European Super League Mega Thread

[Amo]

I think Levy and Lewis had no other choice

Of course they had a choice. They weren't forced to shoot someone at gunpoint. Porto said no. Bayern said no. Dortmund said no. Might not have been a palatable choice but it was a choice.

Also, why's everyone assuming we were invited and not that we were actively organising it. Spurs are one of the biggest clubs in the world financially and in terms of infrastructure.

 

[PLTuck]

Laugh all you like but I'd take her in a heartbeat over Levy right now. At least she gave a shit.

 

[Indisguise]

Um... can someone translate because I catch what she's saying.

 

[C0YS]

Reps from some clubs have tried to campaign to UEFA that they deserve a bigger cut of the revenue, UEFA are naïve if they didn't expect them to be planning something. The Super League has been rumoured for many years.

The timing was deliberate, the clubs didn't get what they wanted from UEFA so they announced the new league the night before the new Champions League format was approved.

They agreed to it though. That's what is bizarre about it. You agree to changes, say, yep that's all good, then they turn of their phones and breakaway. This is why its beyond a negotiating tactic. Talk about burning bridges. To demonstrate how in bed with each other football is the head of UEFA is the god farther of Agnelli's son. Agnelli essentially lied to his face and then instigated a massive power grab. This is why those who still think it's for leverage are probably not correct. Bridges have been burnt.

 

[Zippy1980]

Of course they had a choice. They weren't forced to shoot someone at gunpoint. Porto said no. Bayern said no. Dortmund said no. Might not have been a palatable choice but it was a choice.

If they said no it would be like marrying Nora Batty

 

[SirNiNyHotspur]

Breaking news there caught the gist of it, Spanish courts ruling FIFA and UEFA can't restrict formation of ESL...

 

[PontusEngblom]

That made me laugh and I rated Funny accordingly, but there's a little bit of my brain that is seething that they used the wrong Peep Show screencaps to frame the text (with the misquotes coming from series 1, and the images coming somewhere from series 6 onwards).

Seeth no more, it's from season 5.

 

[OpenHeartZoo]

Why do so many fans say they would stop supporting the club, that wouldn’t happen.
I said I’d stop supporting Spurs when we appointed gooners Terry Neill and George Graham as managers. I said the same when we sold Pat Jennings to Arsenal. Stop supporting Spurs, oh come on!

I think those of us saying it would no longer recognise the club as Spurs. A coup of our national sport is a little bit different to having an ex-gooner as our manager.

It's all a bit premature as I think there's a way to go yet but I've supported us since I was 7, so about 27 years, and I think I would be tuning out, especially if we leave the Prem. No idea whether I would "support" someone else or just dip in and out of games, but I feel strongly enough about it to follow through I think.

 

[PLTuck]

Um... can someone translate because I catch what she's saying.

Come on! Let's be 'avin you is the important part

 

[SpartanSpur]

Of course they had a choice. They weren't forced to shoot someone at gunpoint. Porto said no. Bayern said no. Dortmund said no. Might not have been a palatable choice but it was a choice.

There is still time for them to change their minds, plus unlike us they have no other clubs from their leagues signing up for this, we had 5.

Had Leipzig or Benfica signed up it might have changed their outlook.

We always had the option to be the bigger/better club but Daniel Levy will always follow the numbers in this situation.

 

[chas vs dave]

In this leagye we will be by far the smallest club

We will be the Burnley Southampton equilvalent

Nobody in the manure/liverpool centric market in Asia will respect us and we will be mocked the way we laugh at the smaller clubs here

In this league the name & history of Tottenham Hotspur will no longer be revered but scoffed at

Yes, because spurs aren't scoffed at all the time. Look at the no trophies mob

 

[Gassin's finest]

American vision is to drive out the jeopardy that shows up their deficiencies as owners. It's bull****, all of it

There are positive measures Glazers, FSG and Kroenke could've brought from American sports. Instead it's all about the bucks. It's appalling

theathletic.com

American vision is to drive out the jeopardy that shows up their deficiencies as owners. It’s bull****, all of it

There is a peculiar reaction whenever an American investor takes ownership of an English football club. Yes there is still that childish tendency to cringe if they use words like “soccer” or “franchise”, but there is something else too. Something bordering on relief.

It is as if the very mention of American businessmen raises fears of someone who combines the worst elements of Gordon Gekko and JR Ewing. When they prove themselves to be more circumspect and more benign, as many of them do, it comes as a pleasant surprise. Randy Lerner, who briefly brought hope and vision to Aston Villa in the late 2000s before finding himself worn down by the financial and emotional cost of it all, was often referred to as “the quiet American” — as if we are predisposed to expect the likes of Tom Hicks, wearing a 10-gallon hat and pitching up at Liverpool in 2007 to make brash declarations and nonsensical references to their rivals “Man Ham”.

There is a danger in judging or talking of American owners as a single entity; there are good ones and there are bad ones, the same as with English owners. Lerner always came across as a good man who found himself beaten by the system; similar could be said of Ellis Short, no matter how great his contribution to Sunderland’s decline; John Berylson, a Boston-based private equity investor, is appreciated by Millwall’s supporters; Paul Conway and his team at Barnsley have built an exciting team that, against the odds, are challenging for promotion to the Premier League.

When it comes to talking about American owners in English football, though, the problem is that, for all the favourable impressions made by Berylson, Conway and (for a time) Lerner, they are not the ones who have made a fundamental difference to the game. The ones who are doing that are the Glazers at Manchester United, John W Henry at Liverpool and Stan Kroenke at Arsenal. At a time of economic crisis, they are intent on taking the inequalities of the modern game and preserving them for eternity. Gordon Gekko would be proud of that one.

The “Super League” proposal has been embraced by 12 leading clubs with a variety of ownership models, ranging from a Russian oligarch to a Middle Eastern state, but nobody should underestimate the American influence behind it. Between Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal and AC Milan, four of the 12 founder clubs are American-owned. Three of the four elected vice-chairmen (Joel Glazer, John W Henry and Kroenke) are Americans. An American bank, JP Morgan Chase, is behind the venture. And of course the entire concept draws heavily from the success of the American sporting model, a closed system without the sense of commercial jeopardy that comes with the European model.

It has been driven by the disdain in which Real Madrid, Barcelona and Juventus hold their notional competitors in their own leagues and across Europe — witness the Real president Florentino Perez’s television interview last night — and it has been facilitated by American businessmen who share that complete disregard for the traditions of the European game.

For the Glazers and for Kroenke, it has only ever been about the money. They haven’t even tried to hide it. Henry and his Fenway Sports Group attempted to court popularity in the early days at Liverpool, expressing shock and indignation whenever they were portrayed as greedy capitalists, but the mask has slipped so many times, you sense they have stopped bothering now. “This means more”? Not to the owners, it doesn’t.

One figure who has advised numerous investors in English football over the past decade suggests “at least you know what you’re going to get” with Americans. “People from other parts of the world tend to buy football clubs as playthings or status symbols or political tools, which can lead to blurred thinking as well as a certain amount of baggage in PR terms,” he says. “Americans are easier to work with because their aims are clear from the start. There’s no confusion there.”

He says it with a degree of respect. As a rule, he says, Americans are less inclined to the “volatile” decision-making seen among other owners. And with a few exceptions, such as the calamitous Hicks-Gillett regime that took Liverpool perilously close to administration before FSG arrived in 2010, he is probably right. He also credits American investors — not least the Glazers, FSG and Kroenke — in bringing the type of business and commercial expertise that has often been lacking in English football in the past. He is probably right about that too.

But we disagree about the Glazers and Kroenke in particular. Whatever their commercial advances during football’s boom period over the past decade, both Manchester United and Arsenal would surely have enjoyed far greater growth in all areas had their owners been capable of sustaining top-class performance on the pitch. Complacency brought a lack of investment and a lack of future planning, which in turn brought decline. From a position of unexpected weaknesses, their decision-making was poor — not volatile, but consistently poor. And, in terms of Champions League revenue and the commercial spin-offs that come with it, that lack of football vision and expertise has come at a heavy cost over recent years.

More than that, it has heightened the sense of entitlement that they have shown from the moment they got their hands on English football’s crown jewels. Liverpool were less than a year into the FSG era when Ian Ayre, who had never previously been the type to rock the boat, could be heard making the case for the elite clubs to get a greater share of overseas broadcast revenue. “If you’re in Kuala Lumpur, there isn’t anyone subscribing to Astro or ESPN to watch Bolton. Or if they are, it’s a very small number,” he said. “The large majority are subscribing to watch Liverpool, Manchester United, Chelsea or Arsenal.”

This was undoubtedly true. But it was also grotesque. A collective approach to revenue-sharing had long been one of the strengths of the Premier League model — frequently cited as a wonderful antidote to the approach in La Liga, where Barcelona and Real Madrid took a far greater share to reinforce the advantages their status already brought in terms of match-day, commercial and Champions League revenue. The Glazers, Henry and Kroenke disagreed. They wanted a greater share of income in the Premier League and of course in the Champions League, where, joining forces with the presidents of Real Madrid, Barcelona, Juventus and others, they found it far easier to strong-arm UEFA into submission.

What they see, the suits behind this wretched “Super League” plan, is an American-style closed system with none of the uncertainty and the jeopardy that is so fundamental to the appeal of the longstanding European model. (Or at least was built into it until the biggest clubs spent the past two decades forcing through one small but significant change after another so that by this stage it would take monumental mismanagement for certain clubs to miss out on Champions League qualification. And still, they demanded the safety net of places set aside for underperforming teams to qualify on the basis of historic performance. And still, as demonstrated over the past couple of days, it wasn’t enough for them. Nothing will ever be enough.)

And here is the strange thing. The Glazers, FSG and Kroenke come from American sport, which, while undoubtedly business-oriented, is all about fairness, equality and at least the theoretical notion of an even playing field. There are so many positive ideas they could have brought with them from American sport — greater regulation of ownership, transparency of communication, a clearer licensing system, perhaps even some variation on the salary caps and draft systems that are designed to bring equality to the competitions. But no, the great American gift to European football is the pursuit of a closed system in which Manchester United and Arsenal are guaranteed unprecedented riches every year no matter how poorly they perform. No wonder the Glazers and Kroenke love the idea.

Oh, but these guys just love the game, don’t they? Juventus president Andrea Agnelli even had the temerity to use those words in the statement behind the proposed league’s launch — 12 clubs who 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”.

Pass the sick bucket. Don’t let these people tell you they love football, let alone that they are doing this for the greater good. As Jonathan Liew put it in The Guardian, “this is an idea that could only have been devised by someone who truly hates football to its bones (…) 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.”

“Wake up! It’s not a game anymore. It’s business!”, goes the cry. And, yes, football has developed into a multi-billion-pound industry in which — regrettably — European clubs have come to feel like pawns in the hands of American capitalists, Russian oligarchs and Middle Eastern states. Manchester United became a business the moment it was floated on the Stock Exchange as a public company in 1991. But there was always a certain degree of loyalty and commitment to the values of the club and its wider responsibility to English football. That has gone out of the window under the ownership of a regime which, never mind the game, shows no regard for a club that continues to bear the cost of that leveraged buyout, £1.5 billion and rising all the time.

It makes you wonder. What would the Glazers have said to a breakaway within the NFL a couple of years ago? What would they say if the Dallas Cowboys, New England Patriots and a handful of others had broken away, leaving the Tampa Bay Buccaneers (the 29th highest valued of the 32 franchises last year, according to Forbes) in the wilderness? There would be no Tom Brady, no Super Bowl LV, just a fast-diminishing asset with no prospect of ever reaching the top table again. Rightly they would cry foul, pleading for someone to consider how important the Bucs franchise is to the Tampa Bay area. Which of course it is, even if you suspect the Glazers’ concerns don’t stretch far beyond the more exclusive areas of Palm Beach.

At least Henry is consistent. As far as back as 2006, he could be heard criticising the MLB’s revenue-sharing model, complaining that the Boston Red Sox were effectively investing in order to prop up the weaker franchises. If there was an opportunity to screw over the Miami Marlins and Tampa Bay Rays (yep, Florida again) in pursuit of more revenue, you have to assume he would seize it. Then again, we can only guess whether he would have the same approach to revenue-sharing if he happened to own the Kansas City Royals or if, by some quirk of fate, he and FSG had ended up buying Sunderland a decade ago while, say, Short got his hands on Liverpool. A real tough one, isn’t it?

Real Madrid were always going to push for this type of project. They were among the prime movers behind the “Super League” projects in the 1990s, when they had the AC Milan president Silvio Berlusconi and his Mediaset company in the driving seat, but ended up settling for an expanded version of the Champions League instead. The big English clubs were interested back then, but not sold on the idea. “Its concept is interesting — more transparency, more influence of clubs, more places for English teams in European competition — but we have an excellent home league and we are not going to let it down,” said Peter Kenyon, Manchester United’s chief executive at the time.

Kenyon was nobody’s idea of English football’s conscience, to put it mildly, but that was the correct answer. And it would be the correct answer now. Manchester United’s loyalty should be to their own supporters and to the wider game in England, across Europe and all over the world. But under the Glazers’ ownership, under FSG’s ownership, under Kroenke’s ownership, none of that matters. All they want is more revenue, more growth and the removal of the uncertainty and the unpredictability which still just about underpins football’s global appeal.

There have been disdainful whispers about a “broken” European club system — irony of ironies, from the very people who have appeared hellbent on inflicting more and more damage with every new broadcast rights negotiation — and about the need to look beyond “legacy fans” and engage fans in different territories. It is bullshit, all of it. Yes, more and more fans are more captivated by superstars and the big-name clubs, but the novelty of an American-style closed-shop competition, with no promotion, no relegation and no jeopardy, would wear off very quickly.

That is not a dig at American sports or an attempt to portray the European football model as better or more worthy. The NFL, the NBA and the MLB are enormous success stories with their own rich histories and traditions. But the idea of an American-style closed system in European football is an appalling one. Football fans in the United States and around the world tune into the Premier League and the Champions League because they appreciate the differences. They don’t want it to be like the NBA, just as basketball fans in Europe don’t want the NBA to embrace the sprawling idiosyncrasies of European football.

And they really don’t tend to want to see a handful of American owners trying to rip the and soul out of the game, not just riding the coat-tails of Perez and Agnelli but putting themselves right in the centre of this process, creating a system so utterly anti-competitive that it would even save them from the consequences of their own football ignorance.

Unlike Perez, Agnelli and a handful of others — including Henry at a stretch — the Glazers and Kroenke have made no attempt to hide the contempt in which they hold football. But still, the scale of the greed and the selfishness behind this latest venture feels shocking. And still, Silent Stan and his friends lack the conviction of even the courtesy to front up and explain themselves to the world. But we all know what is driving this. As Gordon Gekko said, “It’s all about bucks, kid. The rest is conversation.”

 

[Timbo Tottenham]

? Please God please let this happen.

Chelsea fans moaning about greed in football? IRONY KLAXON

 

[Timberwolf]

I think Levy and Lewis had no other choice

Well...they did.

If they had the foresight to realise this had the potential to permanently stain the club and rip apart the very fabric of the game then they could've stayed away and watched the other big 5 eat themselves.

Considering I don't think this super league will ever get off the ground I'd feel a hell of a lot better if our name wasn't tarred with the same filth as the other clubs and we could actually take the moral high ground, along with avoiding potential sanctions, etc.

 

[C0YS]

Are you serious? They are corrupt to the core

They are, but how? What do you think wouldn't make UEFA as curropt?

 

[stov]

No German club can sign up. The fans have the final say. Except rb leipzig who have circumvented the 51% rule.

 

[yawa]

Breaking news there caught the gist of it, Spanish courts ruling FIFA and UEFA can't restrict formation of ESL...

are you telling me some of the richest people on the planet did their due diligence before announcing anything. Well shock horror.

European Super League: Spanish court tells UEFA and FIFA not to stop plans, in preliminary ruling

The new tournament has been criticised as a closed competition that will destroy clubs at all levels, but its chairman disagrees.

www.google.co.uk

 

[LeParisien]

Ok so I've just spoken to an agent who in turn has spoken to a board member at another club involved.

He basically said that as far as the legalities go people have been working on this for 2 years. They believe they have every eventuality covered and the money to fight and win on every front in every country involved. Those behind this were expecting this fall out, and are more than prepared to fight it.

…………………

Don't @ me I'm just passing on.

What they can’t compete against is any new legislation passed. If boris is determined to win then parliamentary supremacy is real and the British clubs will lose. No amount of planning or expensive lawyers can avoid that outcome.

Let’s see how this plays out.

 

[PLTuck]

Breaking news there caught the gist of it, Spanish courts ruling FIFA and UEFA can't restrict formation of ESL...

Yeah but we have an ace in our sleeve. Johnson. He won't care what the courts say.

(only half joking btw)

 

[Zippy1980]

They are, but how? What do you think wouldn't make UEFA as curropt?

By choosing not to exist and sending their supporters for spelling tests lol