By Andrew Warshaw
November 5 – European football has been rocked by fresh revelations of a proposed breakaway super league to start in 2021 while FIFA president Gianni Infantino has separately been accused of secretly helping two of Europe’s most affluent elite clubs gain more lenient sanctions for breaching financial fair play rules.
The explosive claims have been released by German magazine Der Spiegel and Reuters as part of the latest exposures from the whistleblowing website Football Leaks, with the part about Infantino denounced by FIFA as nothing but a smear campaign orchestrated by disaffected past employees.
The idea of a European Super League has been a long-running saga and leaked documents are said to name 11 so-called “founding members”, including five English clubs, as having been in secret negotiations for a closed tournament that would drastically undermine the credibility of UEFA’s two main club competitions.
The clubs involved are apparently Real Madrid, Barcelona, Bayern Munich, Juventus, Paris Saint-Germain, Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool, Manchester City and AC Milan with a further five clubs – Atlético Madrid, Borussia Dortmund, Marseille, Internazionale and Roma – appearing as “initial guests”.
According to Der Spiegel, the 11 founding teams could not be relegated and would be part of the super league, which would have a group stage and a knockout round, for the first 20 years. The date by which the 16 clubs are to sign the “binding term sheet” is reportedly listed as November 2018. In other words, this month.
Der Spiegel has shared the information with other media outlets in the European Investigative Collaborations (EIC) consortium, a grouping of international media which includes Reuters, Britain’s Sunday Times and Spain’s El Mundo. The publication claims the documents suggest the clubs involved have even discussed “an option for leaving the national leagues and their football associations behind entirely”.
The idea that Europe’s elite clubs went behind UEFA’s back will be of grave concern to European football’s governing body whose president Aleksander Ceferin has made no secret of the fact that a breakaway league would never happen under his watch.
“To some clubs, I shall say it calmly and dispassionately, but firmly and resolutely: there will be no closed league. Quite simply, that is not in line with our values and ideals,” Ceferin said last year.
“We will never give in to the blackmail of those who think they can manipulate small leagues or impose their will on the associations because they think they are all powerful on account of the astronomical revenues they generate.”
The fact that current broadcasting deals for the Champions League and Europa League run until 2022 suggest, however, that the timing of the Football Leaks claims might be wide of the mark even if they do pose a considerable threat to the status quo.
The cache of leaked information spans much of the past 10 years, according to Reuters, and includes previously undisclosed details of UEFA’s investigation of Manchester City’s and Paris St-Germain’s financial affairs and the subsequent settlement terms. It is this information which personally involves Infantino who allegedly intervened at the time he was general-secretary of UEFA to help the two clubs avoid being hit with the heaviest sanctions for breaching financial fair play rules, including the possibility of being thrown out of Europe.
According to Der Spiegel’s report the clubs overvalued sponsorship deals to help meet FFP rules. When facing being rapped over the knuckles in 2014, it is alleged in the documents that Infantino helped arrange more lenient sanctions so that the pair could achieve “favourable” deals. City and PSG ultimately agreed settlements of €20 million each.
City said they would not comment “on out of context materials purportedly hacked or stolen” while a PSG statement said it “has always acted in full compliance with the laws and regulations enacted by sports institutions” and it “denies the allegations”.
FIFA, meanwhile, hit out at the allegations that Infantino went behind the backs of his own auditing team, saying they amounted to a deliberate attempt “to undermine the new leadership of FIFA”
Questioning Der Spiegel’s version of events and labelling it a distortion of the facts, a statement added: “Four weeks ago, a group of journalists sent several hundred questions to FIFA, based on private and internal e-mails and other information which had been accessed (illegally) by third parties.
“Despite the fact that we answered the questions posed to us in a straight-forward and honest manner, certain media decided to ignore most of our answers and to distort both the facts and the truth in a deliberate attempt to discredit FIFA.”
“It comes as no surprise that some of those who have been removed, replaced, or who are unhappy, continue to spread false rumours and innuendo about the new leadership. We are aware that there are people who, out of frustration, would like to undermine FIFA, for their own self-interested reasons.
It is, therefore, also a cause for regret that some media outlets occasionally lend support to such false claims, apparently without giving any thought or consideration to the very real and substantive changes that have been made at FIFA, since the old regime was swept away, under a cloud of shame.”
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