May 27 – UEFA may have gone to war with Real Madrid, Barcelona and Juventus by opening formal disciplinary proceedings against the three clubs, but the three Super League rebels refuse to abandon their plans and issued a statement on Wednesday to defend their ideas against what they call “threats” from Nyon.
The trio are the last clubs from a cabal of 12 European elite clubs – that concocted plans to break away from the established football pyramid with a Super League – to insist that they remain committed to the plans that disintegrated within 48 hours.
“The founding clubs have suffered,” wrote Real, Barca and Juve in a joint statement and they claimed that UEFA’s actions, which could lead to their expulsion from the Champions League, are “incomprehensible” and risk causing football’s “inevitable downfall”.
The statement added that the clubs faced “unacceptable third-party pressures [and] threats… to abandon the project. …This is intolerable under the rule of law.”
The Spanish giants and Juventus insist that the Super League is still the way forward for the game.
“We would be highly irresponsible if, being aware of the needs and systemic crisis in the football sector, which led us to announce the Super League, we abandoned such mission to provide effective and sustainable answers to the existential questions that threaten the football industry,” read the statement.
The renegade trio seem on complete collision course with UEFA. The governing body welcomed the other nine breakaway clubs back into the football family as they signed a letter of apology and agreed to donate millions of dollars to the grassroots game. They will also have 5% of UEFA competition revenues withheld for one season, starting in the 2023-24 season, and this money will be redistributed.
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