Football's Magic Money Tree

[Chester Perry]

This is both depressing and intriguing at the same time in regards to Monday's ratification of Champions League format changes post 2024

https://twitter.com/tariqpanja/status/1 ... 3752666113

11 top European Clubs agree in principle to a Super League - from the New York Times

https://twitter.com/tariqpanja/status/1 ... 2091671568

Top European Soccer Teams Agree to Join Breakaway League
APRIL 18, 2021

LONDON — A group of the world’s richest and most storied soccer clubs has agreed in principle on a plan to create a breakaway European club competition that would, if it comes to fruition, upend the structures, economics and relationships that have bound global soccer for nearly a century.

After months of secret talks, the breakaway teams — which include Real Madrid and Barcelona in Spain, Manchester United and Liverpool in England, and Juventus and A.C. Milan in Italy — could make an announcement as early as Sunday, according to multiple people familiar with the plans.

The timing of the announcement appears designed to overshadow Monday’s plan by European soccer’s governing body, UEFA, to ratify a newly designed Champions League, a competition which would be decimated by the departure of its biggest teams.

At least 12 teams have either signed up as founding members or expressed interest in joining the breakaway group, including six prominent teams from England’s Premier League, three from Spain and three from Italy, according to the people with knowledge of the plans.

The group has been trying to get other top teams, like Germany’s Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund, to commit, but to date those clubs — and others — have declined to turn their backs on the decades-old domestic structures and Continental competitions that have underpinned European soccer for generations.

The French champion Paris Saint-Germain, for example, has been invited to join but has so far resisted the overtures. Its president, Nasser al-Khelaifi, sits on the UEFA board and also heads beIN Media Group, the Qatar-based television network that has paid millions of dollars to UEFA for the right to broadcast Champions League games.

The teams committed to the super league plan are, for the moment, limited to almost a dozen clubs from Spain, Italy and England. A cohort of six teams from the Premier League — United, Liverpool, Manchester City, Arsenal, Chelsea and Tottenham — represents the biggest grouping from a single country. Atlético Madrid is the other team from Spain that is said to have endorsed the project, while the Milan rivals Internazionale and A.C. Milan would join Juventus as Italy’s representatives.

The New York Times contacted a number of clubs involved in the breakaway plans but all declined to comment or did not respond. A UEFA spokesman did not immediately return a request for comment.

UEFA and the top European leagues, though, are bracing for the breakaway announcement. Officials spent the weekend in discussions about ways to block the plan, including potentially banning the breakaway teams from domestic leagues and from next season’s Champions League, with the breakaway scheduled to begin in 2022. The repercussions of that type of breakup would be seismic for all involved; without the top teams, UEFA and the leagues would face demands for millions of dollars in refunds from the broadcasters who pay billions for television rights to tournaments, and the clubs would lose revenue streams that could cripple their budgets as European soccer continues to emerge from the financial wreckage caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

Among the most notable teams involved in the breakaway group is Juventus, the serial Italian champion. Its chairman, Andrea Agnelli, also leads the European Club Association, an umbrella body for more than 200 top division clubs, the majority of which will be left out of the proposed Super League. He is also a member of UEFA’s executive board. When asked by The Times this year to discuss his role in the talks of a breakaway league, Agnelli brushed off the idea as a “rumor.”

Still, according to documents reviewed by The Times in January, plans for the breakaway league had gathered pace since the summer. Top clubs sought to take advantage of uncertainty in the soccer industry caused by the pandemic to forge a new path that would ensure a degree of financial stability for them but would also almost certainly lead to a significant — and potentially devastating — loss in value and revenue for teams excluded from the project. Each of the would-be permanent members of the proposed super league are being promised 350 million euros, or $425 million, to sign up, the documents said.

Under the proposals reviewed at the time, the super league, which would play its matches in the middle of the week, sought to secure 16 top soccer franchises as permanent members and to add four qualifiers from domestic competitions. The clubs would be split into two groups of 10, with the top four teams in each group qualifying for the knockout stages, culminating in a final that would take place on a weekend.

The event would, according to the documents, generate hundreds of millions of dollars in additional revenue for the participating teams, which are already the richest clubs in the sport. (An alternative version of the plan proposed 15 permanent members and five qualification spots.) The group had entered into discussions with JPMorgan Chase & Co. to raise financing for the project, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The firm has so far declined to comment.

UEFA found a powerful ally in opposition to the plans in FIFA, soccer’s global governing body. FIFA warned that any player who took part in such an unsanctioned league would be banned from appearing in the World Cup. The statement came after UEFAs president, Aleksander Ceferin, demanded support from his FIFA counterpart, Gianni Infantino, amid mounting speculation that the breakaway would have FIFA’s backing.

European soccer leaders huddled on the telephone and in video conferences over the weekend to forge a counterattack. However, finding a solution to the potential loss of the biggest brands in soccer is not an easy task. The Premier League, for example, would lose much of its sheen — and almost certainly a lot of the commercial appeal that has turned it into the richest league in soccer — should it move to banish its top six teams.

As member-owned clubs, Barcelona and Real Madrid would likely require the support of the thousands of their supporters before formally joining, and any German clubs that agree to take part would face similar obstacles. All can expect heavy internal opposition; fan groups from across Europe had already voiced opposition since details of the plans for a super league emerged earlier this year.

[Chester Perry]

This report from The Times says 5 English clubs are part of the agreement

This tweet suggests Manchester City have joined them https://twitter.com/martynziegler/statu ... 9561178113


European Super League: Five English clubs sign up to breakaway league in challenge to UEFA plans
Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea and Tottenham Hotspur all agree to plan
exclusive
new
Martyn Ziegler, Chief Sports Reporter
Sunday April 18 2021, 12.45pm, The Times

Five English clubs are among 11 European teams who have signed up to a breakaway Super League in an extraordinary development on the eve of Uefa’s announcement of a new Champions League format.

Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea and Tottenham Hotspur have signed up to the breakaway plan with only Manchester City among the Big Six yet to do so, sources with knowledge of the development have told The Times.

The Super League development is a direct challenge to Uefa which is to announce its new 36-team Champions League format on Monday, to come into force from 2024. The European governing body had thought it had seen off the threat of a breakaway but is now involved in urgent talks with other football bodies about the new development.

Uefa had succeeded in winning the support of the European Club Association (ECA) board and the European Leagues but it emerged today that the Super League threat had been revived with the ECA chairman Andrea Agnelli, also the Juventus president, appearing to throw his hat in with the breakaway clubs led by Manchester United and Real Madrid.

Other members of the ECA board, who had agreed to the new Champions League format, and Uefa officials have attempted to contact Agnelli since Saturday evening but one source said he “has gone off the radar”.

Uefa insiders insist they will press ahead with the announcement for the new-look Champions League which will see clubs playing 10 group matches instead of six.

If the Super League clubs do not back down then the dispute is likely to end up in courts given that Uefa and Fifa have promised to ban any clubs and players who take part in breakaway competitions from their tournaments such as the Euros and the World Cup.

The Times revealed in January that a proposal document showed founder members of a proposed European Super League would be offered up to 350million euros (£310million) each to join the competition.

There would be among 15 permanent founding members and five other clubs, who would qualify on an annual basis. They would be split into two groups of 10 and play between 18 and 23 European matches a season.

The Super League proposals include:

- The 15 founder clubs sharing an initial 3.5billion (£3.1billion) euro “infrastructure grant” ranging from £310million to £89million per club which can be spent on stadiums, training facilities or “to replace lost stadium-related revenues due to Covid-19”.

- The format would see two groups of 10 clubs who play home and away, with the top four from each group going through to two-legged quarter-finals, semi-finals and a one-legged final.

- Matches would be midweek and clubs would still play in domestic leagues

- Clubs would have rights to show four matches a season on their own the digital platforms across the world

- Income from TV and sponsorship would favour the founding clubs: 32.5% of the pot would be shared equally between the 15 clubs, and another 32.5% between all Super League clubs including the five qualifiers

- 20% of the pot would be merit money “distributed in the same manner as the current English Premier League merit-based system” according to where clubs finish in the competition or group if they don’t make the knock-out stage

- The remaining 15% would get a “commercial share based on club awareness”

- A cap of 55% of revenues permitted to be spent on salaries and transfers (net)

- A ‘Financial Sustainability Group’ would monitor clubs’ spending

The emergence of the written proposals led football’s authorities to take unified action to combat the threat. A Super League would be disastrous for the Champions League which relies on the glamour of the top clubs to attract broadcasters.

[Chester Perry]

This article in the Guardian gives a bit more detail on this Super League agreement

Five English clubs sign up to European super league, report says
Five of Premier League’s ‘big six’ among signatories
Manchester City only one not to sign up

Reuters
Sun 18 Apr 2021 14.45 BST

Five English clubs have signed up to a breakaway European super league, according to a report on Sunday.

The Times reported that Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea and Tottenham have agreed to join the new league. The only member of the “big six” not to have signed up is Manchester City, the paper said, citing sources with knowledge of the development.

Italy’s Serie A called an emergency board meeting on Sunday to discuss a newspaper report saying broadcaster DAZN is involved in new plans for a breakaway European super league, a league source told Reuters.

The meeting, called by league president Paolo Dal Pino, comes before Monday’s Uefa executive committee at which plans to expand and reform the Champions League, changing the format from 2024, are expected to be agreed.

The source told Reuters that the league had recently become aware of the plans for a breakaway project and the potential involvement of DAZN. Corriere dello Sport reported that DAZN, which is owned by billionaire Len Blavatnik’s Access Industries, has been working on the formation of this 16-team league, featuring the top clubs in Europe, for some time.

The newspaper did not indicate a source for the report. DAZN was not immediately available for comment. Uefa declined to comment.

[Chester Perry]

@MiguelDelaney for the Independent adds to the story - just how do these clubs expect to keep domestic League status?

European Super League: Major clubs consider announcement which would ‘end football as we know it’
At least five of the Premier League’s ‘big six’ are at the heart of drastic new plans for European football

Miguel Delaney - Chief Football Writer

7 minutes ago

European football is facing up to the biggest crisis in its history, as a group of 12 of the wealthiest clubs on Sunday considering an announcement of plans for a new super league.

Figures involved told The Independent that the weekend had involved “chaotic” talks between all parties in a frantically moving situation, that was described as a “race against time”. Uefa is due to announce plans for the reformed Champions League on Monday, with much of the changes at the behest of the top clubs, and the threat of a new competition was initially seen as mere “brinkmanship”.

If a formal announcement of a super league were to be made – and some felt it could happen on Sunday night – it would move way beyond that, and drastically change the landscape of the game. One figure from a major European club told The Independent it would potentially represent “the end of football” as we know it.

It is for this reason nothing has been off the table in talks, with officials from various bodies – from the European leagues to Uefa – discussing the possibility that the clubs could be thrown out of the domestic and continental competitions. Prominent figures in the major leagues, including the Premier League, were said to be “apoplectic” on Sunday.

Some involved still believe this is just an attempt from the group to guarantee more income from the Champions League, and that Uefa will eventually fold. Others in the talks have stressed that the time has come for the governing bodies to make a stand. An increasing number of people involved feel the situation now goes beyond that, though, and that the threat of a super league is more real than it has ever been.

Any announcement would cause chaos in the game, from legal challenges around existing competitions, to the financial viability of scores of clubs around Europe.

It is for this reason that the super clubs – who are at this juncture understood to be at least five of the ‘big six’ in England, Real Madrid, Barcelona, Atletico Madrid, Juventus, AC Milan and Internazionale – have devised the plan, since they believe it is their financial power and commercial attractiveness that drives European football at the top level. Many club hierarchies involved feel they should no longer have to compromise on that. There is also the implicit knowledge that millions of supporters around the globe would willingly sign up, regardless of any political fallout.

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A further problem for competitions like the Champions League and Premier League in talks is that their broadcasting contracts would be completely compromised if the most glamorous clubs either walked out or were banished, creating financial shockwaves for the game as it still recovers from the effects of the Covid-19 crisis.

As reported by the New York Times and The Sunday Times, the so-called super league would involve midweek matches, with an idealised 16 clubs split into two groups of eight, before a knockout phase. The group currently stands at 12, and no French or German clubs have yet signed up, but it is felt a formal announcement could push things along.

It would create a deep fissure in the game that it would struggle to recover from in its current form.

[Chester Perry]

You may remember that it was suggested in February that a Super League is not worth as much to Broadcasters as the Champions League format

https://www.independent.co.uk/sport/foo ... 03417.html

What is notable here is the suggestion that DAZN are behind this - this kind of the deal is the kind of bet that could either save or kill that business - as a single provider it could theoretically service the whole planet as the single rights holder - which is a risky move but likely to find the investor backing that they have been struggling for over the last 18 months

[Chester Perry]

UEFA Statement - in partnership with the major leagues

Statement by UEFA, the English Football Association, the Premier League, the Royal Spanish Football Federation (RFEF), LaLiga, the Italian Football Federation (FIGC) and Lega Serie A
Sunday 18 April 2021

UEFA, the English Football Association and the Premier League, the Royal Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) and LaLiga, and the Italian Football Federation (FIGC) and Lega Serie A have learned that a few English, Spanish and Italian clubs may be planning to announce their creation of a closed, so-called Super League.

If this were to happen, we wish to reiterate that we – UEFA, the English FA, RFEF, FIGC, the Premier League, LaLiga, Lega Serie A, but also FIFA and all our member associations - will remain united in our efforts to stop this cynical project, a project that is founded on the self-interest of a few clubs at a time when society needs solidarity more than ever.

We will consider all measures available to us, at all levels, both judicial and sporting in order to prevent this happening. Football is based on open competitions and sporting merit; it cannot be any other way.

As previously announced by FIFA and the six Federations, the clubs concerned will be banned from playing in any other competition at domestic, European or world level, and their players could be denied the opportunity to represent their national teams.

We thank those clubs in other countries, especially the French and German clubs, who have refused to sign up to this. We call on all lovers of football, supporters and politicians, to join us in fighting against such a project if it were to be announced. This persistent self-interest of a few has been going on for too long. Enough is enough.

© 1998-2021 UEFA. All rights reserved.

[Chester Perry]

Premier League Statement

Premier League condemns European Super League proposal
18 Apr 2021

The Premier League condemns any proposal that attacks the principles of open competition and sporting merit which are at the heart of the domestic and European football pyramid.

Fans of any club in England and across Europe can currently dream that their team may climb to the top and play against the best. We believe that the concept of a European Super League would destroy this dream.

The Premier League is proud to run a competitive and compelling football competition that has made it the most widely watched league in the world. Our success has enabled us to make an unrivalled financial contribution to the domestic football pyramid.

A European Super League will undermine the appeal of the whole game, and have a deeply damaging impact on the immediate and future prospects of the Premier League and its member clubs, and all those in football who rely on our funding and solidarity to prosper.

We will work with fans, The FA, EFL, PFA and LMA, as well as other stakeholders, at home and abroad, to defend the integrity and future prospects of English football in the best interests of the game.

[Chester Perry]

More detail from the Daily Mail - It is also believed there is to be a big announcement at 9.30 tonight

REVEALED: Big Six sign up for new European Super League, with breakaway competition set to be announced TONIGHT... but UEFA, the Premier League and others join forces to hit back at the 'cynical project' and vow to STOP it happening
- Five top Premier League teams have signing up to a European Super League
- Liverpool, Manchester United, Arsenal, Chelsea and Tottenham have agreed
- The moves come as a snub to UEFA following fresh Champions League plans
- UEFA are set to outline a new format to their elite level competition very soon
- European football's governing body have threatened legal action for the 'project'
- READ: The FA has written to UEFA to object to the Champions League reforms
By MARTIN SAMUEL FOR THE DAILY MAIL and MIKE KEEGAN FOR THE DAILY MAIL

PUBLISHED: 13:29, 18 April 2021 | UPDATED: 17:02, 18 April 2021

The big six of English football have signed letters of intent to join a new European Super League, which will be announced at 9.30pm on Sunday night.

Manchester City were the last to agree, on Saturday, joining Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea and Tottenham in the breakaway, which will spell the end of competition in domestic and European football as we know it.

UEFA were strong in response, revealing in a statement that they will take legal action if the 'cynical project' for a Super League goes ahead.

The new league represents the American takeover of elite European football, which will become a closed shop run by its founder members. It is bankrolled by US banking giant JP Morgan and is the brainchild of Real Madrid president Florentino Perez and the American owners of three leading English clubs.

It is believed Perez will hold the chairman's role in the new league's structure, with Liverpool's John W. Henry, Joel Glazer of Manchester United and Arsenal owner Stan Kroenke as vice-chairmen.

Andrea Agnelli, chairman of Juventus, and believed until now to be an ally of UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin will occupy the fourth vice-chairman role.

Ceferin is understood to be furious at Agnelli's betrayal, the news of which comes less than 24 hours before UEFA's own proposals for a revamped Champions League.

The plan is for the Super League to evolve to roughly 15-18 teams, but the initial 12 signatories to the deal are the six English clubs, plus Real Madrid, Barcelona and Atletico Madrid from Spain, and Juventus, AC Milan and Inter Milan from Italy. This leaves room for other major clubs, such as Bayern Munich and Paris Saint-Germain, to be picked off with UEFA's own competitions hopelessly devalued.

The Premier League are aware of the agreement and have spent the weekend formulating their response.

In a statement on Sunday, the Premier League condemned proposals that they feel 'attacks the principles of open competition and sporting merit'.

'Fans of any club in England and across Europe can currently dream that their team may climb to the top and play against the best,' the statement continued. 'We believe that the concept of a European Super League would destroy this dream.'

Former Manchester United full-back Gary Neville, speaking in commentary during their game against Burnley, called the news an 'absolute scandal'.

'I'm not against the modernisation of football competition, but I think to bring forward proposals in the midst of Covid is an absolute scandal,' Neville said.

'United and the rest of the big six clubs that have signed up to it should be ashamed of themselves. I can't concentrate. Deduct points off them all, for doing it mid-season. It's an absolute joke.'

The six clubs are not intending to resign from domestic football, but need Premier League permission to join any new competitions. This could be the first sticking point because the Premier League board is unlikely to grant any request that weakens its own competitive value.

It does not need to be put to a vote of the 20 clubs, but goes before the Premier League board comprising Gary Hoffman (chair), Richard Masters (chief executive) and Kevin Beeston (non-executive director).

If they say no to the European Super League, as expected, the clubs will have to be break away from the Premier League entirely in order to join, putting in jeopardy their players' participation in UEFA and FIFA competitions, such as the World Cup and European Championships.

Yet the Premier League no longer believe this to be more brinkmanship in the battle for control of Champions League monies and make-up.

JP Morgan are believed to be debt financing the new league to the tune of £4.6billion, which is set against future broadcast revenue.

A letter sent to clubs by Premier League chief executive Masters has warned those involved to 'walk away…before irreparable damage is done'.

It added that clubs would need Premier League permission to enter a new competition – and Masters wrote 'I cannot envisage any scenario where such permission would be granted.'

'Based on our understanding of the proposed European Super League concept it would sit outside the auspices of UEFA and the current European sporting pyramid, offering 15 founding members permanent access from as early as season 2022-23, rather than via the historic access principles of annual sporting merit,' the letter read.

'Such a European Super League would be deeply damaging to the European pyramid, and immediate and future prospects of the Premier League and its member clubs and all those in football who rely on our funding and solidarity to prosper.

'We do not and cannot support such a concept. Premier League rules contain a commitment amongst clubs to remain within the football pyramid and forbid and clubs from entering competitions beyond those listed in Rule L9, without Premier League Board permission.

'I cannot envisage any scenario where such permission would be granted. It is the duty of the Premier League Board to defend the integrity and the prospects of the League as a whole, and we will have no choice but to do everything we can to protect and maintain both.

'As previously evidenced, we would expect complete condemnation from all parts of the game, fans groups and the UK Government.

'This venture cannot be launched without English clubs and we call upon any club contemplating associating themselves or joining this venture to walk away immediately before irreparable damage is done.'

Fan groups were quick to come out and join the condemnation of the news that the Big Six are keen to join.

The Football Supporters' Association described the European Super League as a project motivated 'by nothing but cynical greed'.

'This competition is being created behind our backs by billionaire club owners who have zero regard for the game's traditions and continue to treat football as their personal fiefdom,' the FSA statement read.

'The FSA, and no doubt supporters across the continent, will continue to fight against its creation.'

FansEurope added in their own statement that the Super League 'is illegitimate, irresponsible, and anti-competitive by design.'
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

RICHARD MASTERS' LETTER
Dear Chairman/Chief Executive,

I am writing to inform you of what we believe to be an imminent announcement of a European Super League concept, potentially involving a number of Premier League Clubs alongside others from Spain and Italy.

Based on our understanding of the proposed European Super League concept it would sit outside the auspices of UEFA and the current European sporting pyramid, offering 15 founding members permanent access from as early as season 2022/23, rather than via the historic access principles of annual sporting merit.

The Premier League Board met this morning and I wanted to make clear its position based on the information we have at our disposal. Such a European Super League would be deeply damaging to the European pyramid, the immediate and future prospects of the Premier League and its member Clubs and all those in football who rely on our funding and solidarity to prosper.

We believe such a concept would be hugely unpopular with football fans across the continent, in particular here in England, where progress via sporting merit is central to the history and traditions of the national game and the rightful aspirations of all Clubs and their fans. We do not and cannot support such a concept.

Premier League Rules contain a commitment amongst Clubs to remain within the football pyramid and forbid any Clubs from entering competitions beyond those listed in Rule L9, without Premier League Board permission.

I cannot envisage any scenario where such permission would be granted. It is the duty of the Premier League Board to defend the integrity and future prospects of the League as a whole, and we will have no choice but to do everything we can to protect and maintain both.

The consequences of attempting to proceed with a European Super League would be the immediate destabilisation of the Premier League and the English game as a whole, at a time when it needs precisely the opposite.

This is a time when English football should be coming together as we emerge from the extraordinary challenges of the pandemic. As previously evidenced, we would expect complete condemnation from all parts of the game, fan groups and the UK Government.

This venture cannot be launched without English Clubs and we call upon any Club contemplating associating themselves or joining this venture to walk away immediately before irreparable damage is done.

A media statement will be issued on behalf of the Premier League and, should the announcement go ahead, we will call a meeting of Clubs to discuss the immediate implications and the Board's recommended response.

Both Gary and I are available to talk you through what we reliably know at this stage.

Kind regards,

Richard

Richard Masters, Chief Executive

[Chester Perry]

Sir Alex Fergusson offers his thoughts - report from Reuters

Soccer-United's Ferguson says breakaway league would end 70 years of history
By Simon Evans

2 MIN READ

MANCHESTER, England (Reuters) - Former Manchester United manager Alex Ferguson says a breakaway European Super League would be a move away from 70 years of football history and that fans love the Champions League as it is.

Media reports on Sunday said that six Premier League clubs, including United, had signed up to plans for a breakaway league which would be a rival to UEFA’s Champions League.

Ferguson, who won the Champions League twice with Manchester United after having European success with Scottish club Aberdeen, told Reuters that he enjoyed “special nights” in the Champions League.

“Talk of a Super League is a move away from 70 years of European club football. Both as a player for a provincial team Dunfermline in the 60s and as a manager at Aberdeen winning the European Cup Winners’ Cup, for a small provincial club in Scotland it was like climbing Mount Everest,” he told Reuters.

“Everton are spending £500 million to build a new stadium with the ambition to play in Champions League. Fans all over love the competition as it is,” he said.

“In my time at United, we played in four Champions League finals and they were always the most special of nights.

“I’m not sure Manchester United are involved in this, as I am not part of the decision making process,” he added.

Gary Neville, Ferguson’s former captain, interrupted his commentary on Sky Sports’ coverage of United’s match against Burnley to criticise the breakaway plans.

“I think to bring forward proposals in the midst of COVID, in the midst of the economic crisis, is an absolute scandal,” he said.

“United, and the rest of the ‘Big Six’ clubs that have signed up to it, against the rest of the Premier League, should be ashamed of themselves,” he said.

“I can’t concentrate on the game... they should deduct all six teams that have signed up to it. Deduct points from them all,” he said.

[Chester Perry]

apparently DAZN are distancing themselves from this Super League proposal

https://twitter.com/sgevans/status/1383775073161469955

[Chester Perry]

Jason Burt of the Telegraph lambasts the breakaway 12 with the same passion as Garry Neville though with a more considered choice of phrasing - you have to suspect many journalists have a lot of pre-prepared material for this situation

European Super League is a declaration of war — the 'Big Six' should be ashamed of themselves
JASON BURT APRIL 18, 2021

Self-interest. Cynicism. Opportunism. Arrogance. Greed. It is typical of what drives the biggest European clubs and, unfortunately with the largest cohort from the Premier League, that a declaration of war was made on the eve of when there was supposed to be peace.

Instead of heralding a new Champions League and a unified front the Uefa president Aleksander Ceferin is in danger of looking like football’s equivalent of Neville Chamberlain waving his piece of paper and declaring “peace in our time”.

In fairness Ceferin probably knew this was coming — or at least some form of it — because it has never gone away and the response from Uefa, from the European domestic leagues and from the Football Association could not have been stronger. And neither could the condemnation. At least we have to take some heart from that.

But then the signatories to the breakaway European Super League — what a misnomer that is because there is nothing super about it — could not have picked a worse time. It is the height of cynicism and has been met with anger, condemnation, threats but not a hint of surprise.

By signing up Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea, Tottenham Hotspur and Manchester City have joined clubs from Spain — Real Madrid, Barcelona and Atletico Madrid — and Italy — Juventus, AC Milan and Inter Milan — to take advantage of the uncertainty caused by the coronavirus pandemic to do one thing: look after themselves. How venal is that?

Bravo to Bayern Munich, Borussia Dortmund and, especially, Paris Saint-Germain who are so often maligned for their state-backed wealth but have not aligned themselves to this abomination. How ironic that the best European tie this season has involved Bayern and PSG.

The proposed, newly-designed 36-team Champions League was already a bloated, money-driven contest but rather than being expanded it now faces being decimated. Not just it but, quite feasibly, football as we know it. This is the greatest threat it has ever faced.

There is only one reason why and, of course, that reason was why the Champions League was created in the first place to replace the traditional knock-out format of the European Cup — and that is money. That £300million plus carrot just to join a breakaway league appears to have been too attractive to some who have involved themselves in side-rooming bartering.

But this is now anti-competitive monopolism and it is no surprise that its drivers are Real Madrid president Florentino Perez and the American owners of United, Liverpool and Arsenal — how that club has the audacity to claim themselves as a European superpower is remarkable — as well as Juventus president Andrea Agnelli.

The signatories do not appear interested in being in a contest or the health of football. Grassroots? Let’s scorch them. The pyramid? Let’s demolish it. Instead it is about protecting their own revenues and removing the thing that makes sport what makes it so appealing: any element of uncertainty.

Make no mistake the Big Six in the Premier League worry more about interlopers — such as, say, Leicester City — than they do about each other. These clubs want to remove any element of randomness and that extends to the Champions League which, ironically, has stood accused of being relatively boring and unpredictable up until the knock-out stages.

Of course, as has happened in the past, there could well be a strong element of sabre-rattling about the position taken by the powerful rebels and in any case we had reached a point of now or never for them. They will reason they had to make their move and it is the most aggressive and effective way of driving the changes that they want which, again, will undoubtedly settle on a bigger piece of the pie and more money for themselves.

They will argue that they have suffered like everyone else from the pandemic and it would be negligent of them not to drive for a better deal and Uefa does stand accused of complacency when it comes to the most marketable club football competition in the world. But just after yourself? Whatever happened to the concept of being on the right side of history when it comes to a crisis?

The Uefa leadership is plotting its own combative fightback. It has been talking to the main European leagues and it will be pleased by the unified response. They can fight fire with fire and the threat of banishing teams from next season’s Champions League and the domestic leagues — the Premier League would have to sanction a European breakaway by six of its club — is real. Fifa also has to stick to its warning that players will be prevented from taking part in the World Cup if they go along with this.

The leagues — the Premier League, La Liga and Serie A — have to remain strong alongside Uefa. Few of the fans of the clubs involved will want a breakaway. There is already a strong constituency of opposition and that is without examining any legal recourse which is also an option.

The clubs not involved have to issue their own rebuttals. The Big Six, for example, could face points deductions for their plotting alone. Why not? At the very least they need to come clean. There has been too much politicking, plotting, side-meetings, implicit threats. Let’s get this all out in the open.

It has become tiresome and damaging. As Uefa said in its statement it is little more than a “cynical project” that needs to be quashed. And it is right — unless the clubs can come up with a reasoned argument for their case. We have been waiting for that for a long time.

“Enough is enough” Uefa concluded and without being too xenophobic if the owners of these clubs, with United and Liverpool appearing to be at the vanguard, cannot accept the competitions they are in then maybe they should sell up and stick to others sports more in line with their thinking and more in line with the idea of operating a closed shop. Leave football as it is.

[Chester Perry]

Jonathan Liew in the Guardian believes that only those who hate football could come up with the notion of a Super League - though Kieran Maguire has, perhaps more appositely, taken to calling it the Franchise League

Only someone who truly hates football can be behind a European super league
Jonathan Liew

The clubs behind the proposed tournament must find competitive sport offensive, all the way from the grassroots game to the World Cup

Liverpool have reportedly signed up to join the European super league. Photograph: Kieran McManus/BPI/Shutterstock
Sun 18 Apr 2021 19.34 BST

Perhaps once all this has shaken out, once the imminent threat of a breakaway European super league has been resolved one way or the other, football will find the time for a little reflection.

How we reached this point. How the game’s elite clubs managed to engineer a scenario in which a hostile takeover came to feel inevitable, even irresistible. How the world’s most popular sport managed to hand over so much of its power and wealth and influence to people who despise it.

Because make no mistake: this is an idea that could only have been devised by someone who truly hates football to its bones. Who hates football so much that they want to prune it, gut it, dismember it, from the grassroots game to the World Cup. Who finds the very idea of competitive sport offensive, an unhealthy distraction from the main objective, which in a way has always been capitalism’s main objective.

Unchecked and unquestioned, capital has never merely contented itself with a seat at the table, but will invariably demand the power to make its own rules. This, in large part, is what appears to have happened here.

On Sunday afternoon it appeared that 12 clubs were amassed behind a breakaway: three from Italy, three from Spain and six from England. There was an acrid sense of timing, too: coming just as Arsenal (European elite) were scraping a 1-1 draw at home to Fulham (non-European elite), just as Juventus were being beaten (and overtaken in the Serie A table) by little Atalanta, just as Lyon’s women were succumbing to Paris Saint-Germain: their first Champions League defeat in four years and the first rumbling portent that their golden era is about to be trampled by the march of the global super-clubs.

At the heart of this move, then, is a distaste for the basic point of sport itself: a battle of nations and cultures, towns and regions, ideas and systems, an ecosystem with a top and a middle and a bottom, something you go out and play as well as sit down and pay for. Perhaps this had long been an unfashionable idea at the sharp end of the game.

But in stating their intention to establish a closed competition – or a largely closed competition, which in effect would be largely the same thing – the biggest clubs have laid out their vision for the future of football: a 12-month reality television show whose sole purpose is to generate a ceaseless stream of content, animus and talking points.

The lack of jeopardy that many critics have identified as one of the major drawbacks of a super league is in fact the entire point: a constantly bubbling steady-state tension in which nothing really matters, and so everything does. Missed Liverpool vs Real Madrid? Never mind, they’re playing again tomorrow night, and then three nights after that: football as on-demand stream, football as non-fungible consumer good, football that fits into your life as smoothly as an Ocado delivery slot.

At which point, it is worth pointing out an uncomfortable truth: this is what a lot of people actually want. Maybe not you or the stalwart season-ticket holders or the ultras in the Curva Sud, but certainly millions around the world with no particular historical attachment to the game, and for whom the idea of keeping the elite teams apart for the sake of tradition seems as perverse as shelving the Godzilla vs Kong movie on the basis that they still need to face all the smaller monsters first.

And yet, even at this dramatic late stage, so little about this appears to have been thought through. Will Fifa hold its line against a breakaway league, even if its cherished World Cup is reduced to a glorified Olympics in the process? Will players consent to having their international careers forcibly ended, and if not can they be contractually coerced to do so anyway? Would a new competition be available to a mass television audience, and if not how will the sponsors react? And why on earth have Tottenham signed up when they must know this is their best chance of actually winning something?

Doubtless the coming days will bring some clarity, as well as plenty more confusion. Resistance will come in many forms: protests, boycotts, strongly-worded radio phone-ins, the inevitable rebuke from a toothless parliamentary subcommittee. In the meantime, it is worth noting why Europe’s biggest clubs have decided to go now. Barcelona are £1bn in debt and facing one of the biggest financial crises in their history. Real Madrid were unable to afford a single big signing last summer. Juventus
have to find around £100m by the end of June. Internazionale’s owners sought emergency funding in February.

These are the most lucrative clubs in the most lucrative sport in the world: the sharpest minds, the smartest guys in the room. Are we really to believe that these galaxy brains can work together to organise a breakaway league when they can barely keep a roof over their heads?

Perhaps, for all the heartache and upheaval, this is the logical conclusion: you’ve been threatening to go it alone for years now. Well, guys: best of luck.

[Chester Perry]

With confirmation of the Super League now given there is going to be a a lot of column inches dedicated to the subject - Here Sean Ingle starts the ball rolling for the Guardian

European Super League: how did the clubs get to this point?
Analysis: 12 clubs have announced they are joining the new European Super League after a weekend of frantic talks
Mon 19 Apr 2021 00.53 BST

It was only on Saturday morning that a senior executive of one of European football’s biggest clubs realised that the long-rumbling talks about the breakaway European Super League were suddenly – in his words – “about to go nuclear”.

For months, clubs had batted round proposals for a €6bn breakaway league, that would see 15 founding clubs receive between €89m and €310m immediately for signing on the dotted line. But while each of them had been given documents, contracts, and asked to come back with ideas, Uefa appeared to have blocked the plan by agreeing to a reformed Champions League, involving 10 group games in a Swiss-style format, which they were due to announce on Monday.

That all dramatically changed over the weekend. One by one the “maybes” were told that the breakaway was on, others had signed up, and if they didn’t become “definites” they could be left behind.

“Things that usually take years were done in hours,” the executive told the Guardian. “The upfront cash was being dangled like bait. All clubs need money – and if you’re told that everyone else is involved you don’t want to be left without a chair when the music stops.”

Others tell of frantic calls between rival clubs and leagues, and of nobody truly trusting each other to share all their cards, before news broke on Sunday that 12 clubs – including six from the Premier League – were backing the breakaway. Multiple sources told the Guardian that the Juventus chairman, Andrea Agnelli, was a key player, supported in particular by the Premier League clubs with American owners and Spain’s big three.

Their urgency was understandable. On Friday Uefa had contacted the media to confirm that its president, Aleksander Ceferin, was about to confirm the new-look Champions League format, which the organisation promised would “make for a more exciting competition where ‘Every. Game. Counts’”. The breakaway clubs had to strike fast and hard. And they did.

On Sunday evening came the announcement that 12 clubs had indeed decided to create a super league – Milan, Arsenal, Atlético Madrid, Chelsea, Barcelona, Inter, Juventus, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United, Real Madrid and Tottenham Hotspur all joining as “founding clubs”.

“Usually the threat of a Super League is a bargain chip, and about leverage,” says one source with direct knowledge of the talks. “But this is the furthest its ever gone by considerable distance.”

The move is not only about a short-term injection of cash, but long-term control. Europe’s biggest clubs not only want to ease their debts but to run the Champions League instead of Uefa. That was a fight that Europe’s governing body wrongly had thought they had kicked down the road, until they were blindsided over the weekend.

One source said that Ceferin thought that Agnelli was going to stand with him and condemn the proposals but “he just stopped talking to him on Sunday”.

The €6bn question is what happens next. If the 12 clubs hold the line, which they at the moment look like doing, it will inevitably head to the courts.

“On a meritocratic basis, people will say, ‘how could you even think about owning a competition that you only qualify for on a season-by-season basis?’” a well-positioned source asked. “But from a business perspective you can see why the big clubs are trying to go down that route. And this time round they have brought a bigger bat than ever.”

Others, however, are far more sceptical – especially given the immediate backlash among fans and leagues. They predict that Uefa will be able to chip away at the breakaway 12 and, with big clubs such as Bayern Munich or PSG already against it, it may take only two or three more to pull out to make the plan dead in the water. “This is almost existential for Uefa,” says one senior executive. “They will fight it with everything.”

One thing is for sure, European football is unlikely to ever be the same again.

[Chester Perry]

That previous post comes paired with this also from the Guardian

European super league: Premier League ‘big six’ agree to join new competition
Statement confirms involvement of 12 clubs
Uefa, Premier League and politicians condemn proposal

Ed Aarons and Sean Ingle
Sun 18 Apr 2021 23.52 BST

European football was thrown into turmoil on Sunday night after new plans for a European super league were revealed that would mean six English clubs – Manchester City, Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea and Tottenham – joining the breakaway competition alongside three teams from each of Italy and Spain.

After a dramatic day that earlier saw Boris Johnson and the French president, Emmanuel Macron, both condemn proposals that had been met with widespread criticism from around the continent, a statement just after 11pm UK time from the newly formed European Super League confirmed plans to begin the new competition in August. The plans, which would represent one of the biggest changes ever made in the football calendar, threaten not only the future of the Champions League but could have a seismic impact on the entire structure of the club game in England after the Premier League had urged clubs “to walk away immediately before irreparable damage is done”.

“Twelve of Europe’s leading football clubs have today come together to announce they have agreed to establish a new mid-week competition, the Super League, governed by its founding clubs,” it read. “AC Milan, Arsenal FC, Atlético de Madrid, Chelsea FC, FC Barcelona, FC Internazionale Milano, Juventus FC, Liverpool FC, Manchester City, Manchester United, Real Madrid CF and Tottenham Hotspur have all joined as founding clubs. It is anticipated that a further three clubs will join ahead of the inaugural season, which is intended to commence as soon as practicable.”

The statement added: “Going forward, the founding clubs look forward to holding discussions with Uefa and Fifa to work together in partnership to deliver the best outcomes for the new League and for football as a whole. The formation of the Super League comes at a time when the global pandemic has accelerated the instability in the existing European football economic model. Further, for a number of years, the founding clubs have had the objective of improving the quality and intensity of existing European competitions throughout each season, and of creating a format for top clubs and players to compete on a regular basis.”

According to the ESL, the new format will involve midweek fixtures, with all participating clubs continuing to compete in their respective national leagues, “preserving the traditional domestic match calendar which remains at the heart of the club game”.

“An August start with clubs participating in two groups of 10, playing home and away fixtures, with the top three in each group automatically qualifying for the quarter-finals. Teams finishing fourth and fifth will then compete in a two-legged play-off for the remaining quarter-final positions. A two-leg knockout format will be used to reach the final at the end of May, which will be staged as a single fixture at a neutral venue. As soon as practicable after the start of the men’s competition, a corresponding women’s league will also be launched, helping to advance and develop the women’s game.”

Uefa and the Premier League had earlier strongly condemned the proposals, with the former describing the plans as a “cynical project founded on the self-interest of a few clubs”. Its statement, which was also signed by the Premier League, the Football Association and their counterparts in Spain and Italy, reiterated the threat to ban any players involved from “any competition at domestic, European or world level”.

Paris Saint-Germain and Bayern Munich have so far insisted they have not signed up so it remains to be seen whether the others will carry out their threat to turn their backs on their domestic leagues and risk their players being barred from all competitions, including the World Cup. PSG’s reluctance to turn their back on Ligue 1 despite major issues with its new TV rights deal could be down to proposed stringent financial regulations in the new competition that would be similar to Uefa’s financial fair play regulations.

The impetus for the breakaway league has come from the Real Madrid president, Florentino Pérez – who will be president of the new organisation – along with Joel Glazer of Manchester United and Andrea Agnelli of Juventus, who will be vice-chairmen.

“We will help football at every level and take it to its rightful place in the world,” said Pérez. “Football is the only global sport in the world with more than four billion fans and our responsibility as big clubs is to respond to their desires.”

Agnelli added: “Our 12 founder clubs represent billions of fans across the globe and 99 European trophies. We have come together at this critical moment, enabling European competition to be transformed, putting the game we love on a sustainable footing for the long-term future, substantially increasing solidarity, and giving fans and amateur players a regular flow of headline fixtures that will feed their passion for the game while providing them with engaging role models.”

Uefa is due to sign off new plans for an expanded and restructured Champions League on Monday but the timing of the latest development could now put that in jeopardy. “We will consider all measures available to us, at all levels, both judicial and sporting in order to prevent this happening,” said Uefa’s statement. “Football is based on open competitions and sporting merit; it cannot be any other way.”

After the announcement, Fifa, the world fame’s governing body, said it “can only express its disapproval to a ‘closed European breakaway league’ outside of the international football structures … Fifa always stands for unity in world football and calls on all parties involved in heated discussions to engage in calm, constructive and balanced dialogue for the good of the game and in the spirit of solidarity and fair play. Fifa will, of course, do whatever is necessary to contribute to a harmonised way forward in the overall interests of football.”

The Premier League’s chief executive, Richard Masters, is believed to have written to all 20 of the league’s clubs in England to state his organisation’s opposition to the new proposals.

A separate statement added: “The Premier League condemns any proposal that attacks the principles of open competition and sporting merit which are at the heart of the domestic and European football pyramid. Fans of any club in England and across Europe can currently dream that their team may climb to the top and play against the best. We believe that the concept of a European super league would destroy this dream.

“A European super league will undermine the appeal of the whole game, and have a deeply damaging impact on the immediate and future prospects of the Premier League and its member clubs, and all those in football who rely on our funding and solidarity to prosper. We will work with fans, the FA, EFL, PFA and LMA, as well as other stakeholders, at home and abroad, to defend the integrity and future prospects of English football in the best interests of the game.”

The culture secretary, Oliver Dowden, also said the plans “could create a closed shop at the very top of our national game. “Sustainability, integrity and fair competition are absolutely paramount and anything that undermines this is deeply troubling and damaging for football,” he added. “We have a football pyramid where funds from the globally successful Premier League flow down the leagues and into local communities. I would be bitterly disappointed to see any action that destroys that.”

The former United manager Sir Alex Ferguson led criticism of the new proposals, telling Reuters that a super league would be “a move away from 70 years of European club football”.

“Everton are spending £500m to build a new stadium with the ambition to play in Champions League. Fans all over love the competition as it is,” he said. “In my time at United, we played in four Champions League finals and they were always the most special of nights. I’m not sure [if] Manchester United are involved in this, as I am not part of the decision making process.”

“I am disgusted by Manchester United and Liverpool the most,” added former United defender Gary Neville on Sky Sports. “Liverpool, they pretend [with] You’ll Never Walk Alone [they are] the people’s club, the fans’ club. Manchester United – 100 years, born out of workers. And they are breaking away into a league without competition, that they can’t be relegated from?

“It is an absolute disgrace. Honestly, we have to wrestle back power in this country from the clubs at the top of this league, and that includes my club.”

The organisation Football Supporters Europe described the plans as “illegitimate, irresponsible, and anti-competitive by design” which “will be the final nail in the coffin of European football”.

It added: “It is driven exclusively by greed. The only ones who stand to gain are hedge funds, oligarchs, and a handful of already wealthy clubs, many of which perform poorly in their own domestic leagues despite their in-built advantage.”

[Chester Perry]

West Bromwich Albion finally publish the detail of their 2019/20 Financial results

https://find-and-update.company-informa ... ng-history

@SwissRamble takes his turn looking at West Bromwich Albion's 2019/20 Financial Results

https://twitter.com/SwissRamble/status/ ... 3811452932

also has done the usual summary

https://twitter.com/SwissRamble/status/ ... 0898732043

[Chester Perry]

Meanwhile, ignoring the actual long term fans that have helped these "elite" clubs build their wealth and status, the ECA yesterday released a report titled "Fan of the Future - Defining Modern Football Fandom" - that tile reads like it is telling fans how to be fans, I suppose I will just have to read it

https://www.ecaeurope.com/media/4816/ec ... ebsite.pdf

Astounded that no-one in the press has picked up on this ECAS report released last Thursday - "Fan of the Future - Defining Modern Football Fandom" - it contains everything that the rationale of the super league is built on from a revenue generation perspective.

[Chester Perry]

The Financial Times have more detail on the financials of the Super League and the level of involvement of financiers

Super League clubs net €200m-€300m ‘welcome bonus’
ARASH MASSOUDI APRIL 19, 2021

The 12 football clubs that have signed a binding agreement to form a new European “Super League” have been guaranteed a “welcome bonus” worth €200m-€300m each, according to people with direct knowledge of the terms of a deal that will reshape the world’s favourite sport.

The announcement on Sunday of the breakaway league has kicked off an intense power battle within the game, with politicians including UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and French president Emmanuel Macron as well as fans’ groups all expressing fierce opposition. The move also sparked threats of legal action between the sport’s power brokers.

The teams that have declared they plan to join the competition are: Spain’s Real Madrid, Barcelona and Atlético Madrid; England’s Manchester United, Manchester City, Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea and Tottenham Hotspur; and Italy’s Juventus, AC Milan and Inter Milan.

People briefed on the deal said that the next clubs to be sought as “permanent members” would be Germany’s Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund and France’s Paris Saint-Germain, though they have so far rebuffed any approaches. A further five clubs will be invited to play in the 20-club league each season, though they would need to qualify for the competition.

The money to launch the league will be provided by JPMorgan Chase, which has committed to underwriting a €3.25bn “infrastructure grant” that will be shared among the clubs as a “welcome bonus” on joining the competition.

The US investment bank has provided a debt financing deal amortised over 23 years and secured against future broadcasting rights for the competition, said people with knowledge of the terms.

The rebel clubs have agreed to pay €264m a year to pay down the debt, a figure that includes the 2-3 per cent interest rate that the borrowing will carry. JPMorgan declined to comment.

A person close to the Super League said the payment should not be regarded as a “welcome bonus”, but instead was an advance on future revenues which would have to be repaid if any club chose to leave the competition.

The league’s 15 permanent members will jointly own a newly incorporated company in Spain which will share all future media and sponsorship rights derived from the competition, according to people familiar with the matter.

Anas Laghrari, a banker at Spanish advisory firm Key Capital, has been named general secretary of the Super League. He has close ties to Real Madrid’s billionaire president Florentino Pérez, who was named chair of the competition and is the driving force behind the plans. Key Capital declined to comment.

The Super League’s organisers have held early discussions with broadcasters about the competition, according to people familiar with the talks, seeking to secure deals with likes of Amazon, Facebook, Disney and Comcast-owned Sky that would raise annual revenues worth €4bn a year. This is roughly double the amount earned by Champions League, the continent’s top annual club competition.

The belief that such projections are realistic is because the 200 new European games a year will be played midweek and only feature the world’s top sides which have global fanbases.

The Super League clubs will seek to continue to play in their respective national league contests, but would need the approval of groups like England’s Premier League and Spain’s La Liga to do so. The Super League was not immediately available for comment.

But Super League clubs have vowed to provide about €400m in “solidarity grants” to teams and governing bodies in other competitions, a large increase on the funds provided through existing European competitions and money they hope will convince football authorities to avoid a protracted fight over the project.

On Sunday night, the Super League clubs threatened legal action against football governing bodies that have vowed to block the breakaway competition.

The announcement of the Super League comes as clubs across Europe have suffered steep revenue shortfalls owing to the pandemic, raising concerns over the sustainability of their business models and complicating any plans for new signings. The timing also coincides with a period which has seen the valuations for top-tier franchises grow rapidly, prompting questions over where these clubs would find new sources of revenue.

Negotiations have been going on for months, with detailed term sheets shared with the founder clubs since November, according to documents seen by the Financial Times.

But the clubs signed binding contracts to join the project over the weekend, ahead of a Uefa meeting on Monday at which European football’s governing body was set to agree a radical transformation of the Champions League.

[Chester Perry]

Absolutely zero surprise in this report - or the clever legal nicety of offering talks with FIFA/UEFA, which helps "reasonable behaviour" argument in court - from SportsProMedia

we also now see Super League branded as SLco

European Super League launches legal action to ensure its ‘seamless establishment’
SLCo taking 'protective steps' to fend off threat of bans from officially sanctioned competitions.

Posted: April 19 2021By: PA

The new European Super League Company has revealed it has already launched legal action to try to prevent retaliatory moves amid widespread condemnation of the plans.

The bombshell announcement came on Sunday that Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United, Tottenham and six other European soccer clubs have agreed to create a rival competition to the Uefa Champions League.

It is anticipated three more clubs will join the breakaway group as founding members, with the new competition, which will begin 'as soon as practicable', to eventually feature 20 teams.

If the plans succeed it would devastate existing European club competitions and in particular the Champions League. A joint statement including European soccer's governing body Uefa and the English, Italian and Spanish leagues published on 18th April said it would consider 'all measures, both judicial and sporting' to prevent the competition going ahead.

This could include attempts to bar the competing clubs from domestic leagues and their players from Uefa’s international competitions too.

World governing body Fifa has called for 'calm, constructive dialogue' to resolve the crisis, but the company behind the Super League has pre-emptively taken steps to protect itself against any legal challenges.

In a letter to Uefa and Fifa, seen by the PA news agency, the Super League wrote: 'We are concerned that Fifa and Uefa may respond to this invitation letter by seeking to take punitive measures to exclude any participating club or player from their respective competitions.

'We hope that is not your response to this letter and that, like us, your organisations will recognise the immediate benefits of the competition established by SLCo.

'We also seek your co-operation and support on how the competition can be brought within the football ecosystem and work with us to achieve that objective.

'Your formal statement does, however, compel us to take protective steps to secure ourselves against such an adverse reaction, which would not only jeopardise the funding commitment under the grant but, significantly, would be unlawful.

'For this reason, SLCo has filed a motion before the relevant courts in order to ensure the seamless establishment and operation of the competition in accordance with applicable laws.'

European Super League: Soccer in disarray as 12 clubs form breakaway

The PA news agency understands that Manchester United executive vice chairman Ed Woodward has stepped down from his Uefa role, where he was on the Professional Football Strategy Council, while the club has also quit the European Club Association (ECA).

After the plans emerged on Sunday afternoon, the backlash was instantaneous throughout the game and beyond, before the clubs released statements just before midnight stating their intentions.

The letter also said the company had secured a commitment to underwrite funding for the competition in the range of €4 billion (US$4.8 billion), and JP Morgan confirmed to PA that it is financing the deal.

UK prime minister Boris Johnson said the European Super League was not “good news for fans” and he would work with the soccer authorities “to make sure this doesn’t go ahead in the way that it’s currently being proposed”.

Greg Dyke, the former chairman of English soccer's Football Association (FA), does not expect the project to get off the ground because of the widespread opposition to it.

He told BBC Radio Four: “I don’t think it will happen. I think it’s a game that’s going on. But I don’t think it’s good for football in any way at all. Without the approval of Uefa, but particularly without the approval of Fifa, I think this is very difficult to make this happen.

“I think it’s a big mistake. And I think the opposition to it – which has come from almost everywhere, I haven’t heard anybody in favour yet – will probably stop it.”

Aston Villa chief executive Christian Purslow branded the Super League a “grotesque concept”.

He added: “These proposals do away with sporting merit. It would enable a small number of clubs to be in this competition come what may and, for millions of people in football, that goes against everything the sport means and stands for.”

Former Arsenal boss Arsene Wenger, now Fifa’s chief of global football development, told talkSPORT: “I believe as well there’s a more dangerous idea behind [it] that is a big threat for the Premier League.

“When I was still in charge, there was a lot going on from other countries to try to diminish the dominance of the Premier League and a project like that would certainly accelerate that.

“We have to fight to keep football simple, understandable and based on merits, and (so) everyone has the same chance and dream to be successful.”

The clubs involved have so far addressed the plans through a joint statement but Liverpool boss Jurgen Klopp and Chelsea manager Thomas Tuchel will both face the media later.

The timing of the announcement was incendiary coming ahead of an anticipated announcement from Uefa confirming changes to the Champions League format later on 19th April.

The European governing body is expected to approve an increase from 32 to 36 teams from 2024 with the existing structure of eight groups of four replaced by one league. The format, known as the ‘Swiss model’, would see all teams play ten games in the first stage with opponents determined by a seeding system.

But the statement from the 12 breakaway clubs late on 18th April made clear they do not believe these proposed changes go far enough.

Real Madrid’s Florentino Perez, who will chair the Super League, said: “We will help football at every level and take it to its rightful place in the world. Football is the only global sport in the world with more than four billion fans and our responsibility as big clubs is to respond to their desires.”

It is proposed the new competition will be played in midweek with the eventual 15 founding members being joined by five qualifiers. It will be played initially in two groups of ten with an eight-team knockout stage.

The organisers claim it will generate more money than the Champions League and that will result in a greater distribution of revenue throughout the game.

The statement added: 'The new annual tournament will provide significantly greater economic growth and support for European football via a long-term commitment to uncapped solidarity payments which will grow in line with league revenues.

'These solidarity payments will be substantially higher than those generated by the current European competition and are expected to be in excess of €10 billion during the course of the initial commitment period of the clubs.'

News of the breakaway competition leaked out before it was officially announced and had already provoked a fierce backlash from Uefa and various national leagues and associations.

World governing body Fifa expressed 'its disapproval to a ‘closed European breakaway league’ outside of the international football structures' and called for 'all parties involved in heated discussions to engage in calm, constructive and balanced dialogue for the good of the game'.

Uefa, along with the Football Associations of England, Spain and Italy, plus the Premier League, La Liga and Serie A, said they would use all available means to stop the 'cynical project'.

La Liga added in a statement on Monday: 'The newly proposed top European competition is nothing more than a selfish, egotistical proposal designed to further enrich the already super rich.

'It will undermine the appeal of the whole game and have a deeply damaging impact on the immediate and future of La Liga, its member clubs, and all the entire footballing ecosystem.”

[Chester Perry]

Regular readers of this thread will know that the Telegraph's Sam Wallace has been scathing of the management of the two Spanish giants for some time - here he dissects the role of Florentino Perez ad the architect of the Super League

Brains behind Super League that no-one wants cannot even run their clubs properly
SAM WALLACE APRIL 19, 2021

Just to recap, the European Super League has announced its front three as follows: the man who changed the Real Madrid statutes to be president in perpetuity; the Agnelli son who has presided over the death of Serie A as a viable competition and one of the Glazers – although given they all inherited it from their dad it scarcely matters which.

Florentino Pérez, Andrea Agnelli and Joel Glazer now installed as the controlling powers of the worst idea in the history of European football. The chairman and the two vice-chairs of the nascent European Super League (ESL) leading the last charge of football’s zombie apocalypse in search of fresh flesh – because even the last two decades of vast broadcast income increases were never going to be enough for them. In that time they have wasted hundreds of millions on transfer fees, wages and compensation to failed managers; they have laid waste to domestic competitions or leveraged borrowing to control their clubs. Yet still they come, glassy-eyed, in search of more.

Between them the venal, the wasteful, and the often downright hopeless pursuing a dream of elitism that exists only in the heads and hearts of a group of executives and owners small enough to fit in an Old Trafford hospitality box. It is the Super League that no-one wants bar the desperate custodians of the Spanish clubs who have enjoyed illegal state aid benefits for years. Them and their unlikely allies among the American owners of English Premier League clubs.

They have paid for the legal advice, and consulted their public relations experts, and the decision after months of plotting is that, in spite of the near-universal opprobrium for the idea, they shall press on. Over the next few days we will be told that this new competition, run for the elite clubs, by the elite clubs, will give football’s pyramid €10 billion in solidarity over the next 23 years. That is the argument they plan to run to convince sovereign governments and the European Union of its merits, although if you believe that the three in charge of this enterprise care about the world outside their tinted chauffeur-driven window then you have not been paying attention.

The basis of Project Big Picture (PBP) in October was to distribute the revenue of a diminished Premier League to buy off the rest of the English game, while the elite transferred its chief wealth creation model elsewhere. The authors of that document were giving away the broadcast revenue critical for the likes of Leicester City and Southampton in order to facilitate them earning more at another source. This European project of stupendous greed is the source. One that tolerates no regulator or oversight other than the clubs who seek to dominate the world’s game.

The pressure in recent weeks to agree a public consensus on the Super League and announce its founders has come almost exclusively from Spain where Pérez’s Real and Barcelona are burdened with debts so severe it threatens to take them under. In both cases more than €1 billion with no way out in a depressed pandemic transfer-market. Real are committed to a costly long-term stadium rebuild; Barcelona struggled to meet their six-monthly wage obligations in January. Pérez has long sought to eliminate the financial supremacy of the Premier League, built on the equality that Spain’s Liga will not tolerate, and he has found a way in via the soft underbelly of the American ownerships.

The Glazers at Manchester United, Liverpool’s Fenway Group, and the hapless Kroenke family ownership at Arsenal own the three most valuable heritage pieces of English football. Unlike the US sports franchises under their control whose value and revenue is protected by the closed-shop nature of US sport leagues, there is no such stability in the English game. The jeopardy of the sport is what confers its intrinsic value and also what makes it such a challenge to its owners. Those owners would much rather the Major League Soccer system, where each franchise is guaranteed its place in the league year in and year out and holds its value for an investor.

football league titles big 6 vs EU clubs
Although there is a consequence to that too – MLS has high franchise valuations but a paltry annual broadcast deal of €90 million. Football fans can smell the absence of risk and the confected nature of a competition where there is no relegation and they treat it accordingly. Yet this is the model that the great European game would follow.

A Super League is, tragically, a great victory for Pérez, a man who controls Real despite investing no more money in the club than his annual socio fee of €150. So too for Agnelli, the unremarkable scion of one of Italy’s great industrialist families who, like Joel Glazer or that renowned football expert Josh Kroenke inherited all their power and wealth from mum and dad. The Spanish and Italian clubs who have trampled competition in their own leagues have finally unlocked the door to the one competitor whom they could not rein in: the Premier League, where a democracy of sorts existed and the super-majority of 14 meant that everyone shared the decision-making.

It was the destruction of that fragile consensus that PBP sought and yet in the aftermath the 14 clubs fought back. Never let it be forgotten that when the reckoning came at a fiery Premier League shareholders’ meeting in October, the clubs that had been integral to PBP’s conception – who had finessed its very detail – duly joined in the unanimous condemnation of the proposals they had themselves created.

Ed Woodward, the executive vice-chairman of Manchester United; and his counterpart Tom Werner, Liverpool chairman added their signatures to the joint-statement of 20 clubs that rejected their own plan. In terms of the ideological expediency it had a flavour of a 1950s Politburo volte-face. They would abandon whatever does not work in the moment, no matter the humiliation or criticism. But the big picture is clear: ultimately nothing stands in the way of their ambition. An elite game owned and operated by the elite and never mind what anyone else thinks.

[Chester Perry]

The Guardian claim to have seen the Super League document - I wish they would publish it in full for all to see

Revealed: unpublished Super League document justifying breakaway
Document claims plan will benefit fans and all of football
Talk of ‘technology-enhanced rule implementation’

Exclusive by Sean Ingle

Mon 19 Apr 2021 18.25 BST

The Guardian has uncovered an unpublished European Super League document in the hidden code of its new website which seeks to justify the controversial breakaway by saying it will give fans “what they want”.

In comments that will raise eyebrows, it also claims the breakaway will offer “a sustainable and competitive environment for the whole football pyramid” – by providing more than three times the level of solidarity payments to smaller clubs than currently exist.

It also reveals that the clubs are considering intriguing new ideas, including “technology-enhanced rule implementation” that are not backed by the authorities, although it does not go into details.

That such a document was so easily discovered by someone with little specialist knowledge of coding will be embarrassing to the European Super League. However its underlying message is that the 12 clubs – including six from the Premier League – had no choice but to act because of the financial costs they were facing.

“Over many decades, players and fans have made football more than a game, inspiring passion and drama unique in the world of sport,” the statement begins. “But the game we love is challenged as never before.”

Citing Covid, it warns that the accumulated losses of top-level clubs exceed €5bn (£4.3bn). “The value of live media rights is stagnating or declining as some of our competitions fail to meet the needs of fans and new generations seek entertainment in ways which didn’t exist 10 years ago,” it says.

European Super League: what does it mean for football? – video explainer
“The weaknesses in the foundations of football have been known for many years, Covid simply exposed their severity and none of the game’s stakeholders have come up with a solution. Inaction is no longer an option.”

When creating the Super League, the document says the 12 breakaway clubs had “four guiding principles”:

Exceed fan expectations: “Our aim is to deliver to fans the best football possible while providing access for qualifying clubs to ensure the vibrancy of the competition and to maintain a strong commitment to the principle of sporting merit.”

Solidarity and sustainability: including “affordable ticket prices” and “reinvestment into the football pyramid via ongoing and substantial solidarity payments”. The document adds: “Super League solidarity payments will grow automatically with overall league revenues and will be more than three times higher than payments coming from the current European championship.”

Commitment to domestic leagues: “The new Super League has been designed around the principle of maintaining strong and vibrant local leagues and we will continue to compete each weekend in our national competitions as we always have.”

Readiness to change: “The Super League ownership and governance structure is designed to allow us to rapidly adopt and incorporate new ideas into the competition. Whether it’s changes in live match distribution formats, technology-enhanced rule implementation or player development, we can no longer rely on external bodies to drive progress in these areas.”

The document says that while Uefa and the Premier League have made “good faith” attempts to improve things, fundamental change is needed.

“It is a new format that will sustain the drama, passion and most importantly, the unpredictability that is the lifeblood of our sport,” the document claims. “We believe it will be the most dynamic and competitive sports league in the world.

“At its heart is a comprehensive solution to the critical issues facing the sport. It starts with the fans of the game, giving them what they want and deserve; the best players and the world’s top clubs competing with each other throughout the year.”

The European Super League has been asked for comment.

[Chester Perry]

@SwissRamble looks at the earnings from this years Champions League so far.

It is this level of revenue that has caused much of footballs recent problems, regular participation becomes a virtuous circle, particularly in the form of coefficient payments - it has underlined a sense of entitlement that now manifests as Super League

https://twitter.com/SwissRamble/status/ ... 7883463686

[Chester Perry]

Wow this is huge investment for a League 1 club - New owners of Ipswich invest £18m in share capital, this follows a major debt write off from the former owner

https://twitter.com/KieranMaguire/statu ... 4908398594

[Chester Perry]

Birmingham Cirty have been in the news a lot recently, mainly for the kind of thing a fan doesn't want to hear about their club - today they publish their 201920 financial results - just your bog standard championship loss of £29m which explains the auction for Jude Bellingham last summer

https://find-and-update.company-informa ... ng-history

@KieranMaguire has had a quick look

https://twitter.com/KieranMaguire/statu ... 3136578560

[Chester Perry]

The Chaps at Vysyble have a new blog piece on the Super League announcement

https://vysyble.com/blog-9

While they make a number of valid points it is both disappointing and unfortunate that they have resorted to calling out individuals, who in the main have contributed to our understanding of football's (and indeed sport's) financial machinations for decades

[Chester Perry]

As for some reason I am still getting full unregistered access to OffthePitch.com I will share their extensive piece on the Super League situation to date

Super League Special Report: "I spoke to him Saturday afternoon and he said, "Don’t worry, nothing is going on." He said he’d call me again in an hour but turned off the phone."
19 April 2021 9:12 PM

• Hardcore of rebel clubs – Manchester United, Liverpool and Real Madrid – feared that plans for a breakaway league died in January, but a legal review of competition law encouraged their plot.

• Plans only gathered momentum in the second half of last week with a critical mass forming on Thursday and Friday.

• Super League claims it will put €10 billion of solidarity payments into European football over 23 years, but Off The Pitch research shows this is up to 50 per cent less than under current system.

• UEFA president describes plotters as “liars and snakes” whose actions transcended even villains he dealt with in his previous career as a criminal lawyer.

• UEFA and leagues consider severe disciplinary action against clubs and individuals, with possible expulsions from this year’s Champions League.

JAMES CORBETT corbett@offthepitch.com

When plans for a breakaway European Super League were leaked to the media in January, the response of the governing bodies, FIFA and UEFA, was so strident and immediate that most of the clubs involved in the plotting thought – according to a Super League source intimately involved in this attempted putsch and who spoke to offthepitch.com on condition of anonymity – it was “game over”.

A joint statement signed at the time by FIFA president Gianni Infantino and the six confederation heads, including UEFA’s Aleksander Čeferin, that they would not recognise any such competition and participating clubs and players would risk being banned from competitions organised under their flags.

The ferocity of the response was enough to deter most agitators from pursuing the putative plans further.

Instead they threw their weight behind the European Club Association’s negotiating efforts to get a bigger slice for elite clubs in a post-2024 settlement for the Champions League. These negotiating demands included guaranteed places for top clubs who hadn’t qualified via domestic leagues and a stake in a joint venture set up between the ECA and UEFA to handle marketing and commercial rights.

Even as negotiations went on and became protracted as the ECA’s demands increased there was no hint that the Super League was anything other than a dead rubber.

Madrid momentum

However the Real Madrid president Florentino Perez kept privately pursuing the idea of a Super League and other clubs were lobbied.

In tandem with his efforts, the American owners of Manchester United and Liverpool – nominally bitter rivals but strongly united in a pursuit of additional revenues – continued to engage consultants and advisors to explore both Project Big Picture – their failed plot to take control of the Premier League – and a greater chunk of the European pie.

Legal opinions were taken by the Americans as to whether any expulsion from domestic or international competition in the event of a breakaway would be upheld due to competition law.

When these rebel clubs – who were joined in varying degrees by AC Milan, Barcelona and Juventus – believed they had a watertight opinion that it wouldn’t, they moved to get more clubs to join their plot.

But even as late as last Tuesday the rebels didn’t believe they had the numbers needed to get this plan to work. Even those who were working on reviving Project Big Picture at this time claimed to have no knowledge of any attempted coup.

Perhaps a crucial moment came when Perez arrived on Merseyside for Real’s Champions League quarter final. It was at this point that latent plans suddenly gained some urgency. UEFA were voting on the future of the Champions League within days and they needed to act. It was now or never.

Thickening plot

A hardcore of five or six clubs became eight or nine by the end of last week. Others who were at that stage non-committal, such as Chelsea, Manchester City and Tottenham, hedged their bets but kept an ear on the secret talks.

But even at this stage a tight lid was kept on negotiations and UEFA was blindsided. On Thursday evening the Manchester United CEO Ed Woodward phoned Čeferin. Earlier that day the ECA board had met and voted for the deal that had been agreed with UEFA.

“He called me last Thursday in the evening saying that he's very satisfied with the reforms, that he fully supports the reforms, and that the only thing he would like to speak is about financial fair play,” Čeferin said Monday.

“Obviously, he already signed something else,” he reflected.

Liars and snakes

Woodward wasn’t alone in his Machiavellianism. The following day the UEFA Club Competitions committee met to discuss the deal. Woodward sits on that subcommittee, as does Ivan Gazidis and Pedro Lopez of Real Madrid.

“And all the world knows now that they were unanimously supporting our reforms on Friday when they already signed the agreement.”

This is about greed, selfishness and narcissism. Nothing else

Speaking to reporters on Monday Čeferin seemed genuinely aghast by this behaviour. He talked about his time working as a criminal lawyer and said that he had never encountered such behaviour even then. These people, he said, were “liars and snakes.”

“I've seen many things in my life but the situation like that I've never seen,” said the UEFA president. “And obviously, greediness is so strong that all the human values evaporate.”

All the while the plot continued to evolve. Manchester City and Chelsea are understood to have been among the last to join up, having been fiercely lobbied over the course of Friday and Saturday by some of the most hawkish clubs.

Personal betrayal

At this stage UEFA and the Premier League continued to protest to journalists that they knew nothing about any coup, but behind the scenes there was increased anxiety about the rumours. EPL CEO Richard masters wrote to all clubs warning against their involvement.

On Saturday Čeferin decided to challenge the chairman of the ECA Andrea Agnelli, who is also the chairman of Juventus. The two men are also known to be personally close: Čeferin is even godfather of one of Agnelli’s five children.

“Agnelli has to be one of the biggest disappointments, in fact THE biggest,” said Čeferin.

“I’ve met a few liars and many good people in football. I don’t want to get too personal but the fact is I have never seen a person lie so many times, so persistently, as he did.

“It was unbelievable. I spoke to him Saturday afternoon and he said, “Don’t worry, nothing is going on.” He said he’d call me again in an hour but turned off the phone.”

Agnelli has since resigned his ECA chairmanship and thrown Juventus’s lot in with the rebel alliance.

“The next day we got the Super League announcement,” said Čeferin.

“All the world knows now. Greediness is so strong that all human values evaporate with some people. This is about greed, selfishness and narcissism. Nothing else.”

Asian markets

Although the story was broken by The Times on Sunday lunchtime in Europe, the Super League announcement only formally came around midnight. This was no coincidence. “It was done with purposeful intention of delivering for the Asian markets, without time for a riposte,” said a source who works with a European league.

Sleep on Sunday night was a precious commodity for anyone working either for the Super League or those trying to block it. One executive told he’d managed just three hours. But by breakfast on Monday the briefing began in earnest.

Why are 12 clubs breaking away from existing club competitions? What was the real reason?

The response was extraordinary. Apparently the clubs don’t like the Swiss Model that UEFA and the ECA had just painstakingly agreed after more than two years of negotiations.

Why then did Agnelli last month describe the Swiss Model as “beautiful”? I asked. Why at Friday’s UEFA Club Competitions committee was the Swiss model was voted through by members that included Real Madrid’s Lopez, rebel club CEOs Ferrian Soriano (Man City) and Ivan Gazidis (AC Milan), while prime Super League mover Manchester United had not one, but two representatives in Ed Woodward and David Gill.

“You make a good case for the prosecution,” the official deadpanned.

Solidarity slush fund

The official went on to say that Super League clubs would more than treble the solidarity payments they make to non-participants in their breakaway league compared to what UEFA pay non-qualifying clubs now.

UEFA currently devote 4 per cent of its gross Champions League revenue (currently €3.25 billion) across member associations and clubs in its 55 nations to those who don’t participate in their competitions. These solidarity payments are meant to ensure no club falls too far behind those who partake in UEFA’s cash-rich club competitions.

PSG are still to confirm their position, but given that al-Khalifa is also CEO of Bein, who have billions invested in Champions League rights, the assumption is that they won’t follow the rebels

Over the 23 years the Super League has been agreed for, this amounts to around €3 billion from UEFA versus the €10 billion the Super League has promised.

More members

What would happen if the Champions League continued without the breakaway twelve? The Super League source confirmed that the new body had “no problem” with UEFA continuing its own international club competitions, but questioned whether the Champions League would be viable “without its 15 most powerful clubs.”

Pointed out that it only actually had 12 clubs, he added that the Super League were now waiting on the final three members to join up.

“Obviously the 50+1 ownership rules made it very difficult to have private negotiations,” said the source of Bundesliga clubs, who also at that stage expected PSG to sign up.

And then, perhaps came the key to the success or failure of any Super League. Did it have a broadcast partner for a project that would kick off in just over four months? The source said that it hadn’t as yet.

When it was pointed out that the Champions League had broadcast and commercial deals in place until 2024 and could bide its time until then, the official said that the Super League was confident fans would vote with their subscriptions.

The rebel clubs, the source added, were “braced for a hurricane” of fan opposition, but the rebel league questioned whether this will be seen through when tickets go on sale and TV packages become available.

Further cracks

If that wasn’t a wholly convincing display, further cracks started appearing in the Super League’s edifice.

Borussia Dortmund put out a statement in which they condemned the Super League and said that neither they nor Bayern Munich would be taking part. Bayern later confirmed this position, and its president Karl-Heinz Rummenigge assumed the ECA presidency from the now departed Agnelli.

It is my expectation the 12 clubs will be thrown out

Separately, the PSG president Nasser al-Khalifa, in his role on the UEFA Exco voted through the ECA-UEFA plan. PSG are still to confirm their position, but given that al-Khalifa is also CEO of Bein, who have billions invested in Champions League rights, the assumption is that they won’t follow the rebels.

Suddenly, with only clubs from three countries, a European Super League started to look very different

Bad maths

Further questions about the Super League’s purported €10 billion in solidarity payments to non-participants were also begged. Set against the €2.9 billion UEFA would pay over the same 23 year period it indeed looked an enticing offer.

However, UEFA’s figures don’t allow for inflation of broadcast deals, whereas the Super League’s modelling does.

Perhaps more importantly, UEFA splits its Champions League revenues between 32 clubs (rising to 36 from 2024), the Super League just 20. Each of the lowest ranking 12 clubs for 2018/19 – the most recent year for which figures are available – earned on average £30.2 million, or a total of £362 million. Over 23 years and not adjusted for inflation, this is a further €8.33 billion.

In addition to this UEFA pays €107.5 million annually (not adjusted for inflation) to Champions League clubs that don’t progress through its qualifying stage. Or another €2.47 billion over 23 years.

In other words, and not adjusting for inflation, €13.7 billion would flow through football’s eco-system in terms of solidarity money and other payments under the existing system governed by UEFA.

“This is typical of [United co-owner] Joel Glazer’s maths. Fanciful scenarios that always look at the best possible outcome,” said a finance expert, who has previously advised one of the English rebel clubs. He believed that the Super League would need to generate at least €5 billion per year to stay solvent; the Champions League currently generates €3.25 billion. “The numbers simply don’t stack up."

The Super League, by contrast, has so far given no detail whatsoever about its commercial or broadcast plans.

Don’t know S***

By early afternoon Monday, Čeferin had given full vent to his feelings.

“In my opinion, this idea is a spit in the face of all football lovers and our societies,” he told reporters.

And later: “I'm angry to see that that this team of a dozen rich people wants to steal football from our society. I'm angry because they don't care about anything because they write in their press release about solidarity and they look they don't know s*** about solidarity.

“They don't care about solidarity. They care about their pockets. They care to be famous. But they will be famous in their own way. They are famous today. Every single country in the world is writing about them, but not as very popular people.”

Will there be a peace deal that could allow the Super League to exist with clubs being promoted from UEFA competition? Here, Ceferin’s tone was at its most unequivocal all afternoon. “Never.”

Punitive action

While Čeferin ultimately left the door ajar for the rebels to back down, punitive action was already being prepared. The Premier League called a shareholders meeting for Tuesday morning, with its six rebels excluded from proceedings.

It is also understood to be under consideration that Woodward, Lopez, Agnelli and Gazidis, as members of UEFA, could face individual disciplinary action for breaching UEFA’s Ethics Code, by taking actions that work against the interests of the organisation they were supposed to represent and protect.

Meanwhile, the chairman of the Danish FA, Jesper Moller, who sits on UEFA's executive committee, said he expects clubs involved in the Super League to be thrown out of the Champions League.

That would see semi-finalists Chelsea, Manchester City and Real Madrid kicked out, leaving PSG as the only remaining team in the competition.

"There will be an extraordinary executive committee meeting on Friday. It is my expectation the 12 clubs will be thrown out," Moller told Danish public broadcaster DR.

"The clubs must go out and I expect that to happen on Friday, and then you will have to work out how to finish the Champions League.”

Perhaps most far-reaching was his claim that players' contracts with their respective clubs would be automatically revoked, meaning they could chose to sign for a new club.

A power grab for football’s billions, could end up being the costliest error of them all.

[Chester Perry]

SportsProMedia.com looks at the legal challenges that must be passed for the Super LEague to start

European Super League: What legal hurdles stand in the way of a breakaway competition?
As opposition to plans for a new European Super League intensifies, Darren Bailey, a consultant at law firm Charles Russell Speechlys, tells SportsPro how a legal battle over the proposed breakaway competition could play out and why the outcome is “50-50 under the current approach”.

By Sam CarpPosted: April 20 2021

Concrete plans for a JP Morgan-funded European Super League (ESL) might have only just reached the surface, but a subsequent legal battle between the founding members and soccer’s outraged ruling authorities could run for several years if both parties stand their ground.

That is according to Darren Bailey, a consultant at law firm Charles Russell Speechlys and the former director of football governance and regulation at English soccer’s Football Association (FA), who believes that each side could argue that the other is breaching competition law.

Bailey points out that some of the grievances likely to be aired by the two parties should the fallout eventually make its way to court can already be seen in cases involving other sports. The ESL can take confidence from a recent ruling involving the International Skating Union (ISU), which in December last year was found by the European Union (EU) General Court to have breached the EU’s competition law by prohibiting athletes from taking part in competitions not sanctioned by the global governing body.

The objections of soccer’s major powerbrokers, meanwhile, are similar to those that have been put forward by the Union of European Leagues of Basketball (ULEB) and the International Basketball Federation (Fiba) in their complaint against Euroleague Commercial Assets (ECA). ECA is the organiser of the EuroLeague, another breakaway that has become Europe’s most prestigious club basketball competition, but which the two dissenting parties have accused of ‘anti-competitive behaviour’ and ‘abusing a dominant position in the market’.

With the proposed 20-team ECL now posing a direct threat to the Uefa Champions League, European club soccer’s existing top level of competition, Bailey says cases that have not received as much publicity previously could play a part in what happens next.

“I think one of the things in the past that hasn’t been realised is the implications of cases involving ice skating or basketball or swimming,” he tells SportsPro. “They’ve actually created the legal framework, and people weren’t keeping an eye on it.

“This is where you end up, with the biggest sport in the world citing an ice skating case in order to create a Super League. You wouldn’t really have thought that, would you?”

What legal hurdles have to be cleared for the ESL to come to fruition?
Bailey explains that there are “three levels of issues” that the founding members of the ESL will have to overcome if they want their multibillion dollar dream to become a lucrative reality.

“There will be potentially a disciplinary situation,” he says. “There’s potentially a commercial contractual position. Then there’s also avoiding the sanctions that will be being imposed by the football authorities on their conduct.”

Bailey notes that there are “a whole series of approvals and requirements” that the ESL would need from the likes of Uefa, which has shown no appetite whatsoever to give the green light to the new competition in its current form. Indeed, European soccer’s governing body responded fiercely in the face of the breakaway plans, releasing a joint statement with various leading national leagues and associations saying they will ‘consider all measures available to us’ in order to ‘stop this cynical project’.

“What that really sets up is the real essence of this argument,” Bailey continues, “which is going to be: is this a competition law position insofar as its relates to a typical market, or can you find a persuasive argument that says sport should be treated differently and the monopoly structures should be allowed to continue?

“I think what the ESL will argue is that the prohibitions that are seeking to be applied on it and the sanctions that are seeking to be applied on it are abusive of a dominant position, because [the football bodies are] acting as regulator and commercial rival, and it’s wrong for them to be in a position to stop a new event being opened, because they have a commercial interest in stopping it, and it’s a misuse of their monopoly powers to do so.”

Bailey argues that competition law should not be applied to sport in the same way that it is to industries like shipping or steel, instead suggesting it requires a “more nuanced approach” that acknowledges that sport is designed to create a level playing field. However, because of the way the regulations are now, he believes the ESL “will feel quite emboldened” and says it could be “more difficult” for the soccer authorities because they have to “change the weather of the European courts”.

He continues: “The question is whether the sports bodies and football authorities could demonstrate that the overriding needs, the specificity of sport, the cultural and social significance of football, means that there should be a much more sporty approach to the application of competition law that allows them to say: ‘this is important, the European model of sport is predicated on an open pyramid, it’s predicated on social dimension, clubs, regions, history and heritage, it’s not the American model which is predicated on the basis of profit and entertainment.’

“So I see this as being a challenge between those two interpretations of the European legal framework.”

Who holds the upper hand?
As well as saying that they plan to block the formation of the ESL, soccer authorities have threatened the rebel teams and their top talent with several sanctions. The likes of Uefa and the Premier League have warned the breakaway clubs that they will be thrown out of domestic competitions, while players have been told that they face a ban from flagship national team tournaments such as the Fifa World Cup if they play in the ESL.

It was reported on 19th April, though, that the ESL has already taken ‘protective steps’ to prevent those sanctions from being handed down. A letter addressed to Fifa and Uefa, which was seen by the Press Association (PA), said that the ESL has ‘filed a motion before the relevant courts in order to ensure the seamless establishment and operation of the competition’.

“The interesting thing for me is what you’re seeing now is a strategy from what I would say are those that are potentially being sanctioned in any sport setting to take preemptory action,” says Bailey. “So rather than wait for me to impose a sanction on you, you almost say, ‘well we think they’re going to do this and we want you to stop it happening.’

“So that’s the gameplan, and that’s potentially quite clever, because it draws it out and gets you an accelerated and potentially preemptive protection, so that you’re actually protective of yourself.”

How long could a potential legal battle drag on?
The ESL has said that its inaugural season ‘is intended to commence as soon as practicable’, which feels like it could be some way off given the level of immediate opposition and the various issues that need to be resolved.

The question is, though, precisely how long might that process take?

“The slight problem is here if you go through to the end of this process it’s going to take a long time,” Bailey says. “There’s a case in basketball at present where there’s a challenge by the league associations to say two things. One is that it’s not right that you’re not selecting teams on sporting merit, even when they’re doing well in their domestic competitions, but moreover they think that the franchises are all enjoying competitive and commercial advantages that they construe as being anti-competitive.

“That case hasn’t been heard yet, but you could foresee the football authorities swinging behind the basketball case, which is not yet decided, the ESL swinging behind the ISU case, which has been decided, and no party saying, ‘we can give up here’. If that goes long that will be five, six, seven years.”

Bailey adds that it is “unlikely” that soccer could deal with that period of disruption and it will more likely come down to whether the courts are prepared to deal with the case “on a highly expedited basis”. He also cites an “expedited mediation” and a “longer term transitional arrangement” as possibilities.

“For me, because of the significance of it, it could go fast,” Bailey continues. “The question of whether it can go fast enough, I think next year seems very ambitious. I think the legal arguments are reasonably straightforward. You might have a bit of an argument and some of these cases get bogged down in detailed economic reports, but my sense is because of the nature of the case and the impact that it has that they would seek to wrap an expedited process around it and they would seek to drive it through.”

So is a European Super League likely from a legal perspective?
European soccer has been shaken to its very foundations by the news that has emerged in recent days, with governing bodies, clubs and fan groups united in their anger at what many perceive as a betrayal by some of the richest teams in the game.

In terms of whether a legal battle will result in the ESL getting what it wants, Bailey believes the outcome is “50-50 under the current approach”.

“Mainly it’s quite finely balanced,” he adds, “but I think if the courts go to a more sports-specific approach, which I think they should, and they do start to raise questions over the commercial side of the deal, in terms of the founders taking a lot of private money out, then I think it goes 60-40 in favour of a football family victory.

“And all I would say is it’s a very, very big decision, a huge decision for any court to make.”

Indeed, whatever the outcome may be, Bailey expects that the case will have profound implications for sport as a whole. Soccer is not the only sport whose traditional decision makers have faced the threat of a breakaway in recent years, and Bailey believes the ESL ruling can be treated “a little bit like a test case”.

“It warrants that to happen,” he asserts. “More broadly, even beyond this narrower football setting, it’s something that all sports really need. They all need to get clarity of the scope of their powers, because if you don’t know the scope of your regulatory authority, you will continue to act in a defensive way, and you will start to see more and more breakaways.

“Sports are now all suffering from potential challenges and breakaways, so this is not all about football, it’s about the wider need for sports to understand what they can and can’t do.”

[Chester Perry]

The following is a link to a chapter to a book that is being touted by a chap called Rob Francis - this single chapter provides so much history to the financial changes in football that I thoroughly recommend you give it a look as a reference point to events, wider research should give a more rounded perspective

https://rob-francis.medium.com/good-of- ... afcdd19316

[Chester Perry]

Throughout the last few days I have argued that the fundamental argument for the Super League was based in the research published by the ECA last Thursday (linked further up this page), yes there was greed, entitlement and protectionism, the essence however was growing the engaged audience, that is pretty clear from the interviews of Florentino Perez and Andrea Agnelli. I am no supporter of the project but I do believe that throughout the mass hysteria little has been done to properly understand the driver, and the more serious journalists of the game have been deeply complicit in this.

You may or may not be aware that on Tuesday morning, shortly before he acknowledge that the Super League was not going ahead, Andrea Agnelli had an interview published simultaneously in La Repubblica and Corriere dello Sport - here Juvecanal.com and English Language fans distil what was said. There is little doubt it is flawed in execution but the detail backs up what I have repeatedly said

Agnelli explains why The Super League is needed
APR 21, 2021Juve Canal

Juventus president and vice president of The Super League, Andrea Agnelli spoke to Corriere Dello Sport, in an exclusive interview about the new project.

Here’s what he had to say.

The Super League in 5 points:

“First: no threat to domestic leagues. Indeed, the firm will, apart from the group of twelve cluhs, continue to participate in national competitions, both in the championship and in the cups. Therefore total adherence to what is tradition.”

“Two: since the establishment of the Super League, dialogue with institutions has been encouraged, in our case FIFA and Uefa.”

“Three: what we are doing is perfectly legal. We are exercising a freedom provided for by the Treaty of the European Union, and I consider this to be particularly important.”

“Four: football is experiencing an enormous crisis of appeal that affects the new generations.

“Stadiums closed for a year have recorded. For those with children aged ten, fifteen, twenty, the disaffection is more than palpable: young people are interested in other things. Evidently – and here we enter a macroeconomic sphere – this sad phenomenon has accelerated due to the pandemic.”

“Fifth: and it is perhaps the key point, what we are trying to organize is the best competition in the world.”

But only the rich would benefit from this?

“It is absolutely not like that. Our will is to create a competition that can bring benefits to the entire football pyramid, substantially increasing what is the solidarity distributed to other clubs.”

“A competition, I emphasize, which remains open and provides for five places available to the other clubs.”

Sporting merit to join the league?

“This is part of the dialogue we have requested of the institutions.”

“The biggest problem in the football industry is stability, the reforms of national and international demonstrations are themes that I have heard re-launched during every election campaign of every federal president and of international regulatory bodies.”

“Once they get to occupy positions of responsibility, however, they think about maintaining positions of privilege and monopoly.”

“The crisis is not just financial, but one of loyalty. The younger ones want big events and are not tied to elements of parochialism. My generation was much more so.”

“Some data: 1/3 of world fans follow at least two clubs and often these two are present among the founders of the Super League.”

“10% are fascinated by great players, not clubs. 2/3 follow football for what is now called ‘fomo’, fear of missing out, fear of being cut off. And now the most alarming percentage: 40% of children between 15 and 24 years old have no interest in football.”

“We need a competition capable of opposing what they reproduce on digital platforms, transforming the virtual into real. Through Fifa you create your own competition, that competition has to be brought back to the real world.”

“Let’s leave out the effects of the competition of the various Fortnite, Call of Duty etc., authentic catalysts of the attention of today’s kids destined to be tomorrow’s spenders.”

My response to Čeferin?

“I worked for almost ten years in international sports institutions. Well, these hold the control of the demonstrations, a de facto monopoly, without however facing any economic risk.”

“The economic risk falls exclusively on the clubs. I was unable to make those institutions understand the enormity of the entrepreneurial risk for clubs that generate value for all football stakeholders. Or maybe they had no interest in understanding it. It was necessary to change things.”

The media and Čeferin’s reaction?

“I had assumed that there would be such a reaction. As for the details and dynamics of personal life, I would prefer not to comment because they comment for themselves.”

“The political will for a change in the direction of the league of the strongest has been manifesting for twenty, thirty years. We didn’t invent hot water. What has not been understood is the terrible impact of the pandemic on the world of football.”

“The highest institution of European football in December 2020 thought that the pandemic would not do any damage, if you don’t believe it, go and read the statements again.”

“I reiterate that Uefa does not run any risk in the activity it regulates, it only benefits from it. They manage our rights, sell them, decide how many to redistribute, and regulate us. The 2019 reform was a Uefa proposal, as soon as they heard a minimum of noise they ran away. They talk about distributing and redistributing the revenues we generate and this can be done in a much better way.”

“They choose what they want to be. All of us are born as a game and have statutes and rules of the game, but we can no longer roll the dice and see what number comes out, today we are a 25 billion industry.”

Serie A?

“Before the last letter sent, I called Dal Pino, as an act of courtesy. “Paolo, we found ourselves in a stalemate” I explained to him “this stalemate derives from the management of the funds proposal.”

“Never having brought that issue to the agenda from February 3rd to March 26th led to a split in fact. The president is a guarantee figure and in our opinion he did not play this role in the good and healthy management of the League.”

TV rights?

“The Championship playoff to access the Premier is worth about 150 million, that gives stability.”

“The top clubs transfer wealth, pay me the balance of the year-over-year transfer campaign and see how much we affect. We also live with the pressure of the result. If we lose two games in a row, you will see titles as”Photonic Crisis”.”

“In Germany for eight years in a row Bayern have won, in France it’s always PSG. In Italy in 100 years of Serie A, the title has been won 80 times by Juve, Inter and Milan.”

“These are statistics, I could organize a symposium on the evolution of the market and the impact of television rights on the geography of European football.”

“I do not deny the dream, but I underline an aspect that I find absurd. I have been in football since 2010 and in 2010 Juve received 100 million euros from the system. In 2020-21 it always took 100 million euros, the same figure in eleven years of development, while we went from a turnover of 170 to one of 550, investing 450 million in infrastructure.”

“We brought Cristiano to Italy and his presence alone guaranteed the other clubs 4 million at the box office. We wish to continue importing more champions with benefits for all levels of football, from the youngest to the amateurs.”

“I never thought I was wrong to get Ronaldo, I would do it again in the morning. Same goes for Pirlo.”

[elwaclaret]

Madrid acted and are continue to act as though they are entitled. You notice the Liverpool chairman only apologised to Liverpool fans and you think anything they have to say is trustworthy. They can say what they like, but if it was for the good of football and the clubs why did they do it all in a covert operation from their colleagues in their leagues and the fans?

They are simply no longer credible, and need punishing as they clearly learned nothing from all this.

[Chester Perry]

Madrid acted and are continue to act as though they are entitled. You notice the Liverpool chairman only apologised to Liverpool fans and you think anything they have to say is trustworthy. They can say what they like, but if it was for the good of football and the clubs why did they do it all in a covert operation from their colleagues in their leagues and the fans?

They are simply no longer credible, and need punishing as they clearly learned nothing from all this.

I think you missed the point of the post

[elwaclaret]

I think you missed the point of the post

Quite possibly as I only scanned it, I will read it properly... and avoid reading this stack I have piled up for work lol

[elwaclaret]

Just read it again... most of it I could agree needs discussing, but the source is a busted flush... in the same way I need to make arguments to be taken seriously in my historical study. If it was such a genuine attempt to reconfigure football for the future, why do it all in clandestine meetings. I am reading about JFK and Laos 1961... they ran similar covert campaigns, and even as the truth comes into view as official documents are released, JFK supporters continue to try to accommodate the covert dirty tricks.... Laos it was to create ‘freedom’... but only a Western facing freedom... I see not difference in this football attempt to force change.

[Chester Perry]

Just read it again... most of it I could agree needs discussing, but the source is a busted flush... in the same way I need to make arguments to be taken seriously in my historical study. If it was such a genuine attempt to reconfigure football for the future, why do it all in clandestine meetings. I am reading about JFK and Laos 1961... they ran similar covert campaigns, and even as the truth comes into view as official documents are released, JFK supporters continue to try to accommodate the covert dirty tricks.... Laos it was to create ‘freedom’... but only a Western facing freedom... I see not difference in this football attempt to force change.

I don't disagree too much and a major flaw is that younger people get older and tend to want something to sit and watch om the tv at some point - the risk is that they have never been that engaged with football, whereas games effectively involve being sat in front of a screen for extended periods and already involves the social aspect of remote multiplayer games. There are also a growing number of people making a living playing a game and having people watch them do it on livestream.

The clandestine (it wasn't that much everyone new this is what has been in the works for a long time) and closed shop elements essentially talk of fear (not of losing market share but of the pool of interest diminishing) and of childish stroppiness of I am right you are wrong. The latter of course has been heavily clouded by these clubs other stroppiness on the it is our interest generation and therefore should be our money. It has just been too difficult for many to sort out the real useful stuff from the crap that surrounds it.

As for it being the greatest competition ever, the format they created was effectively in place in the summer ICC cup, the desire was simply to make it more competitive than a series of glorified friendlies

[elwaclaret]

I don't disagree too much and a major flaw is that younger people get older and tend to want something to sit and watch om the tv at some point - the risk is that they have never been that engaged with football, whereas games effectively involve being sat in front of a screen for extended periods and already involves the social aspect of remote multiplayer games. There are also a growing number of people making a living playing a game and having people watch them do it on livestream.

The clandestine (it wasn't that much everyone new this is what has been in the works for a long time) and closed shop elements essentially talk of fear (not of losing market share but of the pool of interest diminishing) and of childish stroppiness of I am right you are wrong. The latter of course has been heavily clouded by these clubs other stroppiness on the it is our interest generation and therefore should be our money. It has just been too difficult for many to sort out the real useful stuff from the crap that surrounds it.

As for it being the greatest competition ever, the format they created was effectively in place in the summer ICC cup, the desire was simply to make it more competitive than a series of glorified friendlies

When the likes of EA Sports burst onto the scene... football clubs should have been secured for at least a generation. There was huge new money sloshing in clubs coffers... did they think that’s a bonus? No they thought like a kept partner.. spend spend spend. Now they look to the good of football? Ahead of a possible next bonanza from digital, but they only want what is best for everyone... maybe we should have bells attached to football socks, so we hear more distinctly as they try to pull the other one.

[Chester Perry]

When the likes of EA Sports burst onto the scene... football clubs should have been secured for at least a generation. There was huge new money sloshing in clubs coffers... did they think that’s a bonus? No they thought like a kept partner.. spend spend spend. Now they look to the good of football? Ahead of a possible next bonanza from digital, but they only want what is best for everyone... maybe we should have bells attached to football socks, so we hear more distinctly as they try to pull the other one.

Spending and the continuous upward drive in fees and wages is also part of the fear of not being at the forefront of the market and of losing revenue share, what they are doing feels more like renaissance Europe than free-market capitalism - this is a reasonable attempt at detailing why it was anti-free market capitalistic https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... ech-giants.

This from the telegraph (using work from the chaps at Vysyble) gives part of the reason why I talk about fear (no real return on investment) being the underlying driver.

The financial forces behind football's Super League abomination cannot be ignored
BEN WRIGHT APRIL 21, 2021

The European Super League is now collapsing under the weight of its own hubris with all six English clubs pulling out and club executives falling like ninepins. However, the financial forces that gave rise to this abomination have not been addressed and aren't going anywhere.

The sport's governing bodies have gained an undeserved reprieve. They had better learn from this crisis or it won't be football's last. The Super League may have got a straight red but it won't be long before something a lot like it starts warming up on the touchline.

The proposed breakaway by 12 leading European clubs was not (just) about greed. It was certainly not driven by profits. In fact football's problem is quite the opposite.

Vysyble, a financial strategy and analytics firm, has charted how the economics of the Premier League have deteriorated over the past decade despite two huge increases to TV broadcast contracts. For five years it has been publishing an annual report called: We’re So Rich It’s Unbelievable! The Illusion of Wealth Within Football. The clue’s in the title.

Revenue decrease across Europe's 'big five' leagues (2018-19 to 2019-20)
Premier League clubs achieved record revenues in the 2018/19 season – the last before Covid hit. Nevertheless, they suffered a collective accounting loss of £169m. And that’s not the worst of it. Pretax profit and loss provides only a partial measure of business performance.

Accountants do not attach a cost to the equity capital injected into the clubs by their owners (either directly or through loans that then get converted into equity). Clearly there is an opportunity cost because they could do something else with that cash – like stick it in the bank and earn interest.

And owners have been pouring money into their clubs hand over fist for the past five year. Between 2016/17, the first year of the then-record breaking TV deal, and 2018/19, the level of invested capital in the Premier League, has risen by £2.1bn to £6.8bn.

Add the cost of this capital (financed by equity and debt on the balance sheet) into the mix and the top 20 clubs in the country suffered an economic loss of almost £600m in the last full year before Covid, according to Vysyble’s analysis. Over half a billion quid! And that was a good year.

This is merely the culmination of a long-running trend. For years now, English football clubs have been spending money far faster than they can make it. “On paper Manchester United has been making pretax profits of £20m to £30m a year,” says Vysyble’s John Purcell. “But by our calculations the club has made steady economic losses ever since Alex Ferguson walked out of the door in 2013.”

The problem is even worse elsewhere in Europe. The net debts of the 20 teams in Italy’s Serie A hit €2.2bn last year. In March, the European Court of Justice ruled that four of Spain’s biggest clubs, including Barcelona and Real Madrid, were being propped up by illegal state aid.

There is next to no chance of the situation improving. TV audiences are showing signs of waning as the battle for the attention spans of younger generations intensifies (even before saturation coverage of closed doors matches made matters worse in recent months). This is why pay-TV companies are becoming more reluctant to partake in ruinous bidding wars for broadcast rights.

Football executives are increasingly emphasising social media interactions, giving a clear indication of where they are searching for future growth. How they will monetise this audience remains an open question.

Purcell argues that the issue is less that clubs are chasing a profit than that there are no proper rules compelling them to make one. This has led to a clearly discernible cycle of boom and bust through the three years between the triennial broadcast rights auctions as the clubs spend their new riches with increasing profligacy in an attempt to best each other.

It does not matter whether you class football clubs as out-and-out businesses or "community-based assets" – they still need to remain solvent. “It always seemed obvious to us that football’s new American owners in particular were not going to fund continuous losses, inject capital into the business each year and do nothing about it,” says Purcell.

As the hope of making future profits becomes increasingly quixotic, club owners are searching for new ways to crystallize the value of their investment. As far back as 2016 Vysyble predicted that a European competition based on the US closed-league model was all but inevitable, but was widely ignored.

Purcell believes that football has got itself into this mess because of weak regulatory oversight and a lack of proper governance. No individual club could afford not to take part in the spending arms race for fear of underperforming on the pitch. It was up to those in charge of the sport to call a halt to the collective madness.

It remains to be seen whether the Super League still has a future. Compromise was always unlikely because opening up the league would defeat its primary purpose. “Promotion and relegation flies in the face of the one thing these guys want to achieve, which is the elimination of risk,” says Purcell.

And herein lies the rub. Greed isn’t good or bad. It just is. The only way to temper it is with an equal and opposite emotion: fear. It has rightly been pointed out that sport without jeopardy isn’t really sport; it’s athletic endeavour reduced to the status of social media content. But capitalism without risk, without the cleansing power of creative destruction, isn’t capitalism either.

The new Super League is not rampant commercialism; it is mutant commercialism. If it doesn't collapse of its own accord and the football authorities are powerless to prevent what looks, swims and quacks like a cartel, all sorts of future distortions to the once beautiful game will inevitably follow. Moral hazard isn’t Eden’s promising younger brother.

[Chester Perry]

This thread by the Independent's Economics Editor Ben Chu is also well worth a read on the subject

https://twitter.com/BenChu_/status/1385161130532814848

[Chester Perry]

This week's Business of Sport Podcast from the Athletic has some interesting background history and detail from Peter Kenyon on European Football - though he is still talks about the G14 as a good thing, necessary may be good in how it has performed, questionable

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/e ... 0518051451

[elwaclaret]

Maybe I am becoming old a cynical, but I have very little time for football clubs financial strife at the top level. If I bought everything on HP and lived well beyond me means I would eventually be taken to court and lose it all as a lesson. I would not expect the national press to run in-depth analysis of how I could fund me out of my stupidity.. so I do not accept those with most power are victims. They are idiots, rich idiots but idiots nonetheless.

Independent management for me is what is required to re-shape football, not just businessmen but supporters groups, ex-managers, players and club owners... the German system for example spits out Dortmund for a period, Bayern remain largely dominant, even in Europe without getting involved in ridiculous high jinks... I’m not saying they have it nailed but it far closer than the rest of major European football.

[Chester Perry]

Interesting piece on Florentino Perez from the Financial Times

Florentino Pérez: Spain’s football king faces his greatest challenge
ARASH MASSOUDI APRIL 22, 2021

As Europe’s top football clubs deserted the continent’s planned Super League this week, the exodus was a rare humiliation for the competition’s mastermind: Florentino Pérez, president of Real Madrid.

It was Pérez’s ambition to use the Super League to multiply revenues for the clubs involved, locking in cash flow for a decade and providing relief for those that were struggling with debts even before the pandemic struck.

But it was not a playbook confined to Real Madrid, Europe’s biggest clubs, or even football itself.

Instead, Pérez has been pursuing a similar strategy — and working with the same tightknit group of financial advisers — to try to transform his Spanish construction group ACS into the world’s biggest toll road operator.

Earlier this month he unveiled a plan that could provide ACS with a steady stream of income for years to come — through a €10bn bid to buy Italy’s largest motorway network from Atlantia.

His vision for the Super League and ACS is the culmination of a decade or more of planning and positioning from a businessman who managed to survive the 2007-2008 Spanish property crash that sunk many rivals.

For both deals, the 74-year-old turned to Key Capital, a little-known Madrid-based brokerage and advisory boutique, to help execute them. One of the firm’s partners, Anas Laghrari, was tapped as the prospective general secretary of the newly formed company intended to run the Super League, under Pérez as chair.

“There is a step-change going on in the way Florentino organises his investments,” said Jonathan Amouyal, a partner at London-based hedge fund TCI. “He probably wants more stability, more predictability and more visibility of his businesses . . . A lifetime in doing construction projects is very difficult.”

Spain’s power broker
But, as Pérez is discovering, the fierce backlash over his attempt to remake football is proving even more trying.

“I am a little sad and disappointed because we were working on this for three years,” Pérez told Spain’s Cadena Ser radio late on Wednesday night, as he criticised what he labelled the “aggressiveness” and “orchestrated” response of football organisations such as Uefa and suggested that the English clubs’ decision to pull out had “infected” the others involved.

As the desertion of almost all of the 12 founding members lands a seemingly fatal blow on the league, the question is not just how Pérez and Real Madrid will react — but whether his ambitions for ACS will fare any better.

“I'm sure he [Pérez] will come back with something,” one person close to the Real Madrid chief said of the next chapter in his quest for a Super League. “You don’t work four years on something like this and just drop it.”

For decades, Pérez has been one of Spain’s biggest power brokers, because of his overlapping roles in business and sport. Long before his arrival, the box at Real Madrid was where the country’s executives and politicians struck their deals. The club is so close to the heart of the ruling elite that the former King Juan Carlos used to begin meetings with ministers by discussing its latest results.

But under Pérez, first elected as the club’s president in 2000, three years after forming ACS, Real Madrid became a commercial proposition as never before.

This was initially through its signing of “Galactico” star players such as David Beckham and Luis Figo, purchases largely financed by a half billion euro property deal in which the club’s old training ground was transformed into some of Madrid’s most prestigious office space.

“There they are,” Spain’s ABC newspaper once quoted Perez as saying of the four towers raised on the ground, on whose construction ACS helped, in a reference to his star signings. “The Figo tower, the Zidane tower, the Ronaldo tower and the Beckham tower.”

Although the Galactico project failed initially to produce a cohesive team, over Perez’s time at the club, Real has won the Champions League five times.

“He has never dissimulated. He has always linked his business image to that of Real Madrid,” said Lorenzo Bernaldo de Quirós, president of Freemarket, a Madrid-based consultancy.

ACS rejects the idea that Pérez has linked his personal fortunes to Real. “ACS is present throughout the world,” said someone close to the company, pointing out that the sprawling group has 180,000 employees. “But if Real was following ACS’s areas of businesses, it would have an Australian player, a Canadian player — this is nonsense.”

As Pérez found himself at the centre of the outcry over the Super League, he told Spanish television this week: “I don’t own Real Madrid. Its members do. What I am doing is for the sake of football.”

Dealing with debt
Another feature is shared by Real Madrid and ACS: debt. Real Madrid, whose revenues Pérez said this week have been €400m short of budget over the past two seasons, has an outstanding loan of €575m for the redevelopment of its Bernabéu stadium and a reported €200m in emergency government-backed coronavirus loans.

Like rival construction groups, ACS, which has a market capitalisation of €8.4bn, borrowed and bought significantly in the run-up to the financial crisis. At present it has €8.4bn in long-term financial liabilities and €2.9bn in short-term debt.

ACS characterises its most recent deals — including a €5bn agreement this month to sell industrial services businesses to Vinci of France — as part of a decade-long effort to strengthen its financial position and focus more on the toll road and renewable energy industries.

“They have a very good base business, but it is cyclical and they took on too much debt before the financial crisis,” said an ex-banker who worked with the group. “Florentino hasn’t had the balance sheet to match his ambitions, and perhaps he didn’t have the corporate governance to restrain them.”

Just as ACS hopes that a steady stream of toll road cash — the ultimate prize in his pursuit of Atlantia’s motorways — will provide the basis for its future business, so Pérez has expressed similar ambitions for Real Madrid.

“Television pays: we, the big clubs, have fans in Singapore and China, everywhere. You see it in social networks . . . This is what generates money,” he said this week. “I got into the world of football in 2000. It has to evolve, as life and businesses evolve . . . it has to change, to adapt . . . What we want to do is save football, so that at least for the next 20 years it can live peacefully, without losing €200m.”

The trusted advisers
By many accounts, Perez prepared the groundwork for the Super League for years, through work with JPMorgan, the financial backers of the competition, and other leading clubs. He argues that the economic damage wrought on football by the pandemic was the catalyst for the project, which Key has been central to.

“Key Capital is not someone I had ever heard about until a few years ago and then suddenly they are everywhere,” says one senior Madrid-based banker. “Florentino is a guy who takes a lot of importance in who he trusts.”

It was Key, founded in 2010, that helped design a previous ACS transaction with Atlantia, in which the two groups jointly purchased the Spanish toll road group Abertis in 2018 — without calling on ACS’s cash-strapped balance sheet. Instead, ACS handed Atlantia a stake in its German subsidiary Hochtief.

Key, alongside Société Générale, is now also helping Pérez in his bid to seize Atlantia’s toll road business, which the Italian establishment favours handing to a consortium led by the country’s state investment fund.

While the Atlantia deal would be transformative for ACS, it is Key’s role in the Super League that has put the firm in the spotlight.

In particular, two of Pérez’s closest advisers are shareholders and senior partners at Key.

One is Laghrari, a 37-year-old Moroccan-born French national who worked as an equity derivatives banker at SocGen until he left for Key in 2013. Pérez has known Laghrari since he was born, having worked with his father on construction projects in Morocco.

One person who has worked closely with both men said Laghrari has become like family, spending hours with Pérez every week: “Anas has Florentino’s entire trust. If Anas doesn’t like something or doesn’t trust something, Florentino will not do the deal.”

Pérez, who can lack confidence in his command of the English language, turns to Laghrari for everything from reading contracts to advice on structuring transactions.

The other trusted Pérez adviser is Borja Prado, a 65-year-old patrician who is the third-biggest shareholder in Key, with almost 15 per cent, after Laghrari, with 17 per cent, and the group’s founder Alex Matitia, with more than 43 per cent.

Prado, who has advised Pérez for decades during stints at Rothschild, Lazard and Mediobanca, also served as chair of Endesa, the Spanish electricity group acquired by Italy’s Enel in a 2009 deal in which ACS played a crucial role.

“You can go back in time and find Borja getting votes for Pérez to become chair of Real Madrid,” said one Spanish executive who knows the men well. “They are as close as it gets.”

The two have lived through past reverses — such as 2006, when Pérez quit as Real Madrid president following a poor set of results, or the financial crisis, after which ACS had to sell assets to shore up its position.

Pérez has bounced back after such setbacks, reshaping ACS, and, on his 2009 return to Real, making the club more of a juggernaut than ever.

But now, with the Super League seemingly in tatters and the fate of ACS’s bid for Atlantia yet to be decided, the Madrid boss faces two of his toughest tests yet.

With additional reporting by Murad Ahmed in London

[Chester Perry]

The Financial Times again with detail that Perez has repeated over the last few days, they have a legally binding contract with expensive exit clauses - true but not until the competition actually starts - details details details, there is still the possibility of legal proceedings but it may prove difficult

Clubs signed up to punitive exit clauses for Super League
ARASH MASSOUDI APRIL 21, 2021

Super League clubs would have faced financial liabilities worth hundreds of millions of euros for leaving the breakaway competition once it began, according to leaked documents that reveal measures designed to lock Europe’s top teams into the now unravelling project.

The ambitious plan to redraw elite European football has unleashed a wave of criticism from rival clubs, players, politicians and fans since it was announced on Sunday.

Six English clubs late on Tuesday bowed to the pressure, saying they would no longer participate in a contest that was aimed at shattering the existing power structures in the world’s favourite sport. On Wednesday, Spain’s Atlético Madrid and Italy’s AC Milan and Inter Milan also announced they will withdraw.

The Super League’s founding clubs had agreed so-called “exit clauses” designed to keep them in the competition once money was raised to fund the project, according to leaked documents confirmed by the Financial Times.

As part of the clauses, the clubs agreed not to abandon their new competition before June 2025, and thereafter would have to issue notice to leave at least a season in advance.

Super League clubs would also have been liable to pay back money received from an initial “infrastructure grant”, the €3.25bn intended to be shared between 15 founding Super League clubs and provided through a debt-financing deal underwritten by US bank JPMorgan Chase.

The measures show the high stakes involved in joining the Super League, but the sanctions related to exit clauses also appear dependent on money flowing to the teams, which has not yet happened as the breakaway plan was first announced just two days ago.

However, legal risks remain for the clubs as the project flounders. The dozen teams that agreed to play in the competition signed binding contracts to join the competition, according to several people familiar with the terms of the deal.

The remaining Super League clubs have the option to sue those who are quitting in an attempt to enforce the deal, and it remains unclear what liabilities the clubs face for choosing to withdraw.

The Super League obtained an interim injunction in a Madrid commercial court on Tuesday preventing the game’s governing bodies from blocking the new competition.

After that early legal victory, English club officials spent Tuesday night preparing documents announcing their intention to withdraw, but a person involved in the decision said “there are legal complexities for the exiting clubs to navigate”.

The remaining Super League clubs, led by Spain’s Real Madrid, have affirmed their commitment saying “we are going to reconsider the appropriate measures to redesign this project”.

Currently, the competition would make 15 out of 20 clubs “permanent” members and the clubs have projected they would raise upwards of €4bn a season from broadcasting and sponsorship deals.

But fierce opposition gathered over their plan to replace the Champions League, the continent’s existing club contest that any team, through strong on-pitch performances in their respective national league, can qualify for.

Aleksander Ceferin, Uefa president, on Monday unveiled a counter proposal — a radical new format for the Champions League, including 100 more matches and more ties between the biggest sides.

After the English clubs withdrew from the Super League, he said: “The important thing now is that we move on, rebuild the unity that the game enjoyed before this and move forward together.”

Manchester United and Chelsea declined to comment. Manchester City, Arsenal, Liverpool and Tottenham Hotspur and the Super League did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

[Chester Perry]

Maybe I am becoming old a cynical, but I have very little time for football clubs financial strife at the top level. If I bought everything on HP and lived well beyond me means I would eventually be taken to court and lose it all as a lesson. I would not expect the national press to run in-depth analysis of how I could fund me out of my stupidity.. so I do not accept those with most power are victims. They are idiots, rich idiots but idiots nonetheless.

Independent management for me is what is required to re-shape football, not just businessmen but supporters groups, ex-managers, players and club owners... the German system for example spits out Dortmund for a period, Bayern remain largely dominant, even in Europe without getting involved in ridiculous high jinks... I’m not saying they have it nailed but it far closer than the rest of major European football.

I suspect the Bayern side of things re super league was more to do with senior executives being ex footballers - the reaction of those with football's history ingrained within them has been extremely consistent in coming out against this.

[elwaclaret]

I suspect the Bayern side of things re super league was more to do with senior executives being ex footballers - the reaction of those with football's history ingrained within them has been extremely consistent in coming out against this.

Agree... but I am also sure I have read that German football is by default joint owned by the interested parties, and if I read that it was most likely on your own superb thread.

[Chester Perry]

It has taken longer than expected, but the French Ligue has a club enter administration - I am not sure how the fact it is American owned Bordeaux will be viewed -

https://translate.google.com/translate? ... ue-du-club

Private Equity group Fortress Investment had lent Bordeaux over Euro 50m, they are currently in talks to lend a large sum to Inter Milan, It will be interesting to see if that goes through and at what rate of interest. I suspect financing in European football is about to get quite a bit more investment.

[elwaclaret]

It has taken longer than expected, but the French Ligue has a club enter administration - I am not sure how the fact it is American owned Bordeauz will be viewed -

https://translate.google.com/translate? ... ue-du-club

Terrible and it isn’t a small one either, plenty of past glory there.

[Chester Perry]

Terrible and it isn’t a small one either, plenty of past glory there.

The fact that major shareholders have refused to continue the funding is the intriguing issue from a public reaction perspective, these guys bought out Joe DaGrosa, who was there for a year and initiated this mess - this is the guy who has ambitions to set-up a large multi-club franchise and has been sniffing around Southampton for well over a year

[elwaclaret]

The fact that major shareholders have refused to continue the funding is the intriguing issue from a public reaction point, these guys bought out Joe Dagrosa, who was there for a year and initiated this mess - this is the guy who has ambitions to set-up a large multi-club franchise and has been sniffing around Southampton for well over a year

I know we differ on the way forward but this again shows, yet again clubs up and down Europe need protecting and not governing bodies only interested in chasing the money.

[Chester Perry]

I know we differ on the way forward but this again shows, yet again clubs up and down Europe need protecting and not governing bodies only interested in chasing the money.

This is a bit different given that clubs
- were forced to end last season by the government,
- have lost around Euro 35m a club as a result of TV deal (which was a 60% increase on the previous deal) collapse that, they will have budgeted for (think contracts)
- have lost a full year of matchday revenue

[Chester Perry]

I have listened to a number of podcasts about the collapse of Super League (Matt Slater seems to have been on most of them) this I think has been the best of them - from SportsProMedia featuring Tariq Panja and Matt Slater (of course)

https://podfollow.com/689306502/episode ... 993b7/view

[Chester Perry]

The Independent with a different perspective on how the Super League was brought down and a statement of the obvious as to why the 12 are likely to get off rather lightly

Did we just get lucky over Super League collapse?
The games governing bodies have received a wake-up call to how close they were to disaster

Vithushan Ehantharajah
Sports Feature Writer

21 minutes ago


The saying goes that experience is something you get right after you need it. Across the last six days, you could argue the football community had the best of both sides.

Fans, for instance, now know their true power. How their noise can intimidate the 12 who saw themselves above the rest. How cross-club anger can combine to shake the foundations of the ivory tower. And while the European Super League was a step too far in a familiar inching of the game away from the people, the brazenness of this particular scheme was so easy to call out that none of the pain it threatened to cause needed to be endured.

Those previously unknowing or ambivalent to the darker workings of football are more au fait and emboldened. In an industry like football, knowledge and distrust rise in sync. Thus a heightened awareness to the moves boards make, not just the Shameful Six in the Premier League, will breed greater vigilance. And what we might have lost in romanticism by seeing the game used as a means to nefarious ends, the bond with it has ended stronger with the realisation it is still within our control.

Any temptation to revel in this victory has been discouraged from all quarters. Like horror flick aficionados, the warnings are that the threat is never really gone, even if this last battle felt like a show-stopper. There were 12 Halloween movies, and Michael Myers was present in all of them.

But as the dust begins to settle on a tumultuous week, it is hard not to wonder how different things could have been. Because amid the jokes about Andrea Agnelli and his clown car of executives and owners lies an uncomfortable truth. Considering how far they were allowed to stumble before being tackled, who knows what they might have achieved with even a degree of competence and self-awareness they now have?

That seems to be the prevailing sense behind the scenes at Fifa and Uefa. A week that began with defiance looks to end in relief. The kind of relief that suggests the European Super League possessed the clout to fight and win if they were better-organised.

Both governing bodies were brought together by a common enemy. Even having to work together on Monday, which was supposed to be a public holiday for the canton of Zurich before Sunday’s drip-feeding of the Super League, was further common ground.

Statements from Uefa president Aleksander Ceferin and his Fifa counterpart Gianni Infantino were coordinated to pack a punch. A combination threat of expulsion from European club competition and players from rebel clubs banned from taking part in international tournaments worked. That was underpinned by the prospect of leagues considering points deductions and other sanctions to their rebel teams.

And yet the whispers suggest the majority will get off the hook. On Wednesday the Premier League’s remaining 14 were divided on whether The Six should face punishment. La Liga president Javier Tebas said Barcelona, Real Madrid and Atletico Madrid would get off altogether, beyond the public shaming all three have endured.

Similarly, the comfort Uefa and Fifa feel deep down is that their threats would have been tough to execute. At a time when associations and entire nations are looking to recoup losses incurred through the pandemic, banning marquee players from competing would be the last thing they need.

The 2018’s men’s World Cup, for instance, generated almost $5.4 billion, of which around $3billion was broadcast rights. The provisos on that figure relate to having the best of the best on show.

Uefa were wary of cutting off their stars from a Euros that had already been delayed by a year. Quietly, there was a feeling that had this been in any other odd number year - one without a delayed competition - they’d be able to punish completely, knowing there would be some contrition from the 12.

But with two high-profile international money-spinners in 18 months, following through on this threat would have been tough to justify. Even in the corridors of Fifa, 2022’s Qatar World Cup is being mooted as the finale of the Cristiano Ronaldo-Lionel Messi rivalry. Just imagine the marketing opportunities that would emanate from such a Godzilla versus Kong showdown.

Justification of those thoughts comes with the knowledge that by acting as they have, the Premier League’s top six have already damaged things for the rest by lowering the prospective value of the competition.

This was outlined by Conrad Wiacek, head of sport analysis at GlobalData, when it was reported some broadcast companies were looking to pay big money for the first set of media rights. “While good news for the teams involved, this will be a disaster for the English Premier League, which is due to go to market with its new media rights tender in the months ahead – and with its current multi-billion-dollar deal is expiring at the end of the 2021/22, no less.

“With six of its top clubs contemplating potentially joining the Super League, the collective bargaining position of the English Premier League will be severely weakened, leading to a cratering of the value of media rights for the Premier League, which currently generate in excess of £5bn domestically.”

Manchester City, Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur will take time to recover from the body blow of this week. They may never be trusted implicitly by their fanbases, wearing this blemish for a generation.

But the onus is on how they are allowed to recover. Not just in their contrition and how they learn their lessons, but how they are kept in check. Because the powers that be can only be so forceful without harming themselves. As one insider puts it, “it’s not even about the apology, it’s about time”. Those in power, even those on the right side of this particular argument will hope people forgive but will rely on people forgetting.

Whether it is the Super League or the Champions League reform, the fear is these clubs will be able to re-emerge as they once were. The only mistake they will learn from is what to do better next time, rather than what to do right. By over-estimating their power, they have merely set a marker for how powerful they are now and how much more powerful they could be.

[Chester Perry]

Naturally the FSA have taken this weeks events as an opportunity to further their cause and seek significant involvement in the review of the game

https://thefsa.org.uk/news/fsa-statemen ... ce-review/

I have no issue with that, fans must be equally involved as should all the other stakeholders (and that includes billionaire remote owners). My issue with this review is that almost everyone is approaching it from within their own narrow perspectives with solutions that suit them. I would also add that this level of government interest and commitment appears to result from the slight the Prime Minister feels after being in a meeting with Ed Woodward just days before the Super League announcement

My experience (and I used to do this for a living after first getting a MSc that was hugely focused on the subject) is that no right and proper solutions (it will not be a single of solution but a range of solutions) can be found to a problem without first defining it clearly, that in itself will require extensive input from all stakeholders, and more importantly no one dismissing any of that input, This is a time for empathy not recrimination.

Today's announced terms of reference for this review https://www.gov.uk/government/publicati ... governance are in my view overly defining. Many will say years of DCMS hearings have provide structure to this review, I have watch a number of those hearings. and nothing I have seen has significantly contributed to the overall problem definition

I fear for any outcome when so many are approaching this with pre-determined notion of problem and solution, which is what I am seeing a lot of.

There is also something else to remember, acting in isolation can have a detrimental effect internationally, what about the power brokers at UEFA, FIFA and the other confederations? We saw on Monday that UEFA ignored the European Leagues, by ratifying an agreement with the the ECA, an agreement brokered by club executives that resigned from the ECA and UEFA roles that very morning. It was also significant that FIFA President Gianni Infantino who has previously spoken openly of working with Florentino Perez on a Global Super League/World Club Cup and has been championing African and North American Super Leagues this year did not speak on the subject until the direction of travel was known. With populist isolationism being a theme of our current government there is so much to be wary about.