Everton have proudly been playing top flight football, almost continuously since the very beginning, but like many clubs both large and small – indeed all those not first invited to join the ‘dirty dozen’ – their whole raison d’etre is being threatened again by the greed that keeps Real Madrid president Florentino Perez pushing for his hugely unpopular European Super League.
A joint lowest equivalent points total in the club’s history saw the Blues come disgustingly close to a first relegation in 71 years earlier last season but thankfully a dramatic 3-2 comeback victory over Crystal Palace ensured that they’re now enjoying a record-breaking 120th campaign in the English top flight. Other than a couple of brief Second Division interludes (a single season in 1930/31 and a three-year stint between 1951-54), Everton have been operating in the highest division possible to them.
They are the only club to be both founder members of the Football League in 1888 and ever-presents in the Premier League era. The pioneering kick-off of the former was before any of the so-called ‘big six’ of Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur, the clubs initially invited into the ESL, joined the competition and 14 years before Senor Perez’s beloved Los Blancos came into existence.
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While recent times have been tough for the Blues – their present trophy drought will extend into a record 28th year in 2023 – there is hope for a brighter future because they are of course in the process of building what will be an iconic new stadium on the banks of the Mersey at Bramley-Moore Dock.
Some 130 years on from when Everton constructed England’s first purpose-built football ground in the shape of Goodison Park, the project has already overcome several significant hurdles to reach the stage now where we can all see it rising before our eyes and become part of Liverpool’s famous skyline. Along with a global pandemic that forced professional football behind closed doors for the first time, there has also been the global economic crisis linked to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine but over a year on from when the club first moved on to the site, work remains on schedule for completion in 2024.
The Blues want to be playing top-flight football when they move into their new home but if the European Super League ever did come into existence, just where would that leave the Premier League? One of the elements that many football people found most abhorrent about the idea for the breakaway competition, when it was first mooted to almost universal disapproval in 2021, was the prospect it would threaten over a century of sporting integrity created by the game’s organic pyramid system based on merit.
Instead a synthetic closed shop private members’ club was proposed by the self-proclaimed elite in perpetuity, while everyone else not involved would be left to wither and die. In his latest proclamation on Sunday, Perez somehow rejected the idea that the selfish circus he wants to foist upon us would mean the end for domestic leagues. But while it wouldn’t necessarily spark and instant death for the rest of the game, it would change things forever in a negative sense and mark the beginning of the end for the sport he claims to love.
Everton’s new stadium will hold 52,888 and if, as expected, they fill it on a regular basis then they’ll be playing in front of the biggest average crowds in the club’s history. Indeed most new grounds for English clubs have larger capacities than their predecessors and many Premier League sides are attracting more spectators than ever before.
Such realities make Perez’s suggestion that “our beloved sport is sick” an absolute nonsense. The only thing that is sick is his relentless pursuit of money at the expense of a level playing field.
The crowds will surely flock to Everton’s new stadium in the current Premier League format but if the six most-prosperous teams in the land are removed, is the interest really going to remain for a rump competition in which the Blues – who at the time of writing have won more League Championships than Chelsea, Man City and Tottenham – are left to take part in a rump ‘best-of-the-rest’ tournament? To be fair to the six English clubs who were originally part of the European Super League plot, they have all since withdrawn after their appalled fans voiced their disgust (along with Perez’s Real Madrid, only Barcelona and Juventus have yet to formally abandon the project).
As much as supporters of these teams relish taking on the likes of Real Madrid in Champions League combat, it remains special because it is a relatively rare event. Perez’s observation that his club have only played Liverpool nine times in 67 years doesn’t mean Kopites are demanding regular trips to the Bernabeu.
Less is more in this respect. Most of us don’t want a biannual World Cup and we realise that Christmas wouldn’t actually be much of an occasion if it was every day. Fans, even of the elite clubs, retain a huge appetite for their domestic fare and don’t want to replace that with even more cross-continental travel that could threaten their routines of attending most away days.
Ironically, on the same day of Perez’s statement, Real Madrid dropped points for the first time this season as they were held to a 1-1 draw at home to 10-man Osasuna. But even though the Champions League and Financial Fair Play has already skewed most of the advantages to those already with the greatest resources, their president seems happy to abandon such provincial competition. It’s not like his club have done badly out of the current format though, they’re the most-successful team in Europe but it’s still not enough for some.
Perez shows his true colours in the documentary currently being shown on Netflix, The Figo Affair: The Transfer that Changed Football , but while he wields great influence, he doesn’t actually have a reputation for being much of a master administrator and perhaps he should be looking a bit closer to home for the route of Real’s problems? In an interview in 2019, Phil Ball, author of Morbo: The Story of Spanish Football and White Storm: 100 Years of Real Madrid told the ECHO: “ Real are a badly-run club with too much money and not a lot of sense.”
He added: “Perez is used to having all the power and while he runs his business very efficiently but that doesn’t mean he knows how to run a football club. He’s written a lot of cheques but if the likes of you and I had his money then we could have done that and done as well.” Like other older people whose position has enabled them create a certain situation, Perez has also spouted the claim that: “Young people are no longer interested in football.”
Tell that to all the enthusiastic youngsters you see on any given Everton matchday, often brought by loyal but long-suffering parents, some of which are themselves too young to remember seeing the Blues win a major trophy. At 75 years of age, this seems like one last desperate money grab from one of the sport’s elderly dictators. But for the sake of everyone who really has football’s best interests at heart, we must hope that Perez at least outlives the notion of this wretched pseudo competition he keeps banging on about because it would sound the death knell not just for the majority of clubs but also for the game as a spectacle – perhaps Carlo Ancelotti needs to have a word with him?
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