European Super League announced; collapses

[Matt]

6 hours ago, Adam said:

All 12 of them should be kicked out of the domestic leagues tomorrow morning.

It won't happen, but it should. Fuck the lot of them completely. Greedy tossers.

I feel really sorry for the fans of these clubs who are against it as well. I mean, we all lose as football fans if this comes to fruition.

Honestly don't think it will if they get kicked out, there'll be teething pains but football is bigger than scum, Liverpool and Tottenham fucking Hotspurs. It'll kill the game if they're allowed to stay and the rest of the top flight is reduced to playing in their U23 league.

 

The rest of the footballing world just needs to fuck them off and not acknowledge them.

[Jimmy]

I'm assuming it's some sort of power play because UEFA aren't exactly saints themselves....but it's a really dumb fucking power play that's pretty damaging for clubs and their relationships with their fans. 

If Levy's smart, he'll sack Jose today to get some of the goodwill back...

[Nerf]

15 minutes ago, DFF said:

Personally I see a compromise happening whereby there is a bigger safety net for big teams added to the champs lge than the one in the most recently mooted 'Swiss model'.

People need to accept that this is happening. If any "compromise" were possible, it wouldn't have got this far. The clubs involved have left the ECA. They literally aren't allowed to participate in UEFA competitions anymore. This is not a bluff. It's happening. Now we accept it and try to figure out how to take back our clubs from these parasites.

Edited April 19, 2021 by Nerf

[King Ellis]

I feel the fact that we're so close to the end of the season is significant in terms of the idea of kicking these teams out of their respective leagues. Like last year with COVID and the idea of just finishing everything early and 'handing' the title to Liverpool, it'll probably be easier to let everything finish up rather than delay things with potential lawsuits from these clubs.

[JasonM]

16 minutes ago, Jimmy said:

I'm assuming it's some sort of power play because UEFA aren't exactly saints themselves....but it's a really dumb fucking power play that's pretty damaging for clubs and their relationships with their fans. 

If Levy's smart, he'll sack Jose today to get some of the goodwill back...

UEFA aren't Saints, but they've made moves in the past years to spread financial books around so that more teams get the gravy train that is euro football.

Undoubtedly one reason these teams are jumping out, because they don't know how to share wealth, they want it all for themselves.

Just greedy fucking parasites.

[DavidMarrio]

18 minutes ago, Matt said:

Honestly don't think it will if they get kicked out, there'll be teething pains but football is bigger than scum, Liverpool and Tottenham fucking Hotspurs. It'll kill the game if they're allowed to stay and the rest of the top flight is reduced to playing in their U23 league.

 

The rest of the footballing world just needs to fuck them off and not acknowledge them.

I agree that if this goes ahead we should be booted out the league. 

But unfortunately we're in a time where the TV deals dictate a lot of the finances for clubs and I do think this would have a wider effect on the game domestically.

Sky, BT etc aren't going to want to pay nowhere near as much money for the TV rights if the "big 6" aren't in the league. What effect does that then have on a lot of Premier League teams who would have been using a lot of the TV money on wages, sustaining the club etc. 

It's money grabbing bastards going up against more money grabbing bastards with other money grabbing bastards having their own interests and ultimately it is the fans who lose in this situation. 

I just absolutely hate everything about this. 

[Gazz]

Be interesting to see what the FA can do. They have no jurisdiction over the Premier league and the PL requires 15 votes from its 20 members to expel a team, which you're never going to get when you have a self-protectorate of six.

[Jimmy]

also pathetic to announce when fans can't publicly protest at stadiums etc 

 

 

[Tigerstyle]

Someone showed me this quote -

"Meanwhile, the new competition will be built on the basis of sustainable financial criteria, with all of the founding members having committed to a spending framework. In exchange for that commitment, the clubs will receive a total one-off payment of €3.5 billion which is for the sole purpose of investing in infrastructure and offsetting the impact of the COVID pandemic."
 

I can only imagine this spending framework is to not buy players from eachother, but have a small countries GDP and drain every other club in the world?

[Hobo]

6 hours ago, FLiam said:

I’d love to see what some of these managers think and if we hear from them in the coming days.

But seriously, fuck Stan Kroenke and Co. Stealing football.

We know what Klopp thinks anyway

Im still thinking its a power play and won't happen tbh

[Colly]

43 minutes ago, Matt said:

Honestly don't think it will if they get kicked out, there'll be teething pains but football is bigger than scum, Liverpool and Tottenham fucking Hotspurs. It'll kill the game if they're allowed to stay and the rest of the top flight is reduced to playing in their U23 league.

 

The rest of the footballing world just needs to fuck them off and not acknowledge them.

I do keep reading things from mainly overseas Twitter accounts who reckon the Premier League would collapse after these 6 super important teams leave. At worst the tv rights money drops and wages fall to an extent. Some players might move abroad, but only Germany is a realistic move at this point. More homegrown players might come through. The Premier League could survive happily while the Super League gets progressively duller, while the likes of Leeds and Leicester can build up international fanbases in exactly the same way Man City have in the last decade. I've always found the idea that fans "demand the best players in the PL" ridiculous, as a matchgoing fan I'd much prefer a competitive league with players who actually care.

Everything comes down to what the PL and UEFA do today, plus whether Bayern, Dortmund and PSG fill those final three spots. If those clubs are expelled, and the remaining PL, La Liga and Serie A teams refuse to sell players to the Super League sides you're then looking at a China style retirement league, while the Champions League itself still has massive clubs from Germany, France, Portugal, Turkey, the Netherlands plus the likes of Roma and Napoli. If the leagues back down the game is fucked.

[Kaney]

Sorry if I missed it in all this abhorrence, does this make the champions league final this year null and void, essentially just PSG gifted the trophy? I've saw it somewhere that the clubs have all already quit europe so how does it work for the rest of this season?

[DFF]

5 minutes ago, Kaney said:

Sorry if I missed it in all this abhorrence, does this make the champions league final this year null and void, essentially just PSG gifted the trophy? I've saw it somewhere that the clubs have all already quit europe so how does it work for the rest of this season?

Have all 12 quite the EFA already? Only one I saw confirmed was Juve. 

[DavidMarrio]

15 minutes ago, Colly said:

I do keep reading things from mainly overseas Twitter accounts who reckon the Premier League would collapse after these 6 super important teams leave. At worst the tv rights money drops and wages fall to an extent. Some players might move abroad, but only Germany is a realistic move at this point. More homegrown players might come through. The Premier League could survive happily while the Super League gets progressively duller, while the likes of Leeds and Leicester can build up international fanbases in exactly the same way Man City have in the last decade. I've always found the idea that fans "demand the best players in the PL" ridiculous, as a matchgoing fan I'd much prefer a competitive league with players who actually care.

Everything comes down to what the PL and UEFA do today, plus whether Bayern, Dortmund and PSG fill those final three spots. If those clubs are expelled, and the remaining PL, La Liga and Serie A teams refuse to sell players to the Super League sides you're then looking at a China style retirement league, while the Champions League itself still has massive clubs from Germany, France, Portugal, Turkey, the Netherlands plus the likes of Roma and Napoli. If the leagues back down the game is fucked.

To play devil's advocate on the bolded point. It'll be a lot tougher for teams not in the Super League to build up as much as a profile as City have over the last decade purely because of things like could they attract the big name players who they could market, would the casual fan want to watch Leicester Vs Luton when they might have Barcelona Vs Man Utd? Especially during a time where it's more brands and players such as Neymar/Messi/Ronaldo/Mbappe

 

I think there would be a knock on effect for domestic football for a period of time and then it would stabilise. The idea of English football dying is a bit daft but there would be financial ramifications for the some time before things even themselves out

 

 

[DFF]

The best chance the PL, UEFA etc has is for FIFA to now announce that the players would be banned from international football I think. Teams like Leeds, Leicester etc would then have a better chance at attracting the very top stars who simply want to be eligible to play for their country to try and win the WC etc. 

 

[DavidMarrio]

1 minute ago, DFF said:

The best chance the PL, UEFA etc has is for FIFA to now announce that the players would be banned from international football I think. Teams like Leeds, Leicester etc would then have a better chance at attracting the very top stars who simply want to be eligible to play for their country to try and win the WC etc. 

 

I hope this happens I do think it's gonna end up having to become a battle of players/managers against their own clubs. 

It's annoying as the tweet I linked from Dan Roan just shows that these owners purely are thinking of themselves and the quote about "legacy fans" just screams "fuck the people who have spent their hard earned money all these years, we want to grab the ultimate team generations attention"

[Hobo]

 

[Colly]

14 minutes ago, DavidMarrio said:

To play devil's advocate on the bolded point. It'll be a lot tougher for teams not in the Super League to build up as much as a profile as City have over the last decade purely because of things like could they attract the big name players who they could market, would the casual fan want to watch Leicester Vs Luton when they might have Barcelona Vs Man Utd? Especially during a time where it's more brands and players such as Neymar/Messi/Ronaldo/Mbappe

This is fundamentally the argument I've seen. For the first couple of seasons maybe, but when Barcelona and Man Utd have played each other 4 times a year for 3 seasons (I realise that's not the ESL programme, but it would be with no domestic football) Leeds vs West Ham might actually seem appealing. The "Brand" thing might have made sense five years ago, but Messi and Ronaldo can't play forever, and the other two don't even currently play for a Super League club, and neither do other wunderkinds like Haaland and Sancho. At the end of the day these 12 clubs can realistically poach 200 or so superstars at best, and if the rest of Europe refuse to sell to what's essentially a different code of football you won't see the likes of Mahrez going to City anymore. If they lose domestic football (and indeed international football) the whole thing is knackered.

Now I'm just picturing Klopp's reaction to "legacy fans".

[Baddar]

This is undoubtedly the biggest story in football in my lifetime, even bigger than the formation of the Premier League.

I can't believe that despite it being so universally hated by fans, the owners don't care and are going through with it anyway.

What's not going to be fun in the coming days/weeks, is the interviews like the one Ole had after the game yesterday. I expect very few managers to actually come out and say what they really think on this, through fear of losing their job. The only way this doesn't happen is if everyone - players, staff and fans come out against it, with the players having the most important role in it all. Even then it could still happen. Money talks.

Dortmund have just confirmed that they are NOT joining the ESL.

[Jimmy]

2 hours ago, Jimmy said:

I'm assuming it's some sort of power play because UEFA aren't exactly saints themselves....but it's a really dumb fucking power play that's pretty damaging for clubs and their relationships with their fans. 

If Levy's smart, he'll sack Jose today to get some of the goodwill back...

looooooool