back the instigators is not enough. They must be forced out of power, prevented from trying anything like this ever again. That includes Roman Abramovich, the owner who is responsible for all of the joy Chelsea Football Club has brought me in my time as a Blues fan, and shamefully went along with this insurrection for fear of being left behind. Fan ownership, which seems to have kept Bayern Munich, current champions of Europe, must be considered very seriously as a model for ensuring the survival of the footballing order.
There are moments, moments that call you to draw a line in the sand, to give up the promise of temporary happiness and manufactured success, in order to defend what you believe in. And as an American watching all this from across the pond, I believe in the beauty of the traditions of the game, flawed as they might be. And I believe, because of the avarice of the men who own these clubs, this is one such moment.
Game on, you filthy bastards. Game on.
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