This is being financed by the big american banks. They own the debt for the american owners and are worried about collecting. This is 100% driven and debt protection
Anybody remember the TSN Tour in snooker? Around 2001/2002. A load of top players had signed up and it looked all set for a darts style split.
A few key players refused to join it, John Higgins and Matthew Stevens were two off the top of my head, and the thing collapsed.
It was the Americans drove Wimbledon to Milton Keynes, thinking “this is how we make money in America”, but it didn’t work out.
Apparently all 12 that are in have signed binding contracts according to Perez. There is no backing out
I initially assumed this was a shakedown but it appears to be the real deal.
A shit show
It’s very serious. There are a lot of casual fans underestimating it.
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Binding contracts with who though? With each other or with somebody else? With a TV/internet rights holder?
Contracts can be got out of if all 12 realise the game is up.
It’s a direct breach of the Premier league rules. They’ll all have to be sanctioned.
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But like… Liverpool and Man Utd fans just woke up today to be told that tjeir clubs were changing leagues after 100+ years. When the PL launched it wasn’t that major a change and there was a lot of talk in the build up. This just came from nowhere. “Sorry lads - football is finished”
Be a good laugh if UEFA/FIFA and the domestic governing bodies follow through on their threats to throw the Super clubs out of their domestic leagues and suspend their players from international soccer.
A sporting precedent of sorts would be Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket in the late 1970’s. The Australian Cricket Board in particular came down very hard on their contracted players who signed up to it and suspended them. A seriously depleted Australia were routed at home in the 1978/79 Ashes.
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Probably with J.P Morgans legal team and whoever else is financing it. I fear you’re clutching at straws.
It’s happening guys. Stop kidding yourselves
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Perez is suggesting matches be shortened. Seriously.
The dirty dozen are in. Hopefully the teams that haven’t signed up see the backlash and leave the cunts out to dry.
Ban them from all domestic cups and leave them rot
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With timeouts in each half for water breaks.
Which will conveniently show adverts
The domestic Cups have been finished for 20 years now since Man U boycotted the FA Cup in 2000. Most teams field reserve sides now all the way up to the semi finals.
Including the premier league. Ban them from any domestic competition.
Let them play each other in a 12 team league and see how they get on.
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Timeouts in US sports evolved to facilitate betting, more than say anything like player welfare, and thus increased consumer interest. A more gradual continuation in this regard is to be expected here
I can see the 2022 World Cup becoming a big battleground if FIFA remain out on the idea of this Super League, players being banned etc. It could get unbelievably bitter.
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The European Super League shames the people’s game
The plan violates the spirit and ethos of the sport
Any player taking part in this league should be forbidden from representing his national side
If someone had sat down to devise a plan to unite millions of usually-partisan football fans across Europe, they would have been hard-pressed to come up with anything better. My social media feeds are filled with diehard supporters spitting tacks at the proposal for a breakaway European Super League. These include fans of the six English clubs involved in the caper. They have been joined in their fury by pretty much everyone else involved in the game, from its authorities to high-profile former players and pundits. Even presidents and prime ministers have got in on the act.
These individuals and groups see the proposal for what it is: a cynical and unashamed attempt by billionaire owners to generate ever more colossal sums of wealth for their clubs by creating a closed shop at the top of football.
Make no mistake, the plan violates the very spirit and ethos of the sport — of any sport. For all its flaws and inequities, one of the beauties of football remains that there is no ceiling on how far a team might rise or fall. There is always something to strive for, always the potential that a club scratching around in the lower reaches of the game might one day find itself pitting its wits against the highest and mightiest — or indeed the reverse.
Witness, for example, the meteoric rise of Wimbledon from non-league minnows in 1977 to FA Cup holders and top-flight outfit a little over a decade later, or my own team Wolverhampton Wanderers’ slump from Division One illustriousness to Division Four obscurity in successive seasons during that same period. Eat away at that dynamism and unpredictability, and the very essence of the game is threatened.
There are no legitimate football reasons which compel Europe’s elite clubs to create this kind of uncompetitive competition. Teams that are good enough will, under the current structure, always enjoy their fair share of opportunities to compete against the cream of other nations.
Instead, this proposal is driven by naked commercialism and the greed of those looking for a guarantee of regular lucrative pay days, regardless of whether their team’s performances on the pitch merit it, and no matter the impact on the wider game.
Their actions shame the game — the ‘people’s game’, as we like to call it. In response, nothing less than the most exemplary measures will do. Any club participating in the new league should be banned from its own domestic league, and any player taking part forbidden from representing his national side. That is what they deserve for putting money before morality.
Many fans are sick of being fleeced, of witnessing foreign oligarchs and tycoons acquiring their clubs and using them as personal playthings without regard for the wishes of those who have sustained them, often over a lifetime, with support from the terraces. There is speculation that the so-called ‘German model’ — which ensures a club’s fans maintain a controlling stake — will be implemented in British football. It cannot come soon enough.