A Super League? Haven’t we dealt with that already?
It turns out those tumultuous 48 hours in April 2021 were not the end of the European Super League (ESL) saga, though they may still turn out to be its high point. A22, a consultancy hired by the Super League Company, presented a 10-point ‘manifesto’ for reinventing the concept on Tuesday, this time without any of the pesky ‘killing football as we know it’ elements, or at least that’s how it seems.
How have the plans changed?
The ESL project is now committed to ‘open competition’, the watchwords around which the remaining majority of European football chose to organise their defence of the status quo in 2021. Open competition means people qualify to play through on-field success, not through invitation or the size of their annual revenues. This was not the case in the original ESL project where 12 of the world’s richest clubs had agreed to join a competition from which they could not be removed. Now, an ESL would involve 60-80 clubs, chosen on sporting merit from their domestic leagues (which they would continue to play in). On top of that there would be a divisional system which meant teams could be promoted or relegated within the competition.
Is that it?
Of course there’s more, much more; though largely nice-sounding proposal than actual detail. The ESL would promise to invest in and grow the women’s game. Fan engagement would be at the heart of its mission. It would dedicate a substantial tranche of funding towards improving stadiums and there would be a guaranteed €400m a year in solidarity payments to clubs outside the ESL (and the grassroots game and charities). Curiously this figure is one of the few precise numbers in the proposal and this despite A22 being unable to confirm a source of any potential funding or its size.
So it sounds like the Champions League, then?
Well, the ESL would have guaranteed league play while the Champions League is about to switch into an unfamiliar ‘Swiss league’ system where everyone is in the same league table yet doesn’t necessarily play each other. But otherwise, yes, it does a bit.
So why are they doing it?
The original ESL pitch was nasty but seductive: the biggest clubs in world football playing each other every week. This version is a bit muddier; many more teams are playing and all the big ones might not be in the same division if they don’t perform well enough (though if you believe that, I’ve got a distressed National League club to sell you). The idea that this new version would be so irresistible to broadcasters that they would pay much more money than the Premier League behemoth can itself raise maybe seems fanciful. So what it boils down to is control: the ESL would be owned by member clubs and directed by them. They would make the decisions and keep the revenue (at least the stuff they didn’t owe to a bank). Whether every member of the ESL would get this privilege seems doubtful, though; after all they could get relegated out if they weren’t careful.
Is it possible to detect a note of scepticism?
Yes. And the description of the new proposals by the FSA’s Kevin Miles as “the twitching of a corpse” feels not only funny but accurate. Clearly the big clubs of Spain and Italy, if sanctioned Juventus can still be called that, are in financially challenging times and are envious of the success of the Premier League. These new proposals come across as a little desperate, and they could be rendered defunct if the European court of justice upholds Uefa’s right to refuse to sanction new competitions. But people were sceptical about the Super League in 2021 and, had Boris Johnson not been in populist mood, they might have been proved very wrong. A breakaway has been close before, and the financial factors that drove it then have not gone away.
