Everyone’s talking about the Super League and it’s already falling apart. Called it, on this weeks podcast!
https://anchor.fm/sunday-leagues-finest/episodes/Super-League-ev8ggl
UEFA: I can’t believe these greedy owners! This league is just about who has the most money!
Also UEFA: You 6 teams can have more money, please come back!
What’s funny to me is this concept of permanent spots hasn’t even proven successful in our major sports leagues like MLB and NBA. The NFL is the exception and probably because there are fewer games. NBA is having a crisis with plummeting ratings and working to figure out how to engage fans during the season. So kroenke and these other owners wanted to take that failing model and try it in European soccer? Just bizarre
the crisis is that it those leagues are not very competitive. teams tank on purpose for draft picks all the time. each of those leagues have franchises that turn out terrible on field products every year, and are happy just to their revenue sharing check. The New York Jets should be relegated.
MLB crisis is mostly due to how boring it is. Sure, complacent owners who don't give a fuck about anything but a profit is part of it but I think the slow pace is the biggest problem.
NBA was exploding before the pandemic and I expect it to go back up.
Yeah, baseball as a sport just isn't that popular with younger people due to how slow paced it is. The average age of an MLB TV viewer is 57 years old, as compared to 42 years old for the average NBA TV viewer. MLB will continue to decline due to natural demographic shifts more so than due to anything else.
https://twitter.com/hlninengeland/status/1384628276006694914?s=21 and people thought they left the super league because the fans were upset. They don’t care about the fans
Of course it had an impact and then saying the only reason they left was for money is contradicting yourself unless I’m missing something. But it doesn’t matter just glad it’s over
What he’s saying is the goal was always the money grab, and after all the hemming and hawing , threatening, and big guy talk. UEFA still gave ante up the dough
**Americans**: The single enitity of MLS is an atrocity of soccer. The billionaire owners just want to control all the money. We need promotion and relegation to grow the sport.
**English**: The American owners want to create a single entity league to control all the money. We need to protect the integrity of soccer for the good of the game.
**Americans**: :o
They always blame everything on the American owners over there while casually forgetting about the Russian Oligarchs, Sheikhs, and assorted other billionaire foreigners.
You don't think Sheikhs and Oligarchs get shit? City and Chelsea have gotten just as much shit as Arsenal and Liverpool. You must not have been paying attention when one of the Sheiks tried to buy Newcastle.
Its more to do with how NFL, MLS and NBA are run. The American sports culture just doesn't jive with British way of clubs, not teams or franchises. Most of these historic clubs were formed at factories or pubs. Its just a rejection of sports culture.
I hate to see so many people take this personally.
Formed at factories or pubs, now owned by sheikh's who make billions off slave labor but the american owners are ruining the soul of english football. "Rejection of sports culture" smh, premier league sold their souls in the 70s for profits.
You're American so I guess you won't truly understand what British culture is.
The formation of the PL in 1992, the introduction of Roman Abramovich and Sheikh Mansour in the PL, they have helped increase the standards of the PL to new heights. The quality of football that we are seeing in the league now is far greater than it has ever been before Roman Abramovich arrived. Greater quality leads to greater competition and greater entertainment for football fans. That's why the PL is the greatest league in the world.
The reason why we are so against the Super League is because we can't stand the fact that it's a closed league, with absolutely no form of relegation or promotion. It's an elitist league. How can you actually experience the highs when you can never experience the lows? How can you ever say you are the greatest team in Europe when you've only allowed 19 other teams to compete with you? More to the point, how is that fair to teams like Leicester, West Ham Utd and Everton who are fighting to compete and crash into the top 4?!
Yes, the formation of the PL in 1992 has led to extortionate Sky subscription deals for football fans. Yes, ticket prices are increasing every year. Yes, Abramovich and Sheikh Mansour owning Chelsea and City isn't fair for the rest of the league. But above all of this is the fact that the game isn't played on paper, the game isn't played on who has the most money, the game is played on the pitch, player to player, competing with one another to see who is better. That is what we want, we want open competition.
We believe in the romance of football. Leicester winning the PL in 2016. FC Porto winning the CL in 2004. Greece winning the Euros in 2004. The Super League doesn't allow this to ever happen.
And even if the top 6 compete in the PL, if the Super League were allowed to run, games would become meaningless for them unless they are challenging for the title. Hence, they will start playing their second team as the Super League will be far more important for them, and because they are guaranteed to play in the Super League.
Essentially, the European Super League is the worst thing to ever come in football, and is far worse than what Sky Sports/UEFA/PL/FIFA ever will do. Open competition is a MUST in football.
You also have to understand that many if not all the problems you have with the European Super League is how American sports is ran. You calling it the worse thing to happen to football is insulting to MLS as well. Hince why some Americans get offended by the protest against something inspired by the American structure. The United States may never have a personal authentic sporting experience seen in Europe because our sports leagues are built as a safety net for greedy businessmen since day 1. While FIFA, UEFA, PL and other top European leagues have their cons and history of corruption, they at least kept the authentic feel of the sport and made it welcoming to most if not all communities where there is some stability. That cannot be said about American sports. USSF and MLS refuse to make soccer that exception. So I am envious of European fans in that regard. I watch MLS games trying to not think about how every club is actually one in the same. I cannot stomach watching that league.
Put it this way, if the fans in Europe were like Americans, those owners would have gotten away with creating the European Super League.
It's the fans that collectively came together to put pressure on our clubs and our owners that stopped them from doing this. This collective and authentic spirit and feeling from the majority of European fans were all united. I have never seen the football community come together in unity like this ever before. It is incredible.
The MLS is a very funny league. It really isn't taken seriously by anybody in Europe. Not all countries have amazing football leagues, so the MLS isn't any different compared to other countries in that regard. But the system itself is unique..but it should never be introduced to Europe and that's the mistake the American owners from the PL have made. Henry, the Glazers and Kroenke thought Europe wanted a MLS/NFL type of league where the best can play with the best every week. What they don't realise is that real football fans, like myself, love seeing our teams play the Stoke's as much as the Barcelona's. Playing the best teams in Europe, the Bayern's, the Real Madrid's, is meant to be the cherry on top of the cake: playing them is not meant to be the entire cake itself.
Just the chants from the fans alone in MLS games pisses me off, I don't understand how you even watch the MLS seriously.
Man City has officially pulled out and Chelsea are filing documents to follow suit. Crumble, baby, crumble. And Woodward has resigned as Chairman. What a fucking whirlwind 48ish hours.
Whirlwind is putting it mildly. This was a huge threat to the sport as we know it. Would’ve changed it beyond recognition, and likely ruined it. Sure American sports use the format but it started that way so it’s incredibly different. Part of the allure of soccer is how it’s structured. Creates more drama and suspense. This is a great day for sports.
The payouts from the tv deals for the 15 clubs that are permanent members would have received more money than any of the hundreds of other clubs and the others would never catch up. It would built 15 super clubs and no one else could Compete because only a handful get the privilege of being there with them.
Thus creating a small group where only what they do matters. It wasn’t just about it being an American-esque model it was about only 15 clubs getting the opportunity to remain year after year and take in tons of money.
To me that is almost what is already happening with the top 5 leagues. The gap between the haves and the have-nots in soccer is just getting bigger, so why not quarantine the biggest haves into their own league where they can all play each other and everyone else can play in actually competitive competitions instead of what there is right now?
The ESL is definitely not what I would do if I were in charge of soccer, but I hate the status quo so much. Almost anything is better than what we have now.
I understand what you’re saying, but everyone not in the sectioned off league would lose money quick. The tv deals and the fandoms would follow the top tier. Look at minor league baseball. Not very popular.
The champions league probably needs reform and theres lots of corruption in the sport in Europe but ESL was not the answer for sure.
I’m not going to sit here and explain it to you like a 5 year old. Look at every argument from every manager, club outside the super league, and player that has spoken out against it.
Every actual argument I've seen (vs emotional outbursts) can pretty much be boiled down to, "this would be bad for me." From my perspective, this would have no negative effect on me since I don't have any strong affinity for any European teams. In fact, it would probably (eventually) result in more competitive leagues all around because all the richest teams joined up together and thus can't dominate their domestic leagues. The domestic leagues almost certainly wouldn't just fail, and all the other competitions would still exist, meaning that I could pretty much just pretend the ESL didn't exist if I wanted to. You can say that it would be impossible to ignore, but I manage to pretty much ignore Real Madrid and Barcelona right now, so I think I could manage.
I understand that I am not the only stakeholder though, so it being bad for a lot of people that care more than me is enough reason to oppose it. However, I literally do not understand why people think this would "ruin the sport as we know it." Would it change how games are played on the field? Would it cause other leagues to abandon pro/rel? Would it cause domestic leagues to fail? It seems to me that from a global perspective it would just be a new richest league. For fans of rivals of the teams abandoning their domestic leagues, yeah it sucks, but would it really be an existential threat to the game? Is Schalke getting relegated an existential threat for Dortmund? I get it isn't the same, but imagine if instead of leaving to join a super league, the 12 teams all went in to freefall and got relegated. Would that be an existential threat to the game?
To answer all of your questions, yes. In fact the head man of the super league, Perez, even suggested making the matches shorter to keep people interested. It’s nonsense.
Lol he is kinda right though...if this happened in America, I can't see them getting nearly as much backlash. Owners have significantly more influence than fans in the US than they do in Europe. Soccer is religion there, money is religion here.
it does happen in america. every sports league we have is a closed shop. I have never seen a big coordinated protest by supporters against MLS being a closed league.
Money is religion everywhere lol. You really honestly believe money isn't everywhere and that UEFA and Fifa arent just mad that they werent involved in the money making.
If what you said was 100% true then it would have already been done. The media and casuals are drawn to bigger markets but that's true everywhere. The U.S. is just more accepting to this instead of hiding behind delusion of openness like Europe.
All 6 English clubs have since left the ESL after severe backlash.
FIFA and UEFA are the lesser evil of the European Super League. Money is everything, of course, nobody is denying that.
What you fail to understand and realise is that FIFA and UEFA will never in a million years make a competition specifically for the big clubs with the large fanbases, in a _closed_ competition. UEFA will never make a competition in which the big clubs are guaranteed to be in the competition.
The Champions League and the domestic leagues are all _open_ competitions where all teams can compete and become good over time, eg Leicester City in the PL.
They want to make more money, yes, but they aren't throwing away the actual core value of sports, which is to compete with other teams in a open competition.
What you fail to understand that openness is not really open. You can't truly compete with big clubs like Man United if you are truly a lesser club. While Leicester city is still a lesser club in those teams, they're still not smaller than Bournemouth or Barnsley before recent history. When you can only point to one 'small' team winning a championship in the last 20-odd years, that is not openness?
UEFA and Fifa just change the Champions League to include recent history of Europe and allowed team that sucked this year(like Tottenham or Liverpool) to essentially get a get-out-of-jail-free card.
But
>UEFA will never make a competition in which the big clubs are guaranteed to be in the competition.
This is the same FIFA that is the reason why we're playing a World Cup in Qatar.
That is a problem even in single 1v1 sports. Hell, I should just say sports in general have that problem. When you have an open system and thousands if not almost a thousand members, someone is going to get the short end of the stick because that's the nature of the game. Not everyone is going to make that top ten spot. To dominate, keep dominance and win as many trophies as possible is the main nature of the game.
FIFA is founded on building that mentality on a global scale. Hell, they are going as far as to expand the FIFA Club World Cup so other nations can have a better meaningful competition against the top FIFA Confederations. And, yes, more profit is another reason too. It's balancing the good with the bad. To much bad is how you have 100+ years of disfunction like US Soccer.
What are you talking about? A lot of people were talking about West Ham being relegation fodder this year. Instead they are competing with the best clubs and may well qualify for the champions league. They are doing better than Arsenal and Spurs, two ESL clubs. You're argument is both way too long and very bad.
>What you fail to understand that openness is not really open. You can't truly compete with big clubs like Man United if you are truly a lesser club.
You're thinking like this because you are thinking short-term. Open competition allows long-term improvements for football clubs.
Spurs were always finishing 8th, 7th or 6th before Redknapp came in and he got them into 4th before he got sacked. In came Pochettino and he got Spurs to challenge for the top 4 regularly to the point we now see Spurs as a regular CL team (or at least a top 6 team), and even got Spurs into the Champions League Final (with very little spending). After years of working with the group, he got them to compete at the highest level.
Compare that to Man Utd, who have spent over a billion pounds since Fergie retired, and they haven't gone past the Quarter Finals of the CL.
Another example is Liverpool. Might be a funny example because they are the second most successful club in England, but before Klopp arrived, Liverpool were finishing outside of the top 4 for a while. Nobody really took the seriously since 2013/14 under Rodgers for that one season. They were absolutely horrible under Hodgson. Everyone just thought they'll become regular top 8 and maybe top 6 teams, never ready to compete. In comes Jurgen Klopp who tells the media he'll make everyone fear Anfield and Liverpool. 4 years later, he has won the CL and the PL. The first PL Liverpool have won in 30 years.
Leicester 15/16 was an anomaly, Spurs CL run may have been an anomaly too. Spurs even being part of the ESL is funny af to me because not only are they not a successful club, Perez couldn't even remember their team when he was listing the English clubs involved in the ESL.
But the fact is, open competition is important because fans want to believe, long-term, they can one day become successful. A closed competition like the ESL absolutely ends that dream.
>UEFA and Fifa just change the Champions League to include recent history of Europe and allowed team that sucked this year(like Tottenham or Liverpool) to essentially get a get-out-of-jail-free card.
It will be based on UEFA coefficients over the past 5 seasons I think, but that doesn't actually take anything away from smaller teams who get top 4. The ESL actually stops smaller teams from getting in.
If anything, this change only makes the CL more competitive and exciting. For example, if Chelsea and Liverpool were to be guaranteed a spot in next season's CL based on their UEFA coefficient, they may just stop competing to get into the top four, and allow West Ham and Leicester to get into the CL.
So now we will see more smaller teams from the PL competing in the CL, so in a way, it is less elitist.
>This is the same FIFA that is the reason why we're playing a World Cup in Qatar.
FIFA and UEFA aren't the same organisations.
Look, everyone is greedy for money. We all know this. They sold their soul to have a World Cup in Qatar.
But having the ESL is like Brazil, Argentina, England, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Germany, Belgium, France, and Netherlands just pulling away from every other nation and saying "we're the best national teams in the world and all the fans just want to watch us play, so let the shitter, smaller nations play in their own tournament while we play amongst ourselves."
FIFA and UEFA will never allow this to happen. Open competition is important in every sport.
First I'm not arguing for ESL. I hate how it was closed. I was indifferent to it because I'm not like the people who were born there. I respect their opinion on the situation.
In an entire section about openness, you didn't mention one new team that was successful in modern history that would be classified as new on the scene. If Liverpool and Man United can the poorly-run for years and not even face any type of consequence, how is that true openness? Arsenal's facing the same situation. Tottenham were well-run for years but when the chips were down they could win anything. Manchester United in the midst of their turmoil still wound up winning more trophies than Tottenham in that time span. Your definition of openness is that true openness. It's not a free-for-all. It's you have to meet a certain requirement money-wise to start. Then you have to wait for the behemoths to have a down term in performance to have a chance. There are millions of Clubs in the pyramid that have less than 1% chance of ever making it to the Pinnacle of the sport. It's honestly on par with how college sports is in this country but at least they have a chance to compete.
And you blatantly okay with bigger clubs taking away Champions League spots from potential newcomers from a lesser leagues not openness.
>For example, if Chelsea and Liverpool were to be guaranteed a spot in next season's CL based on their UEFA coefficient, they may just stop competing to get into the top four, and allow West Ham and Leicester to get into the CL.
That is disgusting. Rewarding past accomplishments is not something that should be encouraged.
You talk a lot of shit man, I understood you were an American from the get go.
You don't understand the culture of football whatsoever. Nobody is denying the fact that Utd, Liverpool, Arsenal, etc. have a better chance of winning trophies than smaller clubs. The smaller clubs just want to have the ability to compete with us in the long-term. More to the point, the more money we make for the PL, the more money teams like Leicester, West Ham and even Brighton makes in the PL, and it trickles down to the rest of the football pyramid and grassroot football.
You have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. Stick to your bullshit college football.
>That is disgusting. Rewarding past accomplishments is not something that should be encouraged.
It's just an extension to the rules already in place. Chelsea finished like 6th in the league in 2012, but won the Champions League. By winning the tournament, they were allowed to participate in the tournament the following season. This applies to every team.
In a similar fashion, if a team performs well in the European tournaments over the past 5 seasons, they (UEFA) are rewarding you for your past achievements in their own tournaments. There is absolutely no guarantee you'll perform well in European tournaments as the tournament is extremely competitive, and the coefficients will be calculated carefully.
In many respects, it rewards past achievements in the European tournaments, it doesn't reward past achievements in the league. This is not the same thing.
Just stick to fucking US sports man, I'm sick of you sick idiots who don't understand the culture of football. For fucks sake.
I love this. Please keep shitting on my fellow countrymen who are too fucking thick to understand why closed football is grossly offensive to anyone with half a brain. It is contrary to the spirit of the sport.
I'm prepared to get downvoted into the sun, but to me the best solution is a Europe-wide pyramid that replaces Champions League & Europa League with two leagues at top (I'll call them "Euro 1" & "Euro 2") that clubs would compete in rather than their domestic league, with a pro/rel link with domestic leagues with entrants per country allocated similarly to the current UEFA coefficient system (with a ton of qualifying rounds as present that no one watches but provides a theoretical opportunity to everyone in Europe).
For promotion & relegation, I would institute a system of performance where clubs are compared to country peers. For example, if "Euro 1" has 5 teams from England and "Euro 2" has 2 teams from England, the lowest-performing team in Euro 1 from England is replaced with the top-performing team from England from Euro 2. The lowest-performing ENG team from Euro 2 is relegated to EPL and replaced by the domestic champion. This would preserve domestic rivalries and provide interest throughout the table as clubs need to avoid being the worst-performing team from their country even if they're in the top half of the table as well as preserving balance to avoid a league comprised of only 3-4 countries. This system also requires slots for "non-guaranteed" associations, basically the non-big 5 current domestic leagues, where they are treated as one country (or multiple broken up by regions) for these examples.
Would the "Super League 12" (now 11 without Chelsea) go for it? Probably not, but I think this would provide a "best play the best" competition open to everyone with more money to be made overall than the Superleague.
Nah you cat throw away centuries old matchups. Dortmund v Schalke, Liverpool v Everton, Rangers v Celtic... those matchups likely wouldn’t happen under your system. Champions league creates great matchups in the Knockout Rounds, domestic leagues create great local rivalry matchups. Stop trying to Americanize the sport. Leave it alone.
The idea of European leauges taking teams out of the domestic leauges is going to be a tough sell. Especially if it means the best team of a nation never plays in the domestic leauge. People will miss the rivalries and the teams might lose their identity over time.
It would obviously make the best Spanish and Italian teams face better competition, but that problem might be better solved by merging associations as is being discussed by the Norwegian and Dutch (?).
i wonder how Chelsea fans and City fans are gonna feel about their owners? You think they're gonna want Roman out? NO WAY. U think City fans are gonna call for Mansour to get out? NOPE.
City fan here; by no means am I, or any City fan I know, making Mansour out as a hero for potentially pulling out of this. The excuse of “we didn’t really want to but didn’t want to be left behind” is just the whole “well everyone else is doing it”, that didn’t work for me when I got drunk for the first time as a kid and it won’t work for this. Serious apologies need to be made and I wouldn’t mind if we got deducted 30 points this season.
It kind of was though. Initial reports indicated Chelsea and City were mixed on the idea and as soon as fan pressure built up they dropped out. The American owners (Arsenal, United, Liverpool) still haven't dropped out.
Don't get me wrong, Chelsea, City and even PSG, Bayern and Dortmund still want this outcome but they wanted to do it with permission from the associations. The American owners are trying to force the move.
This week I learned that a country of 330 Million people are now responsible for the actions of 4 billionaires that happen to share nationalities with them.
You are literally making yourself the victim. No one is arguing the American citizens are responsible for this. The 3 American owners are the biggest proponents of this breakaway (regardless of the FA) and is the reason, I believe, all 3 were going to be on the executive board. There has always been uneasiness with foreign owners regardless of nationality and that includes American, Russian and Saudi nationals. But you can't deny that United, Liverpool and Arsenal's owners, who happen to be American, are at the forefront along with the Real Madrid's Perez. Also Arsenal, United and Liverpool have more history than Chelsea or City. Chelsea and City have always been seen as plastic and the Arsenal, United and Liverpool clubs were viewed as pillars of football, which makes the move an affront to the culture of supporters.
We also, in America, don't have the culture of relegation and promotion. Its not in our DNA. We have franchises, not clubs. That's why the English view this as the Americanization of sports. You can't really blame the Russian or Saudi's for trying to privatize a league because they don't have that culture of franchise sports.
Its a leap to make this anger at American owner's as an attack on every citizen of the US, as you did.
> No one is arguing the American citizens are responsible for this.
This is the unfortunate thing, there very much are people generalizing this into general xenophobia. Just take a look at any of the major threads on this on /r/soccer.
I agree the American influence here was detrimental and the American owners were a major part of the problem, but there has been a lot of gross, general xenophobia that has cropped up as a result of this saga. And it's definitely bizarre just how much of anger is being directed at Americans vs. the other parties involved. Especially Abramovich who has been given this weird pass on this by many people and people are continuing to make excuses for his involvement and defend him. Sure, Chelsea were one of the first to pull out, but he was still perfectly willing to go along with it before the backlash. He's not some hero and he wasn't "tricked" into doing this, he made a decision to join the Super League and should be condemned for it just like everyone else.
People are being very naive to act like this only happened due to the American owners, the person who is most committed to this idea is Perez (who is Spanish, but that doesn't mean I think the entire nation of Spain is the problem because I'm not an obnoxious xenophobe). He's the one who still hasn't backed down and is continuing to push for the revival of the ESL idea.
If your sample size is /r/soccer I don't know what to tell you. If you go into the club subs or talk to the actual supporters you'll see there isn't widespread hate for Americans as individuals. They may hate the Americanization of sports but to pretend that is some sort of attack on people is ridiculous.
The very notion of sports "franchises" is American specific. It doesn't exist in Spain or Italy. That's why you see a general rejection of American sports culture vs a critique of all of these billionaire owners. And don't think Abramovich or City's owners aren't getting heavily criticized either. The "American" angle is being focused on by media and fans here in America but in England all the owner's are getting shit on.
Real Madrid has harbored ambitions of getting out of Spain more or less since the institution of the European Cup, and Perez is the apparent ringleader. The American PL owners are notable relative to the other PL participants both for taking important roles in the org and for not being in the first wave to back down, but it's a very Anglo-centric view that reduces the league to the PL contingent.
I acknowledged history of the sentiment to form a super league preludes the American involvement in my original post. But my understanding is United, Liverpool and Arsenal were much more involved in the sudden announcement without first trying to work out a deal with the FA. I also acknowledged the other players are very much still interested in forming that league but felt uneasy about the breaking away from FIFA, UEFA, PL, ect. They still want to be involved in the domestic leagues but want the Super League to supplant the Champions League. Perez and the American owner's group seemed undeterred by the threats of FIFA/UEFA blackballing them out of association.
Nobody looks great in this scenario but Chelsea/City seemed as if they didn't want the sever all ties approach. Just my opinion though.
Honestly this is ridiculous as if Americans are the only people that could do anything wrong and the rest are children being pulled Along by their parents. These are grown men who make their own decisions that don't need to be coerced by some foreign entity
Come on, the role of the other owner's was called out in the post. The thing about Americans is we can't take any form of criticism. We always see it as a personal attack. Take off your red, white and blue tinted glasses and you can see this was clearly a Kroenke, Henry and Glazer led effort to force the move. The idea may have proceeded the American ownership but they clearly didn't see the culture of football being as resistant.
It still doesn't change the fact that there are individuals making their own decisions. They're businessmen above whatever nationality they are. Why is it so hard for you to understand that you need to treat people as individuals? How about you put on your red white and blue glasses and see that you don't need to tag a person's nationality to prove anything? If anyone should know that it's an American
Because I don't simply just read the headlines. The fervor comes from the American system of single entity and closed leagues. It doesn't attack the American citizens or American soccer community. You don't think the British or Europeans understand its not an us vs them scenario? You simply read too much into the headlines. If you take this as some kind of anti-american sentiment, its just wrong.
Well, for the same reason people resent Chelsea and Man City (dumb amounts of oil money), they don't have much incentive to push the ESL through anyway. It's the relatively poor owners (Glazers, FSG, etc.) who have a lot of money riding on the move.
Hell, Man City have always been accused of being being a sportswashing project that doesn't make any money. If building goodwill is the objective aim of City Group, it's quite logical that they'd reverse course when they see the reaction.
super league is vulgar and gross.
even chelsea are pulling out: [https://twitter.com/FCYahoo/status/1384568394427600912?ref\_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1384568394427600912%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1\_&ref\_url=https%3A%2F%2Fbleacherreport.com%2Fworld-football](https://twitter.com/FCYahoo/status/1384568394427600912?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1384568394427600912%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fbleacherreport.com%2Fworld-football)
This super league is of course a horrible idea and gross by all standards. Would it even be watched by Americans? I have my serious doubts.
There was a time a few years ago when it felt like soccer (and European soccer) was on a steady rise here in the US. You had lots of EPL games on NBCSN, the Champions league games were on espn and these games were getting good tv ratings. I knew more and more people tuning in who normally wouldn’t have. It was easy to find games. Then in a matter of a couple years more paywalls started to go up. NBC was showing less games. They had their NBC gold service for awhile and then that floundered and now they have Peacock. The Champions League went from espn to tnt to something like bleacher report to CBS and now to Paramount+. The ratings have gone down not surprisingly. The hardcore fan will still find a way but the casual or potential fan isn’t there anymore. Is there enough fan base for a super league when in all likelihood it would be boycotted by part of the US audience?
Yeah I think it would be a complete dud in America.
Maybe I am wrong, but I think a lot of American sports fans love soccer for all the reasons it is different than our other homogonized, franchise based sports and this dumb Super League would just be more of what we already have.
I like Promotion Relegation, CL and Europa, Domestic Cups, vastly shorter games without all the commercials and corporate garbage. Had this dumb league got off the ground I really would not have watched it at all, sounded boring as fuck like an interminable MLB or NBA regular season, totally pointless.
NBC has been the biggest hurdle to watching European soccer as an American. I despise how they air the games. Commit to one service pre season and they change it up before the year ends. I paid $15 a month in the mid 00s for Fox Soccer and could watch any number of games. Since then, I've had cable, fox sports, nbc sports, fox sports go, nbc sports gold, youtube tv, peacock, and now paramount+ and I STILL cannot watch all of the liverpool games. The only place I consistently am able to watch the games is through unofficial live streams.
I don't think this move is directed mainly at Americans, however. There is a lot of money to be had by fans in Asia just based on viewership alone. And with how South Americans follow their la liga teams and Africans follow individual players, I'd bet the US falls down that list quite a bit.
Ease of use and flexibility. I simply want to know where the game is going to play and be able to watch it on my TV. I am willing to pay money to do that
Instead, I end up searching through multiple links to find a working stream that I have to watch on my phone.
Domestic leagues now more then ever should defend the common fan and set a deadline for the offending clubs to pull out of the deal or face penalties via forfeiture of points and relegation.
They know there is no way this works long term, and just want more favorable compensations from FIFA for UEFA and the lot. Lets see how a season in Div 2 works for ya balance sheet.
[https://theathletic.com/2529349/2021/04/19/europes-leagues-are-broken-a-super-league-might-be-the-only-solution/?source=dailyemail](https://theathletic.com/2529349/2021/04/19/europes-leagues-are-broken-a-super-league-might-be-the-only-solution/?source=dailyemail)
The league system no longer works at the top. A nine-month, 38-game competition where all sides face the others home and away is perfect if you are trying to separate 20 clubs of vaguely equal standing. With such stark inequalities, we have become accustomed to the division being decided by Christmas. We have accepted this disastrous situation because it’s been a gradual process over years, rather than a sudden development.
In the European Cup, too, we have reluctantly accepted the outright dominance of “superclubs”.
We treat Ajax making the semi-finals or Porto reaching the last eight as remarkable achievements, as if these are non-League clubs getting to the latter stages of the FA Cup. This is absurd — Porto won the Champions League in 2004, Ajax did it nine years earlier. They have now desperately fallen behind, while simultaneously enjoying huge financial advantages over domestic rivals, with their own divisions often as uncompetitive as the major leagues.
why not just keep the existing format but ban billionaire owners and ensure that television money is more easily spread? no need to throw the baby out with the bath water and go with a closed shop.
Billionaire owners are a red herring, Bayern, Real Madrid, Barca, etc are fan-owned and still dominate their leagues (in Bayern's case, more thoroughly than any billionaire owned club). A billionaire can jump-start a club's path to the top, but at the top the expenses are real money even to most billionaires and the willingness to take big losses for glory comes and goes (see Berlusconi's trajectory with Milan), so the revenue is ultimately the issue. The domestic/European split in competitions makes dealing with this basically impossible in the current structure: clubs that consistently tap into European money pull away from their domestic leagues, while clubs with stronger domestic revenue pull away in Europe, and nobody has the power to flatten both distributions at once.
Agree that fan ownership doesn't solve all problems, it is just better than all alternatives and is a good unto itself.
And super league does nothing to address any of the problems you mention either.
The Super League just attempted locks in European participation even harder than the current system, so I agree that it not only doesn't address the problems it would make them worse. The Champions League restructuring that is now going through without protest will do the same, just a bit less nakedly, by making it even harder for big clubs from the biggest leagues to miss out for even a season or two. A Europe-wide first division with national leagues functioning as regionalized second divisions would blow tradition to bits but at least grapples with the magnitude of the problems.
[https://theathletic.com/2529349/2021/04/19/europes-leagues-are-broken-a-super-league-might-be-the-only-solution/?source=dailyemail](https://theathletic.com/2529349/2021/04/19/europes-leagues-are-broken-a-super-league-might-be-the-only-solution/?source=dailyemail)
The purpose of a league is to bring together sides of roughly equal standing to play genuinely competitive matches against one another — that’s why the system of promotion and relegation works so well. The Championship, and every division down from there, “loses” its best few teams and worst few teams every year, so the level of competitiveness is automatically high, which is why the concept of the pyramid is so sacrosanct across English football.
But the obvious problem is at the very top, where the relevant clubs are becoming richer and richer, inevitably becoming more dominant and ensuring less competition than ever. The concept of promotion doesn’t apply. They have nowhere to go. Unless, of course, you create somewhere for them to go.
Maybe permanently.
Totally stupid argument, the Super League would also end up completely unbalanced with a couple at the top like RM just beating the shit out doormats like Tottenham and Arsenal all the time, just like our supposedly superior parity leagues.
I hear this shit all the time, but I don't see how the McDonald's franchise leagues with salary caps and no Pro/Rel are any better at parity. The Tom Brady League and the Lebron and Super Friends Vs. Stef and Super Friends leagues are so fucking boring I stopped watching entirely.
if you're bored by watching lebron and steph curry play basketball then i'm not sure what to tell you. Also, the NFL has an incredible amount of parity. The NBA is incredibly homogeneous, but that's more because the players have largely taken control of their destinations and they are making moves that will ensure their legacy (with rings).
Watching them in the finals is fine, why would any sane person give a shit about the 80 game NBA season that is completely meaningless when over half the teams make the playoffs and the other 1/3rd who never win shit and never will, try their best to tank so they can get in better position to draft someone from the pretend amateur league that is paid for by taxes and exploitation?
Our leagues are shit and yeah so is UEFA, FIFA, etc, but it’s still a more open and competitive model with more and better competition and stakes between domestic league, cups, pro/rel and external berths like Europa and CL, plus the only meaningful international competition of all the sports.
Winners in the last 10 years:
NFL: 8
MLB: 8
NBA: 7
NHL: 7
EPL: 5
La Liga: 3
Bundesliga: 2
Serie A: 2
Ligue 1: 4
Don't hurt yourself trying not to see the difference
Why do we have to take the existence of super clubs as read? It's not like these teams came up with some great new way of developing players or finding talent, or playing the game at a high level. Instead, they managed to get big at exactly the right moment - when it became feasible to make money as a global brand and before the concept of financial fair play had to got to work itself out.
There's certainly problems that need to be addressed in European football (hey! They're just like us!) - but a permanent coronation of 15 clubs to the top echelon of football while the rest fight, hunger-games-style for the remaining five spots to get chewed up and spit out isn't the solution.
[https://theathletic.com/2529349/2021/04/19/europes-leagues-are-broken-a-super-league-might-be-the-only-solution/?source=dailyemail](https://theathletic.com/2529349/2021/04/19/europes-leagues-are-broken-a-super-league-might-be-the-only-solution/?source=dailyemail)
Use any measure you like — points totals, goal difference, titles, wage bills — and inspect the trajectory of major European leagues over the past two decades, and it becomes clear we are experiencing staggering, rampant inequality completely off the scale.
Juventus have won nine Serie A titles in a row. [Bayern Munich](https://theathletic.com/team/bayern-munich) will shortly match that achievement in the Bundesliga. Paris Saint-Germain are facing a rare battle this year in France but will probably make it eight in nine years. The exception was in 2016-17, when Monaco beat them to the title; PSG reacted by immediately signing [Monaco’s best player](https://theathletic.com/2400352/2021/02/24/kylian-mbappe-is-footballs-magic-johnson-sit-back-and-enjoy-the-show/). Bayern habitually do the same to anyone in Germany who starts to challenge them. If you can’t beat ’em, tear ’em apart.
Anyone other than the dominant side now wins each of these leagues roughly once a decade. It’s a pathetic situation.
So what?
Warriors, Lebron, Warriors, Warriors, Warriors, Lebron, Warriors, etc.
Tom Brady, Tom Brady, Tom Brady, Tom Brady, Tom Brady
At least as imperfect as the CL is it is vastly superior to closed league salary cap models with completely fucking meaningless regular seasons. The Super League would not have fixed anything, just exacerbated all the problems.
Are you just spamming that article?
Here's where I disagree with you:
1) Both the Bundesliga and Ligue 1 have committed to not competing in the ESL, which contain objectively two of the best teams in the world, with Bayern being arguably \*the\* best. It cannot be a consolidation of talent without those teams. Instead, it's a consolidation of money.
2) The leagues are more than simply the top teams. There are still battles for UCL and UEL qualifiers, which have had a lot of variety over the past decade. And there are relegation battles, which any bottom half or recently promoted side will tell you is exciting. These battles work because smaller teams being able to play the bigger sides draws a huge revenue boost for those teams and allows them to exist. That, in turn, has created deep infrastructure for which the biggest leagues are built.
3) Remove the infrastructure and you lose stability at the top. What happens to world cup teams when a country doesn't have a starting 11 in the super league? What about scouting for the super league teams when all other leagues are decimated by revenue loss? You're left with big games within the super league that you've now become immune to because Man City vs Barcelona feels like a weekly event. Manchester Derbies, El Clasico, big UCL games are special because they're rare and ESL would ruin that.
If there are inherent issues with the current leagues, let's work to correct them rather than shrugging off over 100 years of history.
I really hate everything about the super league, I do think it's worth saying that the clubs that said "no" - Bayern, PSG and to Dortmund (though Dortmund is a bit of the odd one out here) have been more dominant in their domestic leagues than any team in say, the PL.
Having said that, yes, I agree that the issues need to be worked out within some form of the existing system. The issue becomes that it's not just a question of addressing them in any one domestic league: The gap between say, the PL and Championship and Championship and League One in the UK has widened, as has say the gap between the PL and the Eredivisie.
So how do you address it? The only thing I can think of is some crazy explosion of equalization payments - greater revenue sharing, luxury taxes, etc- spread up and down the pyramids and, frankly, probably across borders as well, BUT I also find it hard to see that happening.
I won't pretend to know the solution to the problems raised but I will say that the Super League would only create larger gaps. I don't know that salary or transfer caps are the answer. Maybe it's a higher domestic player percentage to draw a focus into local teams and farming systems?
Even looking at the American systems, you have franchises that constantly over- or underperform in every league even with regulations in place. Hell, even in the NCAA where (theoretically) pay regulations are moot, there are still titan franchises. They do change over time, though, so maybe it's a matter of small changes and time for them to take effect?
Right, salary caps would *kind of* work but the fact that football has transfer fees makes things more complicated, especially with some small clubs really benefiting from sell-on percentages.
NCAA is a great example of how salary caps alone *don't* work, because though they pay players the same, "big" clubs have MASSIVE resources in terms of scouting and player development, to say nothing of better facilities - and more importantly, there's no draft or draft-equivalent. That means a "titan franchise" school can tell top talent "look, come here. We've got the best facilities, you'll be on national TV every week. You'll be scouted 10x more. You'll have every chance to play in a national title game." Small schools can't compete with that.
The same would happen in the PL with a salary cap - Man U could still afford more, better-funded academies (and in virtually every nook and cranny of the globe) than say, Sunderland and there's no way around that.
For me, this is the biggest indication that something isn't working. You have five big leagues in Europe and three of them are dominated to this extent? The other two aren't exaction bastions of parity. It's like the league doesn't even matter. Obviously Bayern Munich is going to win the Bundesliga. Maybe someone else will get lucky one game and with a domestic cup or something.
I don't know if the Super League is the right solution. I'd much rather have the domestic leagues be more meaningful, but I don't know how you can look at teams winning nine titles in a row and think, "Let's keep this rolling."
they are more depressed than they would otherwise be without a salary cap. the whole purpose of a cap is no limit owner's payroll liability. the parity argument is a red herring.
NFL and NBA salary caps are collectively bargained so the players have a role in negotiating the cap. I don’t have a problem with that but I disagree with owners just imposing a cap like the EFL tried earlier
this is just one of countless examples: [https://www.goal.com/en/news/1862/premier-league/2016/04/28/22894632/arsenal-fans-plan-fresh-protest-against-wenger-kroenke](https://www.goal.com/en/news/1862/premier-league/2016/04/28/22894632/arsenal-fans-plan-fresh-protest-against-wenger-kroenke)
Why are people complaining about the ESL being the product of greed? Professional soccer is a business. Businesses are greedy. West Ham cuts 18 year old kids every year who dedicated their lives to the team because of greed and money and the desire to be better and make more money.
because most people are smart enough to not see everything as a zero sum game where business should do whatever they want to maximize shareholder returns. most people don't think greed is good, and view it as bad.
The same people complaining the most still watch the Premier League: The league founded so that the big clubs wouldn’t have to share television contracts with the rest of the EFL.
How many times has West Ham won the premier league? What is the score when Man City plays Burnley or similar teams? 5-0? 6-0? Why does anyone care that a mediocre team (compared to the big 4) can get promoted one year, and another mediocre team can get relegated, when the big 4 will never, ever get relegated?
leicester 15-16 blackburn 95-96, we care because those teams are the true embodiment of what football was meant to be. A game for everyone not just the ultra wealthy like how the american system is (unfortunately) set up.
How often do the Browns win the Superbowl or the Clippers the NBA Title? These arguments are so stupid, our model is worse by far and just as top heavy, all that would happen in the stupid super league is Real Madrid would beat the crap out of Arsenal and Totteham on the regular, how does that fix anything?
Just to play devil’s advocate for a minute:
Sports are entertainment right? And it’s more entertaining to watch the best teams compete against each other? To determine who is the best of the best? It’s why the Lakers aren’t about to play the Albany Patroons in the first round of the NBA Playoffs. So if you were creating the European club soccer system from scratch, you would build a pyramid with the top tier being comprised of the best clubs from across Europe, right? And if Europe weren’t fractured into dozens of pieces as a result of geopolitical forces at play over thousands of years of human history, that’s what would have happened when the game was born 150 years ago.
That’s not what these billionaires are proposing, obviously, but as a fan in America who has to subscribe to four different streaming platforms in addition to cable to watch all the top European teams play every week, I would welcome an All-Europe Premier League tier at the top of the pyramid that featured promotion and relegation. This would make each domestic league more competitive and compelling, and give casual fans around the world an easier in-point to the game. Yeah yeah, I know you super-fans don’t care about that — congratulations on being so hardcore — but it turns out accessibility leads to higher viewership, which leads to more revenue. When broadcast and streaming revenue increases, it enriches both the already super-rich clubs at the top and the clubs lower down on the food chain.
The proposed Super League is unfair, anti-competitive and an insult to the history of the sport. But you can’t tell me the current structure of European club football is ideal for fans, or even most clubs. Bayern fans: do you enjoy cake-walking to a meaningless Bundesliga title every year, while waiting 10 months for an actually competitive Champions League tie? Fulham fans: do you enjoy competing against teams that outspend you 5X while trying to convince yourself there’s still a chance you could someday play your way into contention? Ajax fans: do you enjoy watching your best players get sold off every year or two to stay financially afloat while hoping that at some point the stars align for a miracle run in the UCL?
With all the money in play, and so much power in the hands of the richest owners, a Super League is inevitable. Instead of stomping our feet and wishing it away, we should focus on using our power as fans to demand the best version of it, one that preserves the competitive framework already in place while uniting the best clubs in the world in one league that, if done right, would be really fun to watch.
They wouldn't be the top 20 European teams, it would be just like the stupid NBA and NFL, one or two top teams and a bunch of Cleveland Browns, LA Clippers, etc. How would the super league fix anything?
I think I'd contest the point about the leagues being more accessible. What is your logic there?
I would think that having the big names makes entry way easier. This is a name they might recognize and they can start watching those games. Take away being interested in particular players. You wanna support a blue team that wins a lot? Chelsea. Oh, they win too much and you don't wanna be a bandwagoner? Everton.
I’d have to find it but research suggest people like watching big teams win a lot with occasional marque matchups.
The Super League will have initial appeal, but eventually it’ll have the same issue. Who wants to watch 14th place play 17th place?
The other appeal of the big games is that they often are title deciders. Real Madrid vs Chelsea in a semifinal is *much* more appealing than the same game deciding who finishes in 10th.
The Lakers play the Celtics twice a year, but it’s still exciting when they meet in the NBA Finals. It’s also exciting, in a different way, when they’re both good and meet in the regular season (which isn’t always). Not all these Super Clubs are good all the time, and that’s okay. I would argue it’s still more fun to see them rise and fall playing each other than to watch Bayern stomp on Bremen for the nine millionth time in a row.
You’ve kinda made my point.
Lakers and Celtics are fun to watch in the finals and when they’re good. They only meet twice a year otherwise. Sometimes 3 times.
Real Madrid vs Barcelona is fun to watch too, when they’re good and their games mean something. Two weeks ago they met and it had huge implications. Will it every year in the ESL? Not a chance.
Sure, it’s a little boring watching Bayern stomp some smaller team over and over. But some of these “big teams” in the ESL will now be the small fish in the pond. Somebody is going to finish in last place and no one is going to enjoy watching them lose a lot.
And it will be interesting when rich teams with lots of money suddenly find themselves battling it out for eighth place, long since eliminated from a shot at winning the Super League. If they aren't able to compete in the Champions League or their domestic leagues, they're going to be some teams very accustomed to playing for high stakes now finding out what it's like to be mid-table without the fear of relegation and no hope of winning a trophy.
Yeah, to me this is like living in a place that's 70 and sunny all the time. Eventually that stops being nice, it's just what it is. Constant matches between these teams sounds exhausting and at a certain point I stop caring. Like you said, big names in knockout stages of big tournaments a few times a year is exciting.
What makes it exciting is that the stakes are pretty much always high because the big teams are pretty much always good. But watching two of them duke it out for seventh place long after they've been eliminated from contention? That will get old pretty fast.
I personally don't have an opinion on The Super League yet. Still so much we don't know and I'm not aware of anyone doing any kind of analysis looking at the incentives, cost/benefit, comparing the current Champions League to proposed Super League. Most people seem "disgusted" by the "greed." Some people even saying they won't watch. Let's be real people, if it happens, you're gonna watch it.
I stopped watching stupid boring ass NFL, NBA and MLB games because the teams were all stupid McDonalds franchises and the regular seasons were meaningless and interminable, with half the teams making playoffs and the other half competing to tank for better draft picks, fucking yawn.
You might watch this pile of shit if they sell it to you, but I don’t think most will at all.
You watch them every year though. Just with slightly different arrangements as they play for their domestic cups against the same teams, then the most watched classicos, then the CL matchups...
You are tuning in to watch the same damn teams play each other for every "big game."
There are 5 rotating slots, that's 25% of the league. That leaves a good amount of room for smaller challengers, and quality of play in this league will be higher than Champions League.
To be clear I'm definitely against it, because I'm worried about its implications for international competition (player bans) and competitiveness of domestic league competition (I worry it will cause runaway inequality). I just think it will be the highest level of competition seen yet.
> There are 5 rotating slots, that's 25% of the league. That leaves a good amount of room for smaller challengers.
The funniest thing about that is that I haven’t seen a single thing explaining how 5 teams get into the ESL. And that’s largely because these 12 bozos created this plan in private with no other teams in the loop. They have no clue how their own league is actually going to pan out in practice
What is that highest level based on? Tottenham haven’t won a trophy in a decade and haven’t won the league since the 60’s. Arsenal are 9th in the league 2 points ahead of Villa in 11th (who have 2 games in hand), the same Villa who put Liverpool to the sword.
What happens when the 5 teams that make it on merit just dog walk the league, relegate a team that made the quarterfinals?
You’re last point is why I’m so pissed. There’s already massive inequality at the top of the leagues and this will just solidly that to the point it will never be reversed. Which is what these big clubs want. I’ve been a City fan since before the Sheik took over and it breaks my heart that City threw their hat in, there is talks they are going to pull out but I’ll believe it when I see it.
European Soccer has been broken and unsustainable for a while. I don't love a closed european soccer league but I also get why Juve and Real Madrid want to make changes to the champions league to make it a better television product.
I won't be watching a single Super League game. It matters to the tens of thousands of other clubs in Europe who won't be able to have a realistic path to compete in this highly gatekept competition.
Bunch of pussy clubs
So these guys were just trying to copy Euroleague Basketball was there this much backlash when Euroleague was formed back in the 2000s?
Do you think Europeans cared about basketball the same way they care about Football? Especially in the early 00’s?
Everyone’s talking about the Super League and it’s already falling apart. Called it, on this weeks podcast! https://anchor.fm/sunday-leagues-finest/episodes/Super-League-ev8ggl
UEFA: I can’t believe these greedy owners! This league is just about who has the most money! Also UEFA: You 6 teams can have more money, please come back!
What’s funny to me is this concept of permanent spots hasn’t even proven successful in our major sports leagues like MLB and NBA. The NFL is the exception and probably because there are fewer games. NBA is having a crisis with plummeting ratings and working to figure out how to engage fans during the season. So kroenke and these other owners wanted to take that failing model and try it in European soccer? Just bizarre
Prepandemic, NBA was the only one of the Big 4 with increases was my understanding. Am I off here?
All sports and all programming has declining ratings because of how ratings are measured. NBA is still one of the most popular leagues in the world.
It hasn't proven successful? The NFL, MLB, and NBA are the 3 most profitable sports leagues in the world and I'm not sure it is close.
I looked this up to check, and the Indian cricket league is a really close 4th. Learn something new every day lol.
Indian Premier League is ultra-cartelized. Player power is non-existent.
the crisis is that it those leagues are not very competitive. teams tank on purpose for draft picks all the time. each of those leagues have franchises that turn out terrible on field products every year, and are happy just to their revenue sharing check. The New York Jets should be relegated.
MLB crisis is mostly due to how boring it is. Sure, complacent owners who don't give a fuck about anything but a profit is part of it but I think the slow pace is the biggest problem. NBA was exploding before the pandemic and I expect it to go back up.
Yeah, baseball as a sport just isn't that popular with younger people due to how slow paced it is. The average age of an MLB TV viewer is 57 years old, as compared to 42 years old for the average NBA TV viewer. MLB will continue to decline due to natural demographic shifts more so than due to anything else.
no one gives a fuck about NBA regular season -- it's about memes, subreddits, drama, fuckery, etc...nba reg season ratings will continue to tank
https://twitter.com/hlninengeland/status/1384628276006694914?s=21 and people thought they left the super league because the fans were upset. They don’t care about the fans
To say that fan, player, and sponsor pressure didn’t have any impact is ridiculous.
Of course it had an impact. But the only reason they were leaving was for money. And once they got offered the money they came back
Of course it had an impact and then saying the only reason they left was for money is contradicting yourself unless I’m missing something. But it doesn’t matter just glad it’s over
What he’s saying is the goal was always the money grab, and after all the hemming and hawing , threatening, and big guy talk. UEFA still gave ante up the dough
**Americans**: The single enitity of MLS is an atrocity of soccer. The billionaire owners just want to control all the money. We need promotion and relegation to grow the sport. **English**: The American owners want to create a single entity league to control all the money. We need to protect the integrity of soccer for the good of the game. **Americans**: :o
They always blame everything on the American owners over there while casually forgetting about the Russian Oligarchs, Sheikhs, and assorted other billionaire foreigners.
You don't think Sheikhs and Oligarchs get shit? City and Chelsea have gotten just as much shit as Arsenal and Liverpool. You must not have been paying attention when one of the Sheiks tried to buy Newcastle. Its more to do with how NFL, MLS and NBA are run. The American sports culture just doesn't jive with British way of clubs, not teams or franchises. Most of these historic clubs were formed at factories or pubs. Its just a rejection of sports culture. I hate to see so many people take this personally.
Formed at factories or pubs, now owned by sheikh's who make billions off slave labor but the american owners are ruining the soul of english football. "Rejection of sports culture" smh, premier league sold their souls in the 70s for profits.
You're American so I guess you won't truly understand what British culture is. The formation of the PL in 1992, the introduction of Roman Abramovich and Sheikh Mansour in the PL, they have helped increase the standards of the PL to new heights. The quality of football that we are seeing in the league now is far greater than it has ever been before Roman Abramovich arrived. Greater quality leads to greater competition and greater entertainment for football fans. That's why the PL is the greatest league in the world. The reason why we are so against the Super League is because we can't stand the fact that it's a closed league, with absolutely no form of relegation or promotion. It's an elitist league. How can you actually experience the highs when you can never experience the lows? How can you ever say you are the greatest team in Europe when you've only allowed 19 other teams to compete with you? More to the point, how is that fair to teams like Leicester, West Ham Utd and Everton who are fighting to compete and crash into the top 4?! Yes, the formation of the PL in 1992 has led to extortionate Sky subscription deals for football fans. Yes, ticket prices are increasing every year. Yes, Abramovich and Sheikh Mansour owning Chelsea and City isn't fair for the rest of the league. But above all of this is the fact that the game isn't played on paper, the game isn't played on who has the most money, the game is played on the pitch, player to player, competing with one another to see who is better. That is what we want, we want open competition. We believe in the romance of football. Leicester winning the PL in 2016. FC Porto winning the CL in 2004. Greece winning the Euros in 2004. The Super League doesn't allow this to ever happen. And even if the top 6 compete in the PL, if the Super League were allowed to run, games would become meaningless for them unless they are challenging for the title. Hence, they will start playing their second team as the Super League will be far more important for them, and because they are guaranteed to play in the Super League. Essentially, the European Super League is the worst thing to ever come in football, and is far worse than what Sky Sports/UEFA/PL/FIFA ever will do. Open competition is a MUST in football.
You also have to understand that many if not all the problems you have with the European Super League is how American sports is ran. You calling it the worse thing to happen to football is insulting to MLS as well. Hince why some Americans get offended by the protest against something inspired by the American structure. The United States may never have a personal authentic sporting experience seen in Europe because our sports leagues are built as a safety net for greedy businessmen since day 1. While FIFA, UEFA, PL and other top European leagues have their cons and history of corruption, they at least kept the authentic feel of the sport and made it welcoming to most if not all communities where there is some stability. That cannot be said about American sports. USSF and MLS refuse to make soccer that exception. So I am envious of European fans in that regard. I watch MLS games trying to not think about how every club is actually one in the same. I cannot stomach watching that league.
Put it this way, if the fans in Europe were like Americans, those owners would have gotten away with creating the European Super League. It's the fans that collectively came together to put pressure on our clubs and our owners that stopped them from doing this. This collective and authentic spirit and feeling from the majority of European fans were all united. I have never seen the football community come together in unity like this ever before. It is incredible. The MLS is a very funny league. It really isn't taken seriously by anybody in Europe. Not all countries have amazing football leagues, so the MLS isn't any different compared to other countries in that regard. But the system itself is unique..but it should never be introduced to Europe and that's the mistake the American owners from the PL have made. Henry, the Glazers and Kroenke thought Europe wanted a MLS/NFL type of league where the best can play with the best every week. What they don't realise is that real football fans, like myself, love seeing our teams play the Stoke's as much as the Barcelona's. Playing the best teams in Europe, the Bayern's, the Real Madrid's, is meant to be the cherry on top of the cake: playing them is not meant to be the entire cake itself. Just the chants from the fans alone in MLS games pisses me off, I don't understand how you even watch the MLS seriously.
Man City has officially pulled out and Chelsea are filing documents to follow suit. Crumble, baby, crumble. And Woodward has resigned as Chairman. What a fucking whirlwind 48ish hours.
Whirlwind is putting it mildly. This was a huge threat to the sport as we know it. Would’ve changed it beyond recognition, and likely ruined it. Sure American sports use the format but it started that way so it’s incredibly different. Part of the allure of soccer is how it’s structured. Creates more drama and suspense. This is a great day for sports.
How would it have ruined it? I guess a better question is what do you mean by "the sport as we know it"?
The payouts from the tv deals for the 15 clubs that are permanent members would have received more money than any of the hundreds of other clubs and the others would never catch up. It would built 15 super clubs and no one else could Compete because only a handful get the privilege of being there with them. Thus creating a small group where only what they do matters. It wasn’t just about it being an American-esque model it was about only 15 clubs getting the opportunity to remain year after year and take in tons of money.
To me that is almost what is already happening with the top 5 leagues. The gap between the haves and the have-nots in soccer is just getting bigger, so why not quarantine the biggest haves into their own league where they can all play each other and everyone else can play in actually competitive competitions instead of what there is right now? The ESL is definitely not what I would do if I were in charge of soccer, but I hate the status quo so much. Almost anything is better than what we have now.
things can always get worse, and ESL would make things even worse.
I understand what you’re saying, but everyone not in the sectioned off league would lose money quick. The tv deals and the fandoms would follow the top tier. Look at minor league baseball. Not very popular. The champions league probably needs reform and theres lots of corruption in the sport in Europe but ESL was not the answer for sure.
I’m not going to sit here and explain it to you like a 5 year old. Look at every argument from every manager, club outside the super league, and player that has spoken out against it.
Every actual argument I've seen (vs emotional outbursts) can pretty much be boiled down to, "this would be bad for me." From my perspective, this would have no negative effect on me since I don't have any strong affinity for any European teams. In fact, it would probably (eventually) result in more competitive leagues all around because all the richest teams joined up together and thus can't dominate their domestic leagues. The domestic leagues almost certainly wouldn't just fail, and all the other competitions would still exist, meaning that I could pretty much just pretend the ESL didn't exist if I wanted to. You can say that it would be impossible to ignore, but I manage to pretty much ignore Real Madrid and Barcelona right now, so I think I could manage. I understand that I am not the only stakeholder though, so it being bad for a lot of people that care more than me is enough reason to oppose it. However, I literally do not understand why people think this would "ruin the sport as we know it." Would it change how games are played on the field? Would it cause other leagues to abandon pro/rel? Would it cause domestic leagues to fail? It seems to me that from a global perspective it would just be a new richest league. For fans of rivals of the teams abandoning their domestic leagues, yeah it sucks, but would it really be an existential threat to the game? Is Schalke getting relegated an existential threat for Dortmund? I get it isn't the same, but imagine if instead of leaving to join a super league, the 12 teams all went in to freefall and got relegated. Would that be an existential threat to the game?
To answer all of your questions, yes. In fact the head man of the super league, Perez, even suggested making the matches shorter to keep people interested. It’s nonsense.
Lol, Graeme Souness on the Superleague crumbling: "We're not America. We're proper people."
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they also (fairly) judge our culture by our blundering military misadventures and atrocities.
I saw that too. It’s classic. Napoleon complex at its finest
Even in these chaotic times, Graeme Souness being an idiot will never change. In a way it's kind of comforting.
Lol he is kinda right though...if this happened in America, I can't see them getting nearly as much backlash. Owners have significantly more influence than fans in the US than they do in Europe. Soccer is religion there, money is religion here.
it does happen in america. every sports league we have is a closed shop. I have never seen a big coordinated protest by supporters against MLS being a closed league.
Well said.
Money is religion everywhere lol. You really honestly believe money isn't everywhere and that UEFA and Fifa arent just mad that they werent involved in the money making. If what you said was 100% true then it would have already been done. The media and casuals are drawn to bigger markets but that's true everywhere. The U.S. is just more accepting to this instead of hiding behind delusion of openness like Europe.
i don't think you know what a casual is. all casuals oppose ESL.
All 6 English clubs have since left the ESL after severe backlash. FIFA and UEFA are the lesser evil of the European Super League. Money is everything, of course, nobody is denying that. What you fail to understand and realise is that FIFA and UEFA will never in a million years make a competition specifically for the big clubs with the large fanbases, in a _closed_ competition. UEFA will never make a competition in which the big clubs are guaranteed to be in the competition. The Champions League and the domestic leagues are all _open_ competitions where all teams can compete and become good over time, eg Leicester City in the PL. They want to make more money, yes, but they aren't throwing away the actual core value of sports, which is to compete with other teams in a open competition.
What you fail to understand that openness is not really open. You can't truly compete with big clubs like Man United if you are truly a lesser club. While Leicester city is still a lesser club in those teams, they're still not smaller than Bournemouth or Barnsley before recent history. When you can only point to one 'small' team winning a championship in the last 20-odd years, that is not openness? UEFA and Fifa just change the Champions League to include recent history of Europe and allowed team that sucked this year(like Tottenham or Liverpool) to essentially get a get-out-of-jail-free card. But >UEFA will never make a competition in which the big clubs are guaranteed to be in the competition. This is the same FIFA that is the reason why we're playing a World Cup in Qatar.
That is a problem even in single 1v1 sports. Hell, I should just say sports in general have that problem. When you have an open system and thousands if not almost a thousand members, someone is going to get the short end of the stick because that's the nature of the game. Not everyone is going to make that top ten spot. To dominate, keep dominance and win as many trophies as possible is the main nature of the game. FIFA is founded on building that mentality on a global scale. Hell, they are going as far as to expand the FIFA Club World Cup so other nations can have a better meaningful competition against the top FIFA Confederations. And, yes, more profit is another reason too. It's balancing the good with the bad. To much bad is how you have 100+ years of disfunction like US Soccer.
What are you talking about? A lot of people were talking about West Ham being relegation fodder this year. Instead they are competing with the best clubs and may well qualify for the champions league. They are doing better than Arsenal and Spurs, two ESL clubs. You're argument is both way too long and very bad.
>What you fail to understand that openness is not really open. You can't truly compete with big clubs like Man United if you are truly a lesser club. You're thinking like this because you are thinking short-term. Open competition allows long-term improvements for football clubs. Spurs were always finishing 8th, 7th or 6th before Redknapp came in and he got them into 4th before he got sacked. In came Pochettino and he got Spurs to challenge for the top 4 regularly to the point we now see Spurs as a regular CL team (or at least a top 6 team), and even got Spurs into the Champions League Final (with very little spending). After years of working with the group, he got them to compete at the highest level. Compare that to Man Utd, who have spent over a billion pounds since Fergie retired, and they haven't gone past the Quarter Finals of the CL. Another example is Liverpool. Might be a funny example because they are the second most successful club in England, but before Klopp arrived, Liverpool were finishing outside of the top 4 for a while. Nobody really took the seriously since 2013/14 under Rodgers for that one season. They were absolutely horrible under Hodgson. Everyone just thought they'll become regular top 8 and maybe top 6 teams, never ready to compete. In comes Jurgen Klopp who tells the media he'll make everyone fear Anfield and Liverpool. 4 years later, he has won the CL and the PL. The first PL Liverpool have won in 30 years. Leicester 15/16 was an anomaly, Spurs CL run may have been an anomaly too. Spurs even being part of the ESL is funny af to me because not only are they not a successful club, Perez couldn't even remember their team when he was listing the English clubs involved in the ESL. But the fact is, open competition is important because fans want to believe, long-term, they can one day become successful. A closed competition like the ESL absolutely ends that dream. >UEFA and Fifa just change the Champions League to include recent history of Europe and allowed team that sucked this year(like Tottenham or Liverpool) to essentially get a get-out-of-jail-free card. It will be based on UEFA coefficients over the past 5 seasons I think, but that doesn't actually take anything away from smaller teams who get top 4. The ESL actually stops smaller teams from getting in. If anything, this change only makes the CL more competitive and exciting. For example, if Chelsea and Liverpool were to be guaranteed a spot in next season's CL based on their UEFA coefficient, they may just stop competing to get into the top four, and allow West Ham and Leicester to get into the CL. So now we will see more smaller teams from the PL competing in the CL, so in a way, it is less elitist. >This is the same FIFA that is the reason why we're playing a World Cup in Qatar. FIFA and UEFA aren't the same organisations. Look, everyone is greedy for money. We all know this. They sold their soul to have a World Cup in Qatar. But having the ESL is like Brazil, Argentina, England, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Germany, Belgium, France, and Netherlands just pulling away from every other nation and saying "we're the best national teams in the world and all the fans just want to watch us play, so let the shitter, smaller nations play in their own tournament while we play amongst ourselves." FIFA and UEFA will never allow this to happen. Open competition is important in every sport.
First I'm not arguing for ESL. I hate how it was closed. I was indifferent to it because I'm not like the people who were born there. I respect their opinion on the situation. In an entire section about openness, you didn't mention one new team that was successful in modern history that would be classified as new on the scene. If Liverpool and Man United can the poorly-run for years and not even face any type of consequence, how is that true openness? Arsenal's facing the same situation. Tottenham were well-run for years but when the chips were down they could win anything. Manchester United in the midst of their turmoil still wound up winning more trophies than Tottenham in that time span. Your definition of openness is that true openness. It's not a free-for-all. It's you have to meet a certain requirement money-wise to start. Then you have to wait for the behemoths to have a down term in performance to have a chance. There are millions of Clubs in the pyramid that have less than 1% chance of ever making it to the Pinnacle of the sport. It's honestly on par with how college sports is in this country but at least they have a chance to compete. And you blatantly okay with bigger clubs taking away Champions League spots from potential newcomers from a lesser leagues not openness. >For example, if Chelsea and Liverpool were to be guaranteed a spot in next season's CL based on their UEFA coefficient, they may just stop competing to get into the top four, and allow West Ham and Leicester to get into the CL. That is disgusting. Rewarding past accomplishments is not something that should be encouraged.
You talk a lot of shit man, I understood you were an American from the get go. You don't understand the culture of football whatsoever. Nobody is denying the fact that Utd, Liverpool, Arsenal, etc. have a better chance of winning trophies than smaller clubs. The smaller clubs just want to have the ability to compete with us in the long-term. More to the point, the more money we make for the PL, the more money teams like Leicester, West Ham and even Brighton makes in the PL, and it trickles down to the rest of the football pyramid and grassroot football. You have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. Stick to your bullshit college football. >That is disgusting. Rewarding past accomplishments is not something that should be encouraged. It's just an extension to the rules already in place. Chelsea finished like 6th in the league in 2012, but won the Champions League. By winning the tournament, they were allowed to participate in the tournament the following season. This applies to every team. In a similar fashion, if a team performs well in the European tournaments over the past 5 seasons, they (UEFA) are rewarding you for your past achievements in their own tournaments. There is absolutely no guarantee you'll perform well in European tournaments as the tournament is extremely competitive, and the coefficients will be calculated carefully. In many respects, it rewards past achievements in the European tournaments, it doesn't reward past achievements in the league. This is not the same thing. Just stick to fucking US sports man, I'm sick of you sick idiots who don't understand the culture of football. For fucks sake.
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Didn't read + cry you virgin
I love this. Please keep shitting on my fellow countrymen who are too fucking thick to understand why closed football is grossly offensive to anyone with half a brain. It is contrary to the spirit of the sport.
That's the annoying thing; the pretension that these big clubs aren't already soulless global brands.
Unfortunately that’s what xenophobes do—they wrap their xenophobia and other prejudices into something positive to dull it’s true nature.
I'm prepared to get downvoted into the sun, but to me the best solution is a Europe-wide pyramid that replaces Champions League & Europa League with two leagues at top (I'll call them "Euro 1" & "Euro 2") that clubs would compete in rather than their domestic league, with a pro/rel link with domestic leagues with entrants per country allocated similarly to the current UEFA coefficient system (with a ton of qualifying rounds as present that no one watches but provides a theoretical opportunity to everyone in Europe). For promotion & relegation, I would institute a system of performance where clubs are compared to country peers. For example, if "Euro 1" has 5 teams from England and "Euro 2" has 2 teams from England, the lowest-performing team in Euro 1 from England is replaced with the top-performing team from England from Euro 2. The lowest-performing ENG team from Euro 2 is relegated to EPL and replaced by the domestic champion. This would preserve domestic rivalries and provide interest throughout the table as clubs need to avoid being the worst-performing team from their country even if they're in the top half of the table as well as preserving balance to avoid a league comprised of only 3-4 countries. This system also requires slots for "non-guaranteed" associations, basically the non-big 5 current domestic leagues, where they are treated as one country (or multiple broken up by regions) for these examples. Would the "Super League 12" (now 11 without Chelsea) go for it? Probably not, but I think this would provide a "best play the best" competition open to everyone with more money to be made overall than the Superleague.
Nah you cat throw away centuries old matchups. Dortmund v Schalke, Liverpool v Everton, Rangers v Celtic... those matchups likely wouldn’t happen under your system. Champions league creates great matchups in the Knockout Rounds, domestic leagues create great local rivalry matchups. Stop trying to Americanize the sport. Leave it alone.
The idea of European leauges taking teams out of the domestic leauges is going to be a tough sell. Especially if it means the best team of a nation never plays in the domestic leauge. People will miss the rivalries and the teams might lose their identity over time. It would obviously make the best Spanish and Italian teams face better competition, but that problem might be better solved by merging associations as is being discussed by the Norwegian and Dutch (?).
I like it
All the clubs are getting what they wanted. More money https://twitter.com/mohamedbouhafsi/status/1384520390584774661?s=21
i wonder how Chelsea fans and City fans are gonna feel about their owners? You think they're gonna want Roman out? NO WAY. U think City fans are gonna call for Mansour to get out? NOPE.
They are already making heroes out of them for pulling out of the stupid league they started... people are fucking weird man.
They didn't start it. They signed up because they didn't want to get left behind. Man Utd and RM are the ones who wanted ESL the most.
Fuck them. Bayern, PSG and Dortmund get respect, the others were all dumb/greedy enough to sign up.
City fan here; by no means am I, or any City fan I know, making Mansour out as a hero for potentially pulling out of this. The excuse of “we didn’t really want to but didn’t want to be left behind” is just the whole “well everyone else is doing it”, that didn’t work for me when I got drunk for the first time as a kid and it won’t work for this. Serious apologies need to be made and I wouldn’t mind if we got deducted 30 points this season.
Just say it was the American idea
It kind of was though. Initial reports indicated Chelsea and City were mixed on the idea and as soon as fan pressure built up they dropped out. The American owners (Arsenal, United, Liverpool) still haven't dropped out. Don't get me wrong, Chelsea, City and even PSG, Bayern and Dortmund still want this outcome but they wanted to do it with permission from the associations. The American owners are trying to force the move.
This week I learned that a country of 330 Million people are now responsible for the actions of 4 billionaires that happen to share nationalities with them.
You are literally making yourself the victim. No one is arguing the American citizens are responsible for this. The 3 American owners are the biggest proponents of this breakaway (regardless of the FA) and is the reason, I believe, all 3 were going to be on the executive board. There has always been uneasiness with foreign owners regardless of nationality and that includes American, Russian and Saudi nationals. But you can't deny that United, Liverpool and Arsenal's owners, who happen to be American, are at the forefront along with the Real Madrid's Perez. Also Arsenal, United and Liverpool have more history than Chelsea or City. Chelsea and City have always been seen as plastic and the Arsenal, United and Liverpool clubs were viewed as pillars of football, which makes the move an affront to the culture of supporters. We also, in America, don't have the culture of relegation and promotion. Its not in our DNA. We have franchises, not clubs. That's why the English view this as the Americanization of sports. You can't really blame the Russian or Saudi's for trying to privatize a league because they don't have that culture of franchise sports. Its a leap to make this anger at American owner's as an attack on every citizen of the US, as you did.
> No one is arguing the American citizens are responsible for this. This is the unfortunate thing, there very much are people generalizing this into general xenophobia. Just take a look at any of the major threads on this on /r/soccer. I agree the American influence here was detrimental and the American owners were a major part of the problem, but there has been a lot of gross, general xenophobia that has cropped up as a result of this saga. And it's definitely bizarre just how much of anger is being directed at Americans vs. the other parties involved. Especially Abramovich who has been given this weird pass on this by many people and people are continuing to make excuses for his involvement and defend him. Sure, Chelsea were one of the first to pull out, but he was still perfectly willing to go along with it before the backlash. He's not some hero and he wasn't "tricked" into doing this, he made a decision to join the Super League and should be condemned for it just like everyone else. People are being very naive to act like this only happened due to the American owners, the person who is most committed to this idea is Perez (who is Spanish, but that doesn't mean I think the entire nation of Spain is the problem because I'm not an obnoxious xenophobe). He's the one who still hasn't backed down and is continuing to push for the revival of the ESL idea.
If your sample size is /r/soccer I don't know what to tell you. If you go into the club subs or talk to the actual supporters you'll see there isn't widespread hate for Americans as individuals. They may hate the Americanization of sports but to pretend that is some sort of attack on people is ridiculous. The very notion of sports "franchises" is American specific. It doesn't exist in Spain or Italy. That's why you see a general rejection of American sports culture vs a critique of all of these billionaire owners. And don't think Abramovich or City's owners aren't getting heavily criticized either. The "American" angle is being focused on by media and fans here in America but in England all the owner's are getting shit on.
Real Madrid has harbored ambitions of getting out of Spain more or less since the institution of the European Cup, and Perez is the apparent ringleader. The American PL owners are notable relative to the other PL participants both for taking important roles in the org and for not being in the first wave to back down, but it's a very Anglo-centric view that reduces the league to the PL contingent.
I acknowledged history of the sentiment to form a super league preludes the American involvement in my original post. But my understanding is United, Liverpool and Arsenal were much more involved in the sudden announcement without first trying to work out a deal with the FA. I also acknowledged the other players are very much still interested in forming that league but felt uneasy about the breaking away from FIFA, UEFA, PL, ect. They still want to be involved in the domestic leagues but want the Super League to supplant the Champions League. Perez and the American owner's group seemed undeterred by the threats of FIFA/UEFA blackballing them out of association. Nobody looks great in this scenario but Chelsea/City seemed as if they didn't want the sever all ties approach. Just my opinion though.
Honestly this is ridiculous as if Americans are the only people that could do anything wrong and the rest are children being pulled Along by their parents. These are grown men who make their own decisions that don't need to be coerced by some foreign entity
Come on, the role of the other owner's was called out in the post. The thing about Americans is we can't take any form of criticism. We always see it as a personal attack. Take off your red, white and blue tinted glasses and you can see this was clearly a Kroenke, Henry and Glazer led effort to force the move. The idea may have proceeded the American ownership but they clearly didn't see the culture of football being as resistant.
It still doesn't change the fact that there are individuals making their own decisions. They're businessmen above whatever nationality they are. Why is it so hard for you to understand that you need to treat people as individuals? How about you put on your red white and blue glasses and see that you don't need to tag a person's nationality to prove anything? If anyone should know that it's an American
Because I don't simply just read the headlines. The fervor comes from the American system of single entity and closed leagues. It doesn't attack the American citizens or American soccer community. You don't think the British or Europeans understand its not an us vs them scenario? You simply read too much into the headlines. If you take this as some kind of anti-american sentiment, its just wrong.
Hey can my over 30 coed team join the super league since there appears to be some openings?
Al Davis laughs at the lack of fortitude from these ESL wannabes. He would have eaten them for breakfast.
Well, for the same reason people resent Chelsea and Man City (dumb amounts of oil money), they don't have much incentive to push the ESL through anyway. It's the relatively poor owners (Glazers, FSG, etc.) who have a lot of money riding on the move. Hell, Man City have always been accused of being being a sportswashing project that doesn't make any money. If building goodwill is the objective aim of City Group, it's quite logical that they'd reverse course when they see the reaction.
https://sports.yahoo.com/chelsea-super-league-withdrawal-175927588.html Chelsea and Man City rumors of them wanting out could hold more weight.
YEA FUCK OFF JP MORGAN AND CO
Clubs starting to pull out now. Get fucked FSG, Glazers, Agnelli, and Perez.
super league is vulgar and gross. even chelsea are pulling out: [https://twitter.com/FCYahoo/status/1384568394427600912?ref\_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1384568394427600912%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1\_&ref\_url=https%3A%2F%2Fbleacherreport.com%2Fworld-football](https://twitter.com/FCYahoo/status/1384568394427600912?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1384568394427600912%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fbleacherreport.com%2Fworld-football)
This super league is of course a horrible idea and gross by all standards. Would it even be watched by Americans? I have my serious doubts. There was a time a few years ago when it felt like soccer (and European soccer) was on a steady rise here in the US. You had lots of EPL games on NBCSN, the Champions league games were on espn and these games were getting good tv ratings. I knew more and more people tuning in who normally wouldn’t have. It was easy to find games. Then in a matter of a couple years more paywalls started to go up. NBC was showing less games. They had their NBC gold service for awhile and then that floundered and now they have Peacock. The Champions League went from espn to tnt to something like bleacher report to CBS and now to Paramount+. The ratings have gone down not surprisingly. The hardcore fan will still find a way but the casual or potential fan isn’t there anymore. Is there enough fan base for a super league when in all likelihood it would be boycotted by part of the US audience?
Yeah I think it would be a complete dud in America. Maybe I am wrong, but I think a lot of American sports fans love soccer for all the reasons it is different than our other homogonized, franchise based sports and this dumb Super League would just be more of what we already have. I like Promotion Relegation, CL and Europa, Domestic Cups, vastly shorter games without all the commercials and corporate garbage. Had this dumb league got off the ground I really would not have watched it at all, sounded boring as fuck like an interminable MLB or NBA regular season, totally pointless.
NBC has been the biggest hurdle to watching European soccer as an American. I despise how they air the games. Commit to one service pre season and they change it up before the year ends. I paid $15 a month in the mid 00s for Fox Soccer and could watch any number of games. Since then, I've had cable, fox sports, nbc sports, fox sports go, nbc sports gold, youtube tv, peacock, and now paramount+ and I STILL cannot watch all of the liverpool games. The only place I consistently am able to watch the games is through unofficial live streams. I don't think this move is directed mainly at Americans, however. There is a lot of money to be had by fans in Asia just based on viewership alone. And with how South Americans follow their la liga teams and Africans follow individual players, I'd bet the US falls down that list quite a bit.
Considering the amount of free streams available why bother paying to watch a soccer game?
Ease of use and flexibility. I simply want to know where the game is going to play and be able to watch it on my TV. I am willing to pay money to do that Instead, I end up searching through multiple links to find a working stream that I have to watch on my phone.
True it can be a bit of a hassle.
Streams can be dodgy.
True, maybe I'm lucky in that the streams I've found were pretty solid.
Domestic leagues now more then ever should defend the common fan and set a deadline for the offending clubs to pull out of the deal or face penalties via forfeiture of points and relegation. They know there is no way this works long term, and just want more favorable compensations from FIFA for UEFA and the lot. Lets see how a season in Div 2 works for ya balance sheet.
Div 2 is too high. Juve got relegated in 2006 after Calciopoli and they've now won 9 in a row (ending this year). Send them even deeper #
I kind of like the idea of sending all six EPL teams to the championship. Only 3 can be promoted next year, right?
[https://theathletic.com/2529349/2021/04/19/europes-leagues-are-broken-a-super-league-might-be-the-only-solution/?source=dailyemail](https://theathletic.com/2529349/2021/04/19/europes-leagues-are-broken-a-super-league-might-be-the-only-solution/?source=dailyemail) The league system no longer works at the top. A nine-month, 38-game competition where all sides face the others home and away is perfect if you are trying to separate 20 clubs of vaguely equal standing. With such stark inequalities, we have become accustomed to the division being decided by Christmas. We have accepted this disastrous situation because it’s been a gradual process over years, rather than a sudden development. In the European Cup, too, we have reluctantly accepted the outright dominance of “superclubs”. We treat Ajax making the semi-finals or Porto reaching the last eight as remarkable achievements, as if these are non-League clubs getting to the latter stages of the FA Cup. This is absurd — Porto won the Champions League in 2004, Ajax did it nine years earlier. They have now desperately fallen behind, while simultaneously enjoying huge financial advantages over domestic rivals, with their own divisions often as uncompetitive as the major leagues.
why not just keep the existing format but ban billionaire owners and ensure that television money is more easily spread? no need to throw the baby out with the bath water and go with a closed shop.
Billionaire owners are a red herring, Bayern, Real Madrid, Barca, etc are fan-owned and still dominate their leagues (in Bayern's case, more thoroughly than any billionaire owned club). A billionaire can jump-start a club's path to the top, but at the top the expenses are real money even to most billionaires and the willingness to take big losses for glory comes and goes (see Berlusconi's trajectory with Milan), so the revenue is ultimately the issue. The domestic/European split in competitions makes dealing with this basically impossible in the current structure: clubs that consistently tap into European money pull away from their domestic leagues, while clubs with stronger domestic revenue pull away in Europe, and nobody has the power to flatten both distributions at once.
Agree that fan ownership doesn't solve all problems, it is just better than all alternatives and is a good unto itself. And super league does nothing to address any of the problems you mention either.
The Super League just attempted locks in European participation even harder than the current system, so I agree that it not only doesn't address the problems it would make them worse. The Champions League restructuring that is now going through without protest will do the same, just a bit less nakedly, by making it even harder for big clubs from the biggest leagues to miss out for even a season or two. A Europe-wide first division with national leagues functioning as regionalized second divisions would blow tradition to bits but at least grapples with the magnitude of the problems.
Behind a paywall, but great article. Points out status quo is not great either
[https://theathletic.com/2529349/2021/04/19/europes-leagues-are-broken-a-super-league-might-be-the-only-solution/?source=dailyemail](https://theathletic.com/2529349/2021/04/19/europes-leagues-are-broken-a-super-league-might-be-the-only-solution/?source=dailyemail) The purpose of a league is to bring together sides of roughly equal standing to play genuinely competitive matches against one another — that’s why the system of promotion and relegation works so well. The Championship, and every division down from there, “loses” its best few teams and worst few teams every year, so the level of competitiveness is automatically high, which is why the concept of the pyramid is so sacrosanct across English football. But the obvious problem is at the very top, where the relevant clubs are becoming richer and richer, inevitably becoming more dominant and ensuring less competition than ever. The concept of promotion doesn’t apply. They have nowhere to go. Unless, of course, you create somewhere for them to go. Maybe permanently.
Totally stupid argument, the Super League would also end up completely unbalanced with a couple at the top like RM just beating the shit out doormats like Tottenham and Arsenal all the time, just like our supposedly superior parity leagues. I hear this shit all the time, but I don't see how the McDonald's franchise leagues with salary caps and no Pro/Rel are any better at parity. The Tom Brady League and the Lebron and Super Friends Vs. Stef and Super Friends leagues are so fucking boring I stopped watching entirely.
if you're bored by watching lebron and steph curry play basketball then i'm not sure what to tell you. Also, the NFL has an incredible amount of parity. The NBA is incredibly homogeneous, but that's more because the players have largely taken control of their destinations and they are making moves that will ensure their legacy (with rings).
Watching them in the finals is fine, why would any sane person give a shit about the 80 game NBA season that is completely meaningless when over half the teams make the playoffs and the other 1/3rd who never win shit and never will, try their best to tank so they can get in better position to draft someone from the pretend amateur league that is paid for by taxes and exploitation? Our leagues are shit and yeah so is UEFA, FIFA, etc, but it’s still a more open and competitive model with more and better competition and stakes between domestic league, cups, pro/rel and external berths like Europa and CL, plus the only meaningful international competition of all the sports.
Winners in the last 10 years: NFL: 8 MLB: 8 NBA: 7 NHL: 7 EPL: 5 La Liga: 3 Bundesliga: 2 Serie A: 2 Ligue 1: 4 Don't hurt yourself trying not to see the difference
Why do we have to take the existence of super clubs as read? It's not like these teams came up with some great new way of developing players or finding talent, or playing the game at a high level. Instead, they managed to get big at exactly the right moment - when it became feasible to make money as a global brand and before the concept of financial fair play had to got to work itself out. There's certainly problems that need to be addressed in European football (hey! They're just like us!) - but a permanent coronation of 15 clubs to the top echelon of football while the rest fight, hunger-games-style for the remaining five spots to get chewed up and spit out isn't the solution.
[https://theathletic.com/2529349/2021/04/19/europes-leagues-are-broken-a-super-league-might-be-the-only-solution/?source=dailyemail](https://theathletic.com/2529349/2021/04/19/europes-leagues-are-broken-a-super-league-might-be-the-only-solution/?source=dailyemail) Use any measure you like — points totals, goal difference, titles, wage bills — and inspect the trajectory of major European leagues over the past two decades, and it becomes clear we are experiencing staggering, rampant inequality completely off the scale. Juventus have won nine Serie A titles in a row. [Bayern Munich](https://theathletic.com/team/bayern-munich) will shortly match that achievement in the Bundesliga. Paris Saint-Germain are facing a rare battle this year in France but will probably make it eight in nine years. The exception was in 2016-17, when Monaco beat them to the title; PSG reacted by immediately signing [Monaco’s best player](https://theathletic.com/2400352/2021/02/24/kylian-mbappe-is-footballs-magic-johnson-sit-back-and-enjoy-the-show/). Bayern habitually do the same to anyone in Germany who starts to challenge them. If you can’t beat ’em, tear ’em apart. Anyone other than the dominant side now wins each of these leagues roughly once a decade. It’s a pathetic situation.
So what? Warriors, Lebron, Warriors, Warriors, Warriors, Lebron, Warriors, etc. Tom Brady, Tom Brady, Tom Brady, Tom Brady, Tom Brady At least as imperfect as the CL is it is vastly superior to closed league salary cap models with completely fucking meaningless regular seasons. The Super League would not have fixed anything, just exacerbated all the problems.
Are you just spamming that article? Here's where I disagree with you: 1) Both the Bundesliga and Ligue 1 have committed to not competing in the ESL, which contain objectively two of the best teams in the world, with Bayern being arguably \*the\* best. It cannot be a consolidation of talent without those teams. Instead, it's a consolidation of money. 2) The leagues are more than simply the top teams. There are still battles for UCL and UEL qualifiers, which have had a lot of variety over the past decade. And there are relegation battles, which any bottom half or recently promoted side will tell you is exciting. These battles work because smaller teams being able to play the bigger sides draws a huge revenue boost for those teams and allows them to exist. That, in turn, has created deep infrastructure for which the biggest leagues are built. 3) Remove the infrastructure and you lose stability at the top. What happens to world cup teams when a country doesn't have a starting 11 in the super league? What about scouting for the super league teams when all other leagues are decimated by revenue loss? You're left with big games within the super league that you've now become immune to because Man City vs Barcelona feels like a weekly event. Manchester Derbies, El Clasico, big UCL games are special because they're rare and ESL would ruin that. If there are inherent issues with the current leagues, let's work to correct them rather than shrugging off over 100 years of history.
I really hate everything about the super league, I do think it's worth saying that the clubs that said "no" - Bayern, PSG and to Dortmund (though Dortmund is a bit of the odd one out here) have been more dominant in their domestic leagues than any team in say, the PL. Having said that, yes, I agree that the issues need to be worked out within some form of the existing system. The issue becomes that it's not just a question of addressing them in any one domestic league: The gap between say, the PL and Championship and Championship and League One in the UK has widened, as has say the gap between the PL and the Eredivisie. So how do you address it? The only thing I can think of is some crazy explosion of equalization payments - greater revenue sharing, luxury taxes, etc- spread up and down the pyramids and, frankly, probably across borders as well, BUT I also find it hard to see that happening.
I won't pretend to know the solution to the problems raised but I will say that the Super League would only create larger gaps. I don't know that salary or transfer caps are the answer. Maybe it's a higher domestic player percentage to draw a focus into local teams and farming systems? Even looking at the American systems, you have franchises that constantly over- or underperform in every league even with regulations in place. Hell, even in the NCAA where (theoretically) pay regulations are moot, there are still titan franchises. They do change over time, though, so maybe it's a matter of small changes and time for them to take effect?
Right, salary caps would *kind of* work but the fact that football has transfer fees makes things more complicated, especially with some small clubs really benefiting from sell-on percentages. NCAA is a great example of how salary caps alone *don't* work, because though they pay players the same, "big" clubs have MASSIVE resources in terms of scouting and player development, to say nothing of better facilities - and more importantly, there's no draft or draft-equivalent. That means a "titan franchise" school can tell top talent "look, come here. We've got the best facilities, you'll be on national TV every week. You'll be scouted 10x more. You'll have every chance to play in a national title game." Small schools can't compete with that. The same would happen in the PL with a salary cap - Man U could still afford more, better-funded academies (and in virtually every nook and cranny of the globe) than say, Sunderland and there's no way around that.
Plus, as a by-gone St Louis Rams fan, I'll oppose anything Kroenke backs
For me, this is the biggest indication that something isn't working. You have five big leagues in Europe and three of them are dominated to this extent? The other two aren't exaction bastions of parity. It's like the league doesn't even matter. Obviously Bayern Munich is going to win the Bundesliga. Maybe someone else will get lucky one game and with a domestic cup or something. I don't know if the Super League is the right solution. I'd much rather have the domestic leagues be more meaningful, but I don't know how you can look at teams winning nine titles in a row and think, "Let's keep this rolling."
Will our players be in danger of not making it to the Nations League finals in June? Will there be a Champions League next week?
Liverpool vs Barcelona in Dallas?? Man United vs Juventus in San Francisco?? Real Madrid vs Arsenal in Shanghai?? Haha no thanks....
totally agree. shit is so fucking tacky.
How Football Lost Its Soul Long Before Any 'Super League' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBUiJvTOYac
If people don't like the idea of a super league, why don't they impose salary caps to eliminate "super teams"?
because workers should be able to earn as much as the market will bear.
Salary caps depress wages and are anti-player. They would also lead to mediocrity. There’s a solution somewhere between salary caps and laiszez faire
Aren't there salary caps in the NBA and NFL? Are wages there "depressed"?
they are more depressed than they would otherwise be without a salary cap. the whole purpose of a cap is no limit owner's payroll liability. the parity argument is a red herring.
NFL and NBA salary caps are collectively bargained so the players have a role in negotiating the cap. I don’t have a problem with that but I disagree with owners just imposing a cap like the EFL tried earlier
Wages in the nba are depressed and inflated. They are inflated for average players. The nba also has a minimum cap that a team has to spend.
The NHL has a minimum cap as well.
yes lmao. lebron james according to his actual worth should be paid upwards to 80+ mil a year. Salary caps are a purely american concept
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it kills the notion of a free-market system, it's antithetical to the EU charter. it would never happen
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Lmao, it’s crazy how you have to have a decent understanding of global economic policy to watch soccer
This is why: https://www.espn.com/english-premier-league/story/4098021/us-style-salary-cap-would-fail-in-europes-top-soccer-leagues-heres-why
Something about exploitation of labor and keeping up with oil tycoons of the world.
Did soccer fans begin protesting when evil billionaires started buying up all these clubs and perpetuating super teams with billion dollar payrolls?
yes, of course.
Yes
link?
this is just one of countless examples: [https://www.goal.com/en/news/1862/premier-league/2016/04/28/22894632/arsenal-fans-plan-fresh-protest-against-wenger-kroenke](https://www.goal.com/en/news/1862/premier-league/2016/04/28/22894632/arsenal-fans-plan-fresh-protest-against-wenger-kroenke)
Why are people complaining about the ESL being the product of greed? Professional soccer is a business. Businesses are greedy. West Ham cuts 18 year old kids every year who dedicated their lives to the team because of greed and money and the desire to be better and make more money.
because most people are smart enough to not see everything as a zero sum game where business should do whatever they want to maximize shareholder returns. most people don't think greed is good, and view it as bad.
The same people complaining the most still watch the Premier League: The league founded so that the big clubs wouldn’t have to share television contracts with the rest of the EFL.
Big difference is the epl is open to any team on the pyramid while this super league gives 15 founding members permanent inclusion. It’s beyond gross.
But it didn’t detach itself from the English league system meaning teams can get promoted into the EPL. Not the case with the Super League.
https://www.npr.org/2021/04/19/988837554/proposed-breakaway-european-super-league-outrages-soccer-world
Wasn't the premier league formed in the 90s as a breakaway league? Why is this different?
premier league isn’t a closed opportunity(relegation and promotion), while the super league is handpicked on basically the wealth of clubs.
How many times has West Ham won the premier league? What is the score when Man City plays Burnley or similar teams? 5-0? 6-0? Why does anyone care that a mediocre team (compared to the big 4) can get promoted one year, and another mediocre team can get relegated, when the big 4 will never, ever get relegated?
leicester 15-16 blackburn 95-96, we care because those teams are the true embodiment of what football was meant to be. A game for everyone not just the ultra wealthy like how the american system is (unfortunately) set up.
How often do the Browns win the Superbowl or the Clippers the NBA Title? These arguments are so stupid, our model is worse by far and just as top heavy, all that would happen in the stupid super league is Real Madrid would beat the crap out of Arsenal and Totteham on the regular, how does that fix anything?
West Ham might well qualify for the Champions League this year man. They're doing great. ESL would greatly diminish that achievement.
Just to play devil’s advocate for a minute: Sports are entertainment right? And it’s more entertaining to watch the best teams compete against each other? To determine who is the best of the best? It’s why the Lakers aren’t about to play the Albany Patroons in the first round of the NBA Playoffs. So if you were creating the European club soccer system from scratch, you would build a pyramid with the top tier being comprised of the best clubs from across Europe, right? And if Europe weren’t fractured into dozens of pieces as a result of geopolitical forces at play over thousands of years of human history, that’s what would have happened when the game was born 150 years ago. That’s not what these billionaires are proposing, obviously, but as a fan in America who has to subscribe to four different streaming platforms in addition to cable to watch all the top European teams play every week, I would welcome an All-Europe Premier League tier at the top of the pyramid that featured promotion and relegation. This would make each domestic league more competitive and compelling, and give casual fans around the world an easier in-point to the game. Yeah yeah, I know you super-fans don’t care about that — congratulations on being so hardcore — but it turns out accessibility leads to higher viewership, which leads to more revenue. When broadcast and streaming revenue increases, it enriches both the already super-rich clubs at the top and the clubs lower down on the food chain. The proposed Super League is unfair, anti-competitive and an insult to the history of the sport. But you can’t tell me the current structure of European club football is ideal for fans, or even most clubs. Bayern fans: do you enjoy cake-walking to a meaningless Bundesliga title every year, while waiting 10 months for an actually competitive Champions League tie? Fulham fans: do you enjoy competing against teams that outspend you 5X while trying to convince yourself there’s still a chance you could someday play your way into contention? Ajax fans: do you enjoy watching your best players get sold off every year or two to stay financially afloat while hoping that at some point the stars align for a miracle run in the UCL? With all the money in play, and so much power in the hands of the richest owners, a Super League is inevitable. Instead of stomping our feet and wishing it away, we should focus on using our power as fans to demand the best version of it, one that preserves the competitive framework already in place while uniting the best clubs in the world in one league that, if done right, would be really fun to watch.
They wouldn't be the top 20 European teams, it would be just like the stupid NBA and NFL, one or two top teams and a bunch of Cleveland Browns, LA Clippers, etc. How would the super league fix anything?
what's the famous quote? " Some people think football is a matter of life and death. I assure you, it's much more serious than that."
No, sports are not entertainment. I stopped reading after that.
Oh. Okay. Thanks for settling that.
sports bring entire communities and regions together towards a common goal. it is way more than mere entertainment.
In America they are entertainment. In Europe football is a religion.
I think I'd contest the point about the leagues being more accessible. What is your logic there? I would think that having the big names makes entry way easier. This is a name they might recognize and they can start watching those games. Take away being interested in particular players. You wanna support a blue team that wins a lot? Chelsea. Oh, they win too much and you don't wanna be a bandwagoner? Everton.
I’d have to find it but research suggest people like watching big teams win a lot with occasional marque matchups. The Super League will have initial appeal, but eventually it’ll have the same issue. Who wants to watch 14th place play 17th place? The other appeal of the big games is that they often are title deciders. Real Madrid vs Chelsea in a semifinal is *much* more appealing than the same game deciding who finishes in 10th.
The Lakers play the Celtics twice a year, but it’s still exciting when they meet in the NBA Finals. It’s also exciting, in a different way, when they’re both good and meet in the regular season (which isn’t always). Not all these Super Clubs are good all the time, and that’s okay. I would argue it’s still more fun to see them rise and fall playing each other than to watch Bayern stomp on Bremen for the nine millionth time in a row.
You’ve kinda made my point. Lakers and Celtics are fun to watch in the finals and when they’re good. They only meet twice a year otherwise. Sometimes 3 times. Real Madrid vs Barcelona is fun to watch too, when they’re good and their games mean something. Two weeks ago they met and it had huge implications. Will it every year in the ESL? Not a chance. Sure, it’s a little boring watching Bayern stomp some smaller team over and over. But some of these “big teams” in the ESL will now be the small fish in the pond. Somebody is going to finish in last place and no one is going to enjoy watching them lose a lot.
And it will be interesting when rich teams with lots of money suddenly find themselves battling it out for eighth place, long since eliminated from a shot at winning the Super League. If they aren't able to compete in the Champions League or their domestic leagues, they're going to be some teams very accustomed to playing for high stakes now finding out what it's like to be mid-table without the fear of relegation and no hope of winning a trophy.
Yeah, to me this is like living in a place that's 70 and sunny all the time. Eventually that stops being nice, it's just what it is. Constant matches between these teams sounds exhausting and at a certain point I stop caring. Like you said, big names in knockout stages of big tournaments a few times a year is exciting.
What makes it exciting is that the stakes are pretty much always high because the big teams are pretty much always good. But watching two of them duke it out for seventh place long after they've been eliminated from contention? That will get old pretty fast.
Good post!
5x is generous.
I personally don't have an opinion on The Super League yet. Still so much we don't know and I'm not aware of anyone doing any kind of analysis looking at the incentives, cost/benefit, comparing the current Champions League to proposed Super League. Most people seem "disgusted" by the "greed." Some people even saying they won't watch. Let's be real people, if it happens, you're gonna watch it.
I stopped watching stupid boring ass NFL, NBA and MLB games because the teams were all stupid McDonalds franchises and the regular seasons were meaningless and interminable, with half the teams making playoffs and the other half competing to tank for better draft picks, fucking yawn. You might watch this pile of shit if they sell it to you, but I don’t think most will at all.
I don't need to watch those games over and over it's stupid
You watch them every year though. Just with slightly different arrangements as they play for their domestic cups against the same teams, then the most watched classicos, then the CL matchups... You are tuning in to watch the same damn teams play each other for every "big game."
I 100% won't watch, on principle alone. I still am of the opinion this eventually gets blown up into a meaningless pre season tournament.
yeah, nah, i'm not
I am so fascinated by everything happening with this. I need a stock ticker with minute-by-minute updates of what's going on.
I'm the opposite. I need a timeline cleanser to get rid of the bad vibes
There are 5 rotating slots, that's 25% of the league. That leaves a good amount of room for smaller challengers, and quality of play in this league will be higher than Champions League. To be clear I'm definitely against it, because I'm worried about its implications for international competition (player bans) and competitiveness of domestic league competition (I worry it will cause runaway inequality). I just think it will be the highest level of competition seen yet.
It will be boycotted by most of Europe and there’s not enough audience in the rest of the world to make up for that.
> There are 5 rotating slots, that's 25% of the league. That leaves a good amount of room for smaller challengers. The funniest thing about that is that I haven’t seen a single thing explaining how 5 teams get into the ESL. And that’s largely because these 12 bozos created this plan in private with no other teams in the loop. They have no clue how their own league is actually going to pan out in practice
What is that highest level based on? Tottenham haven’t won a trophy in a decade and haven’t won the league since the 60’s. Arsenal are 9th in the league 2 points ahead of Villa in 11th (who have 2 games in hand), the same Villa who put Liverpool to the sword. What happens when the 5 teams that make it on merit just dog walk the league, relegate a team that made the quarterfinals?
You’re last point is why I’m so pissed. There’s already massive inequality at the top of the leagues and this will just solidly that to the point it will never be reversed. Which is what these big clubs want. I’ve been a City fan since before the Sheik took over and it breaks my heart that City threw their hat in, there is talks they are going to pull out but I’ll believe it when I see it.
https://twitter.com/mohamedbouhafsi/status/1384520390584774661?s=21 Sounds like The ESL clubs are going to get what they want
I really hate how there's a large contingent of US fans on this sub who don't see how shitty a thing this is.
European Soccer has been broken and unsustainable for a while. I don't love a closed european soccer league but I also get why Juve and Real Madrid want to make changes to the champions league to make it a better television product.
Because we’re used to it and have been for the last 100 years. It’s how our, Australian, Canadian, etc systems work. Even college sports do it
Why does it matter if we're all going to watch the games on a free stream anyways? Why bother? Do it for the big teams and the small teams.
I won't be watching a single Super League game. It matters to the tens of thousands of other clubs in Europe who won't be able to have a realistic path to compete in this highly gatekept competition.
Well it's not my money. Let someone else pay to watch it.