By Paul Nicholson
April 19 – The breakaway Super League broke official cover last night – just after midnight central European time – with a statement confirming the 12 ‘Founding Clubs’ and a €3.5 billion share-out for joining the new set-up.
The 12 confirmed clubs – AC Milan, Arsenal FC, Atlético de Madrid, Chelsea FC, FC Barcelona, FC InternazionaleMilano, Juventus FC, Liverpool FC, Manchester City, Manchester United, Real Madrid CF and Tottenham Hotspur – will be joined by a further three clubs, and a plan to eventually expand to a 20-team league with “the further five teams to qualify annually based on achievements in the prior season”.
Matches will be played mid-week in two groups of 10, starting in August, with eight going through to quarter finals and a final being played in May.
While arguments around the social implications for the clubs and the impact on the wider principles of solidarity in European football are raging – none of them favourably or positively for the Super League clubs on pretty much any forum you look at – the Super League statement focuses on the financial case for its existence.
The Super League claims that their move has been accelerated by Covid pandemic and the instability of football’s economic model. The counter feeling from within all parts football (ie not the owners of the 12 founding clubs) is that covid is just a smokescreen and that the motivation is pure greed around an economic case based on the Super League’s founder clubs eating UEFA’s Champions League lunch.
The Super League statement says that they will make solidarity payments and that they would be “substantially higher than those generated by the current European competition” – in excess of €10 billion, but no detail is given on either what term the payments would be made over or who to.
US bank JP Morgan is reprtedly financing the league but is unlikely to be the only investor in the Super League ‘fund’, with speculation that Saudi Arabian money is underpinning the bulk of it. Japan’s Softbank were originally the front for Saudi money that was backing FIFA’s international calendar revamp proposal (including a Club World Cup) that so spectacularly fell flat. Softbank have now gone away but the Saudi money might not have, though if true is unlikely to help the country’s reputation that has in the past few months been working hard to rehabilitate itself as a good global sports citizen.
Florentino Pérez, recently re-elected president Real Madrid and the first chairman of the Super League said: “We will help football at every level and take it to its rightful place in the world. Football is the only global sport in the world with more than four billion fans and our responsibility as big clubs is to respond to their desires.”
At the core of the financial model is the six English clubs that have signed up – four of them owned by US investors and one by UAE money. They – and Manchester United and Liverpool in particular – led plans to reinvent the Premier League last year under the Project Big Picture proposals.
Those plans, like the FIFA new calendar plan, spectacularly crashed and burned. But the American-led desire to generate even more money from their ownerships – that may have reached a financial ceiling under current structures – remains unsated.
Joel Glazer, co-chairman of Manchester United and vice-chairman of the Super League said: “By bringing together the world’s greatest clubs and players to play each other throughout the season, the Super League will open a new chapter for European football, ensuring world-class competition and facilities, and increased financial support for the wider football pyramid.”
While debate rages over the plans there is potentially a wider consequence for Tottenham Hotspur (£175m) and Arsenal (£120m) who hold £295 million in loans under the UK government’s corporate covid support scheme. Loans that have been taken at 0.75% interest one.
One football finance insider told Insideworldfootball: “These clubs are happy to borrow money off the UK taxpayers at pretty much zero interest but actually what they intended to do was f**k them off. I think you can probably expect to see some regulatory movement from government, particularly regarding the social impact of what is being proposed.”
Of the clubs involved, the duplicitous role played within European stakeholders by Juventus chairman Andrea Agnelli – who has just resigned as chair of the European Club Association and has had a seat UEFA’s executive committee and pretty much all of the European Champions League revamp discussions – is the most eye-popping.
“Our 12 Founder clubs represent billions of fans across the globe and 99 European trophies. We have come together at this critical moment, enabling European competition to be transformed, putting the game we love on a sustainable footing for the long-term future, substantially increasing solidarity, and giving fans and amateur players a regular flow of headline fixtures that will feed their passion for the game while providing them with engaging role models,” said Agnelli.
Would you buy a used-car off this guy?
Contact the writer of this story at moc.l1727724020labto1727724020ofdlr1727724020owedi1727724020sni@n1727724020osloh1727724020cin.l1727724020uap1727724020