European Super League – not just a dark and twisted fantasy, but an inevitable consequence.

April 18th, 2021 is a very dark day indeed for the history of football: the day money and greed almost took over football.

Football, since its very genesis, has been about embracing a collective passion and a sense of community. It’s for chasing prestige and glory, not profits and revenue. Unfortunately, the football we know today appears to be very different from the football we grew up adoring.

Before delving further into this perfervid rant, let’s dissect what it is we’re really talking about and what its implications for the future of the sport entail:

What is the European Super League?

Proposed founding clubs:

1. AC Milan

2. Arsenal F.C.

3. Atlético Madrid

4. Chelsea F.C.

5. F.C. Barcelona

6. Inter Milan

7. Juventus F.C.

8. Liverpool F.C.

9. Manchester City F.C.

10. Manchester United F.C.

11. Tottenham Hotspurs F.C.

12. Real Madrid C.F.

The concept summed up:

· This group of twelve ultra-rich football clubs proposed to become founding members of a competition in which there would be twenty teams in total who play each other in a league format mid-week on a regular basis.

· Three unconfirmed teams were reported to join this group to make the founders’ list go up to fifteen. The remaining five seats in the league would be for ALL the other clubs over the continent to fight for – which will be up for relegation battles each and every season. The fifteen founding members, however, are permanent ones who would always be in the league come what may.

Why is this a problem?

Ideally, this sounds like a dream! The match-ups of the biggest clubs in the world that most of us wait years to see now happening on a regular basis – what could possibly be wrong about this?! Isn’t this what most of us fantasized about as naïve sixth and seventh graders?

Alas, in the real world, this is a terrible idea – arguably the worst possible thing that could happen to the sport.

Firstly, a ‘big’ team isn’t necessarily a ‘good’ team, let alone among the best. For example, teams like Arsenal and AC Milan have strong and loyal fanbases, and rightfully so due to their prolific club history. However, we all know what kind of teams they’ve turned into over the past few years. AC Milan had a massive decline over the past decade with nothing added to their trophy cabinet in years, while Arsenal have silently slumped to a mediocre mid-table team. Okay, leave that; let’s look at Tottenham Hotspurs – a team that has won the Premier League as many times as Bray Wanderers’ F.C. (a big fat 0), and a team that recently got hammered 3-0 by Croatian team Dinamo Zagreb. Perhaps Zagreb’s on the shortlist for the remaining three spots as well now? Isn’t that how a meritocracy should work?

So why are these teams even part of this ‘super’ league if they can’t even keep up with sub-par teams or assert anything close to dominance in their respective domestic circuits? The answer is simple: money.

If the Super League were to become a reality, football would solely become centralized around it. UEFA and FIFA have already announced that participants of the Super League would not be allowed to partake in their respective leagues as well, which entail the Champions League, the World Cup, and all domestic leagues. This means that all these players would be restricted to this competition and relieved of both their national duties and domestic duties. Now, why would fans want to continue watching UEFA and FIFA matches if their favorite players and teams aren’t even in them? The proposed founding clubs have the largest fanbases in all of football, and this league means all viewership immediately shifts away from the competitions that have been the pioneers of football evolution for decades to the ESL, morphing football into a monopolized and somewhat monotonous sport. Thus, the ultra-rich billionaire owners get what they want: returns for their investment in the club.

Leaving all this aside, perhaps the primary concern with this league is the fact that it strikes right at the heart of sporting meritocracy. We won’t have any more Leicester Citys winning the Premier League, or AFC Ajaxes knocking Real Madrids out of the Champions League, or AS Monacos winning Ligue 1 and reaching the semi-finals of the Champions League, or Portos winning the Champions League, and for what reason? With this new structure in global football, there is absolutely no bandwidth for ‘underdog stories’ anymore. Domestic leagues all move down one tier; for example, the EPL will become equivalent to today’s Championship league. Consequently, everyone would become so engrossed with the new “normal” tier of football that everything else will fail to gain much traction. This is also terrible news on the financial front because these ‘small’ teams are ‘small’ for a reason: they aren’t owned by the same external billionaires. The most viewed matches for all these teams are undoubtedly the fixtures with any of the Big 6 clubs, and frankly, a good percentage of their revenue comes in thanks to them. With them suspended from the league to pursue higher monetary gains, viewership for these clubs’ matches will diminish even further and many may be pushed to the edge of bankruptcy. Furthermore, this creates an even greater divide between the rich and the poor clubs of Europe, with the ESL clubs hoarding a majority of revenue in the sport as a whole. This inhibits the growth of all clubs that aren’t “invited” to join this elitist league, allowing them to pick up all young and prospective talent from these small clubs and giving fans even fewer reasons to give them viewership. All this does is further tilt the scale in their favor and help the small clubs drown.

Think this isn’t enough? Consider perhaps the greatest ethical dilemma with this wild proposal: the players and coaches – perhaps the only ones in any touch with the actual game – have absolutely no say in this. As Toni Kroos said back in November, they’re nothing less than “puppets” at the hands of their superiors (in this case, the owners). Even if UEFA, FIFA and the ESL were to come to an agreement to somehow fit all competitions in team schedules, is it really fair to expect the players to undergo such arduous and continuous workloads? It’s already a physical burden for the players to play as much as they are being made to, and adding a whole new league competition mid-week is just cruel. Players would inevitably set their own priorities (which would probably be the ESL due to power of their superiors and constant pressure on their heads), leading to them having to rest during a good chunk of domestic league matches regardless, making these leagues even less enticing to watch and shifting even more attention away from them. Besides, how well do you think a player would play with a metaphorical gun to his head? Their performances would definitely take a hit and, either way, it seems that football would be bound to be dead.

Why weren’t heavyweight German teams like Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund included in this plan?

The way German football is structured is very different, compared to the way English, Spanish, Italian, and other countries’ football is. In Germany, a portion of stakeholders is comprised of club members or fans. Furthermore, most of the club executives are actual retired football players, or at least people who’ve been in direct touch with the game in their lives. Thus, commercial interests are secondary, if not lower for these clubs – the way it should be to maintain the integrity of our sport. However, a lot of English, Spanish and Italian clubs (Manchester City, Juventus, Real Madrid, etc) are owned by private corporations that have absolutely no prior connection with the sport; all of their affairs are primarily revenue-oriented. I mean, is it any surprise that the chairman of the Super League – Florentino Perez – is a billionaire, along with the other executives on board?

Although the Super League is now reportedly disbanded, these past few days in the football world have been an eye-opener, if nothing else. Instead of blasting managers and players for club decisions, we must direct our energy towards engendering change within the higher levels of authority. Perhaps the Premier League could learn a thing or two from the Germans and stop putting avaricious and heedless chickens at the head of management of the clubs that mean everything to us. Football clubs should be run by people who have an idea of what the sport means to us – people who put the sport first and money second. This sudden pump of money (both Arab and non-Arab) into the Premier League has definitely attracted better players with handsome wages, but think about how competitive the league has become; it’s an absolute shock if Manchester City or Chelsea don’t finish top 4. Where were these teams a decade or two ago? I can’t think of a single ardent Manchester City fan who isn’t in their teens, or a single Chelsea fan pre-Abramovich.

FUCK THE GLAZERS, and all the other billionaires invading our beautiful sport.

As a Manchester United fan since childhood, I would like to staunchly proclaim: FUCK THE GLAZERS. I’m sure I speak on behalf of every Red (or at least every relevant one) in the world when I say that the Glazer Family has done nothing but continually disappointed us all time and again and thrown us under the bus for personal gains. We haven’t performed in the Champions League for quite some time, or even qualified a decent number of times ever since Sir Alex Ferguson’s departure. This means less money comes in through sponsors, which is frankly the only concern for the Glazers since this football club – which should be a FAMILY – is nothing more than an investment that hasn’t given the best of returns in recent years. The Super League acts as a saving grace for the Glazers, as they now have the chance to bag even more bucket-loads of money with minimum risk. These bastards were willing to quell century-old traditions and the very structure of the sport just to fill their already overflowing pockets a bit more: it’s loathsome, to say the very least. The fact that these owners have more allegiance to their bank accounts than their club’s history shows that they are ANYTHING but fit to run the biggest clubs in the world, of the biggest sport in the world.

I – along with most of you reading this opinion piece – am praying that this proposed Super League never becomes a reality. However, did we really expect any better? The moment the Glazers and the Arabs stepped foot into Manchester, the moment Abramovich stepped foot into London, the moment the Chinese stepped foot into Milan, and the moment all the other vulture billionaire magnates stepped foot into our beautiful sport, is when we tarnished it. Money has taken over the sport. Maybe not today, maybe not even in this decade. However, inevitably, money will win – as it always does. Football has decided to dance with the devil, and perhaps the football we know now will cease to exist sooner than we’d think.

As perfectly encapsulated by Manchester City coach Pep Guardiola,

“It’s not sport when there is no relation between effort and success. It’s not sport if it doesn’t matter if you lose.”

This league is an attack at sporting meritocracy as a whole and eliminates competitive spirit as a whole, knowing that it’s going to always be the same teams playing the same matches; there’s nothing on the line! These clubs have disrespected all other teams in their respective leagues by essentially telling them “sorry, you’re just not rich enough to play with us”; it’s the high school ‘cool kids club’ (or ‘Marwari Gang’ for Indian high school students) all over again!

Perhaps it’s our job as fans to save the sport we all love from the coterie of this ‘Maru Gang’. Today, we have won; it’s definitely a grand victory. However, there’s still plentiful to do and prevent.

REST IN PEACE, EUROPEAN SUPER LEAGUE. YOU WILL NOT BE MISSED.