October 29 – In a rare intervention, UEFA vice-president Fernando Gomes (pictured) has delivered a withering attack on the latest idea of a European Super League to challenge the status quo, saying it is the “exacerbation of selfishness and greed” at a time of global uncertainty.
Outgoing Barcelona president Josep Maria Bartomeu revealed at a press conference while announcing his resignation on Tuesday that the club intended to join a breakaway European league in future.
But Gomes, president of the Portuguese Football Federation and chairman of the UEFA club competitions committee, repeated the oft-stated stance of his boss, UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin, that a breakaway league was both financially and sportingly unfair.
“The hypothesis of the creation of any kind of European Super League deserves my complete disagreement and refusal,” Gomes said in a statement released to Britain’s Press Association news agency.
“I disagree because it violates all principles of sporting merit. As far as we know, it would be a sort of self-proclaimed privileged club.
“It deserves my refusal because the world is currently experiencing its greatest challenge, at least for the last century, and the last thing it needs is the exacerbation of selfishness and greed.
“The Super League will have no possible path of support in Portugal, and in my opinion all governing bodies should refuse it in a very clear way.”
His views are supported by former Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger who now has an important development role at FIFA, rumoured to be backing the latest idea. “I don’t believe Europe is ready for that,” Wenger told the Guardian newspaper.
FIFA, meanwhile, told the BBC it is “not aware of any agreement” that exists between Barcelona and a European Super League.
“As we already said last week, the topic of a so-called ‘European Super League’ comes up every now and then and FIFA has no wish to comment further on this since there are already well-established football institutional structures to deal with it,” a statement said.
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