@mikehunt has kept very quiet here.
He must have been bought off with some promissory notes or share options.
Pity no Lazio - bad guys are needed
Agnelli will buy over the Irish scousers with a free bar some night in the Ratoath Inn
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I find it strange you look at that list of clubs and find no “bad guys”
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To a football fan it looks like over half the games in this new league will be completely meaningless and basically glorified friendlies but the precedent here is the structure of the NFL - divide the teams into mini-divisions and conferences of three or four. Play out the league as normal and then the top teams in each division qualify for the playoffs. Sounds shite but the NFL has grown steadily over the past 50 years and is now the richest sports league in America, AFAIK.
But again, look closer at the structure of American football: all the money is in the NFL but that’s not where the passion is, or even where the crowds are. The passion and the crowds lie with the college game because those are the teams with real links to their communities. As a result the college game is worth a fortune and that value is growing all the time. You could see similar developments gradually occur in football but the other clubs would have to survive the first 10 or 20 years first.
Also a big difference is that American football colleges don’t have to pay their players. Footballers outside of the Super League will have to accept huge pay cuts, there’ll be no way around it. The days of subs at mid-table PL clubs getting £50k a week will be over. Maybe that’s no harm.
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You also have a salary cap, roster limits, free agency and the draft which drives competition and means that a team can go from last to first in a short time.
A super League without checks and balances like that will become lop sided pretty quickly
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Yeah Spuds will be quickly found out. It will be like Italy in the 6 Nations.
A big difference will be unlike in rugby there will be other viable candidates who are clearly better teams than Spuds and who would want to take their place. Then they’ll be forced to introduce a relegation system. Then eventually one of the big clubs will collapse for a year and get relegated. Then they won’t really get relegated - it will be like the first few years of the English football league. Then the craic will really start.
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In 1955 The English league winners Chelsea were denied entry to the European Cup by the English FA.
Sports administration always resists change.
Well said
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Why are the older generations so selfish?
Once upon a time Match of the Day changed football.
Then you had Sky coming in. The broadcast of Italian soccer even changed how locals viewed football.
The sport evolves. The kids these days want to see FIFA Ultimate Team in action. People from developing countries want to see the best and ultimately to be the best. The Super League means that over time, football will truly become a global game. At the moment the UEFA cartel closes many out, this will change the game for the better in time.
The 20 odd year absence from the top flight probably did Nottingham Forest. The EPL years have been tough on the likes of Forest. Tough on more old school traditional clubs like Everton and Tottenham for long stretches as well, albeit neither have been relegated.
When you tally up what were then the Big 6 tournaments of - League, FA Cup, League Cup, European Cup, Cup Winners Cup and UEFA Cup, at the advent of the EPL era in 1992/93 season, in the post World War 2 years only Liverpool had won more trophies than the 13 that Spurs had amassed up to the then record breaking 8th FA Cup win in 1991. Just two league Cups in the 30 years since. Everton last won a trophy with the FA Cup in 1995, Aston Villa a year later with the League Cup in 1996.
A lot of the old traditional clubs left behind by the emergence of the elite coterie of super franchises in the EPL era. Man U dominating initially for 20 years, then Chelsea and Citeh on the back of Russian state backing and Qatari oil money.
Even Liverpool were left behind for most of the last 30 years until the appearance of the extraordinary Coach Klopp. Just the one League Cup and FA Cup (both on the penalty shoot out lottery) in the 18 years between 2001 and 2019.
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What did Klopp say about the Super League?
He said he did not want to see Liverpool play Real Madrid ten times a year.
When all this settles down people will watch the games.
Klopp is fuming lads. He’s been mentally destroyed
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I hope they go ahead, and are kicked out of their respective leagues. Banning the players from international football would be unnecessary vindictive and spiteful though. It’ll lead to a breakaway world cup as well.
This pissing contest could get out of hand.
I suspect that nothing much will happen though, which is a shame as uefa and FIFA are crooks of the very highest order.
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The European Courts already ruled that sports bodies cannot ban players for playing in other sporting body sanctioned games.
As for The Super League being a cartel it is no more one than UEFA.