hi i don't watch football but lots of football blogs are talking about this super league thing and i'm interested to know what's happening. do you mind explaining to me what is it and why is everyone angry about it?
sure! what follows is a very poor explanation i’m sorry
basically, every football season we have the champions league (UCL) hosted by UEFA. participants include the top four of the bigger domestic leagues and the champions of the smaller leagues (e.g. real madrid, barcelona, atletico madrid, and sevilla qualified based on their standings in la liga, the spanish league, but only slavia prague of czech qualified for ucl this season). there is more to the determination of the participants but i’m just keeping it simple since it’s not super relevant
through this system, participants are generally determined by merit. a club might be in the ucl one season but might not qualify the next. it’s all dependent on quality of performance.
yesterday, though, 12 very popular (i won’t say biggest because lol) clubs in europe announced that they had formed the European Super League (ESL). these include the “big six” clubs of the premier league (english league), the popular teams of spain/la liga (real madrid, barcelona, atletico), and the popular teams of italy/serie a (juventus, ac milan, inter milan). essentially, they’re all breaking away from the UCL to do this.
how this super league works is that these 12 teams will simply never not qualify! they’re in there forever. there’s five qualification spots but the primary point is that there’s no relegation no qualification for these 12 teams etc it’s just the “big dogs” all gathering together so they can only play one another.
no passion or spirit or merit is involved in this.
most critically though, not only are the “founders” of this super league (florentino perez, andrea agnelli, joel glazer, who are the presidents of real madrid, juventus, and manchester united respectively) all billionaire businessmen, many of the other clubs involved are backed by that sort of money (e.g. manchester city with its “oil money,” chelsea with its billionaire businessman owner roman abramovich).
so, as you can imagine, they’re all acting in the main interest of what most businessmen are focused on.
by forming their own super league, these businessmen clubs obtain access to greater control over TV deals and money rewards. they no longer have to compete nor share anything with “smaller” teams. they’re hoarding the cash for themselves.
also? fucking jp morgan is financing the damn thing!
summarily, this is just a lil football monopoly they’re constructing. which is such a shame for football because it’s turning a very beloved sport into very little more than a money machine. and it hurts especially since admittedly, these are some very popular (okay fine i’ll say it, “big”) clubs involved who have tremendous followings. yes, there are a number of fans who really do oppose this (as you have seen), but there are also some who just do not give a fuck. they’ll watch their club wherever they play, doesn’t matter the ethics, the principles, whatever behind it. so if the super league proves successful... well. i really hope not.
UEFA, and it seems many domestic leagues, are doing what they can to stop this but really it’s just a bunch of threats (e.g. threats to kick these clubs out of their domestic leagues, deduct points, kick them out of the UCL, strip them of their badges, ban players of these clubs from competing in national tournaments like the world cup). UEFA’s not such a great organization either but at the moment i guess they’re the lesser evil. we’ve yet to see whether UEFA will uphold any of these threats should developments with the ESL continue.
some players have already spoken out (bruno fernandes of manchester city, ander herrera of paris saint germain) but there’s not really much else we can do beside sit and wait to watch football meet its demise see what happens.
tl;dr: capitalism baby. she’s ugly.
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