The European Court of Justice is to deliver its recommendations relating to the future of the European Super League.
After the collapse of the original ESL plan in April 2021, where nine of the 12 clubs who had signed up initially to a breakaway competition opted to turn their back on it in the face of much anger from fans, governing bodies and the wider football family, the three clubs that remained espoused to the idea challenged UEFA through the courts.
The European Super League Company, S.L, effectively made up of Barcelona, Real Madrid and Juventus, began legal proceedings through the Madrid courts over what they saw as a UEFA's monopoly on the European game - and whether it could be a potential breach of EU competition law. The legal action was not taken so much with a view to resurrecting the failed ESL plan from April 2021, but to clear the road for another tilt at launching a breakaway competition in the future.
The case made its way to the ECJ, who have heard representations from both sides in recent months, with the ECJ's advocate general, Athanasios Rantos, to deliver his recommendations tomorrow morning (Thursday, December 14), recommendations which will then be kicked back to the Madrid courts for a final ruling, which in most cases results in the upholding of the ECJ's recommendations.
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Liverpool were one of the agitators in the beginning for the formation of the ESL, with Fenway Sports Group supremo John W. Henry having seen it as a way of effecting some kind of structural change in European football through at least one competition where there would be more cost certainty and greater revenue potential through a more Americanised model. It was a competition that was presented to the football world as pretty much a closed shop that would have only served to widen the chasm that existed between the biggest European clubs and their domestic counterparts.
For Henry it was particularly bruising. The FSG chief and Liverpool principal owner ended up recording a video apology to Reds fans, shouldering the blame for the club's part in the ESL plot. Like dominoes, nine of the 12 clubs all stepped away from the plans over a dramatic 48 hours in European football, with Arsenal, Manchester City, Manchester United, Chelsea, Tottenham Hotspur, AC Milan, Inter Milan and Atletico Madrid all renouncing their intentions.
For FSG it started a dialogue with the Spirit of Shankly supporters group and other Reds fan groups, with a Supporters' Board coming into effect earlier this year. The Supporters' Board would bring about meaningful fan representation at board level and would be afforded the power to have the deciding say on matters relating to upholding the integrity and traditions of the football club, including having to be sought for consent by the owners when it came to pursuing any further breakaway plans in the future.
In October of this year, A22, the company that was a driving force behind the ESL plan, appointed a new CEO in German media executive Bernd Reichart, with Reichart having spent the last two months on something of a charm offensive around Europe in a bid to drum up support for another ESL tilt, with changes promised to make the next incarnation more palatable to football fans than the last. It has been a campaign that has largely fallen on deaf ears, with Reichart's 'audience' with UEFA last month ending up with him receiving a rather frosty welcome from many major stakeholders across the European game.
As of earlier this year Liverpool and the rest were reported to remain shareholders in the European Super League Company, although for the clubs that stepped away their continued link is down to the legal issues that surround them attempting to extricate themselves from their part of the initial plan, where financial penalties were set to be imposed for any club that backed out of the proposals.
In a statement sent to the ECHO earlier last year, that first appeared in the Guardian, Liverpool's stance was made clear.
"Our involvement in the proposed ESL plans has been discontinued," the statement read. "We are absolutely committed to following that through and there should be no ambiguity to suggest otherwise.
"We are acting on the best legal advice and approach to appropriately end our involvement."
Liverpool's decision to create a Supporters' Board, one where its power is written into the articles of association of the club and would be binding even if FSG sell the club, which remains a possibility moving forward, provides some security over little being able to change unless it was voted for by supporters when it came to the ESL.
But should Rantos rule in favour of the European Super League Company and chime with the views of the chiefs at Real Madrid, Juventus and Barcelona then it would present a huge threat to the established hierarchy of European football and leave the door open for a new ESL plan to continue unopposed by governing bodies, one where enough change would be sought to make it palatable to enough fans to embolden them to proceed.
Liverpool have probably gone further than any of the other eight clubs since the ESL fallout to distance themselves from the plan, and while completely disentangling themselves from the mess that they helped create may still be problematic, there are roadblocks in place to put a hard stop to any plans to explore the situation again, not without fan approval first.
With FSG open to selling the club for the right price, or at the very least seeking fresh capital by selling a minority shareholding, having such roadblocks in place might not be preferable to some would-be bidders. No such restrictions exist among the other teams to have renounced their intentions, their absence from the discourse driven by the desires of ownership at present. For any would-be owner of Liverpool there would be tangible restrictions on what they could do with the ESL in years to come if it reared its head again, and they would have to approach fans to get their buy in if that is the route they wished to pursue to avoid the potential of getting left behind.
Hypothetical scenarios such as the above may me taken off the table tomorrow, however, with reports suggesting that UEFA are confident that the ECJ will side with them on the issue and present their recommendations to the Madrid court as such when the decision is made in a Luxembourg courtroom at 9:30am local time (8:30am GMT).
It will be a landmark decision either way, one that will likely have a profound effect on the future of European football in the coming years.
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