April 22 – Even in defeat, Real Madrid president Florentino Perez remains defiant. In an interview on Spanish radio, the Madrid supremo doubled down on the European Super League (ESL), claiming the proposed competition is “on standby”.
After a week of unprecedented upheaval in European football following the launch of the ill-conceived, and in some quarters much-dreaded, ESL and its dramatic collapse within 48 hours under the crushing force of a tsunami of criticism from every corner of the football industry and beyond, with both England’s and France’s heads of state condemning the proposed competition, Perez is convinced the project is not dead in the water yet.
“We’re going to continue working,” said Perez. “The project is on standby.”
He claimed as well that all 12 clubs “have not left yet”.
“You cannot get out of the contract like this – they are binding contracts.”
On Tuesday evening, Manchester City and Chelsea set the wrecking ball flying, announcing their departure. The other English rebel clubs soon followed suit and on Wednesday Atletico Madrid, AC Milan and Inter Milan all withdrew as well, issuing retraction statements. Juventus remain in the competition, on a technical basis, de facto leaving Perez’s club and his arch rivals FC Barcelona as the only two competitors in the proposed ESL.
Alongside Juventus boss Andrea Agnelli, who exited both UEFA and the ECA to launch the ESL, Perez is one of football’s major losers following the entire debacle, but he is reluctant to concede defeat and reiterated that the ESL was created “to save football”. His view that the ESL is only on standby had earlier in the day been voiced implicitly by the three Italian rebel clubs, who suggested that they still wanted to explore a Super League in the future. Juventus wrote that it remained convinced of “the soundness” of the project.
“The Champions League format is old and only interesting from the quarter-finals onwards,” said Perez. “This format clearly doesn’t work, so we thought that we could have a format where the most important teams in Europe play against each other from the very beginning of the season.”
After years of negotiations with and pressure from the big clubs, UEFA conceded that the Champions League needed to be reformatted and introduced a 36-team Champions League from 2024 with a group stage played according to a Swiss model, changes that were rubber-stamped on Monday, but it was still not enough to appease some of the super clubs, who decided to break away with the ESL, only for their proposal to crumble at record speed.
In the interview, Perez, whose club is currently up to its neck in debt, let slip his real motivation, which seems to have little to do with any self-proclaimed altruistic motives to save the global game. He said: “We worked out the numbers and felt we could make much more money, more money for all the other teams too.”
Greed aside, he also took aim at one of the English Big Six, claiming they were not in it with their heart from the start. The Madrid supremo however stopped short from identifying that club.
“There was someone in the English group that didn’t have much interest, I won’t say who,” said Perez. “That began to infect others, who are also people of an age, and who are perhaps afraid because they did not understand anything of what was happening.
“We all signed a binding agreement, but I think one was never very convinced.”
Contact the writer of this story, Samindra Kunti, at moc.l1736351244labto1736351244ofdlr1736351244owedi1736351244sni@o1736351244fni1736351244