Football Super league rumours yet again !!

[ted fenton]

"Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea and Tottenham Hotspur all agree to plan. Five English clubs are among 11 European teams who have signed up to a breakaway Super League in an extraordinary development on the eve of Uefa's announcement of a new Champions League format. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/18/sports/soccer/super-league-united-liverpool-juventus-madrid.html"

[Side of Ham]

What these greedy cunts forget is that unlike any other sport in the world there is a tribal rivalry that goes way back to when countries like America were just emerging with a bit of history. Beat Barcelona? great you can put two fingers up at one of the UEFA big brands for a few days the Catalonians really won't give a shit. Beat Spurs? the really unworthy entitled cսnt supporters you can see nearly every day and put two fingers right up their nostrils and watch them squirm..... fucking marvellous. You can't buy history.... and wipe it out and you are left with a product that will be like the Marvel heroes assembling over and over until boredom sets in.

[Mike Oxsaw]

"Steady 6:33 Thu Apr 22 On a related note, has anybody considered what the CL/Europa would look like next year without the JPM15? It could trigger a whole new batch of interest/paying customers."

[SurfaceAgentX2Zero]

Paradise Easy to word a law making a windfall tax not specific to a certain sub-group. You just say 'windfall tax on the six with the biggest turnover' - job done.

[Mike Oxsaw]

"ParadiseLost 6:32 Thu Apr 22 I don't disagree with a word you have posted on the subject, but a nettle needs to be grasped here, otherwise the weeds will take over the plot. So long as the PL act within their own remit - signed and agreed by all PL members - I think they will be safe from prosecution of any kind, from any party."

[Steady]

Has anyone actually considered that no format of Champions League or Super League is really that appealing. You can't beat a good old domestic match at the end of the day. West ham beating Millwall or Spurs will always be more enjoyable and appealing than playing a European side.

[ParadiseLost]

"Mike one club, but arguably four of the biggest clubs? Some of the overseas rights holders to begin with would use it as an excuse to stop paying. Remember the recent Chinese incident? Then how many big six supporters in the UK would stop Sky because their teams weren’t in it? The contract would almost certainly become unprofitable for Sky overnight. They might do a ‘France’. What’s the value of the next Sky contract? I’d love to penalize the six i just think that legally its tough."

[Mike Oxsaw]

"ParadiseLost 5:52 Thu Apr 22 I don't think Sky - or any of the media - have any claim over who is in the PL; what happens if a team they like is expelled for gross misconduct or maladministration? The contract is that they can select from the available 380 games in a season those they wish to broadcast live to air, subject to the terms & conditions of the contract. If they EXPECT certain teams to always be in that league, then that's an expectation they need to manage and carries no legal weight. No doubt that a PL without the so-called big six will have less appeal in non-UK markets, and that can be reflected during the next set of negotiations. Until then, they have a contract to broadcast a number of PL games, irrespective of what teams make up the PL."

[ParadiseLost]

"Westside, but a sub set of companies (clubs) in an industry (football)? Remembering that the UK has a Tory majority that doesn’t exactly sound like it came from their manifesto. The Tories would want to set a precedent where you could choose which companies get to pay extra tax? Then there’s the reason for the windfall tax. They’ve not done anything illegal, it would be hard to suggest they’d actually manipulated anything , what they’ve done is unpopular. Lawyers would have a field day with it."

[Westside]

"Windfall tax on a group of companies within one industry? See you in court. Perfectly legal to have windfall taxes, in the UK. Been levied on privatised utilities (by Blair) and on the banks (Thatcher)."

[ParadiseLost]

Yes Mike but doesn’t that get you a letter from the Sky lawyer that you have intentionally reduced the value of his contract with you? I guess you then don’t relegate anyone and invite the top two and the four play off teams from the Championshio}

[ParadiseLost]

Yes Mike but doesn’t that get you a letter from the Sky lawyer that you have intentionally reduced the value of his contract with you? I guess you then don’t relegate anyone and invite the top two and the four play off teams from the Championshio}

[Mike Oxsaw]

"Is not membership of the Premier League, under it's own rules of constitution, by invitation only? Does not legal membership cease for each club at the end of each season? If there is no mention in those same rules that a/6 particular clubs MUST be invited to join each and every year, I don't see what even the best law team in the world can do about it."

[ParadiseLost]

"And of course the politicians who were so brave don’t seem to have had any follow up. Presumably somewhere there’s a conference room full of US lawyers rubbing their hands together as they know that any action by the footballing organizing bodies or governments is going to be potentially very lucrative. Windfall tax on a group of companies within one industry? See you in court. Withhold work visas for those same companies? See you in court. Try to throw the clubs out of the league with a few weeks of the season left and no fixed date for the new league? See you in court. Suggest that only approved bodies can organize sporting events? Restraint of trade, see you in court. Try and implement German soccer club fan involvement in running the clubs? Retrospectively - after we bought them in a free market - see you in court. This breakaway was so predictable, and any legislation or rule changes needed to be made ahead of it. Trying now to invent things to stop it happening just makes lawyers even richer."

[Mike Oxsaw]

"ParadiseLost 4:20 Thu Apr 22 It does, indeed, seem that the ESL have found the price of silence."

[Mike Oxsaw]

"Even if ESL was not a technically closed shop - the gulf in wealth between those already in it and those trying to get in it would make it a de facto closed shop. It would be like Dagenham & Redbridge trying to gain promotion to the PL in one step, missing out all the other layers of the pyramid.."

[ParadiseLost]

"So another day goes by with no action from the authorities and the statements from those involved are morphing into,’we are very sorry but’ and ‘we will continue’. I guess useful journos and pundits are waiting for the Fortnum and Mason hamper gifts from the big clubs before telling us that ‘we need to be worried about the sustainability of football’"

[stubbo]

"I actually think the ESL was 'close' to being along the right lines. The trouble was the closed shop nature of it more than anything. If they made the CL so that there were basically straight knock out eliminators for the weaker clubs to reach a group/league stage, that would make a lot of sense. Have 8, 3 team groups, with the top 2 in each qualifying by virtue of being the strongest in the competition/seeded (could be done base don the Uefa co-efficient, or by the deemed strgengths of leagues they come from...add up the Uefa coefficient for the leagues themselves and then assign places based on league strengths so that those places could justifiably change over time) and then have the other places arrived at via knock out rounds. Then playout those mini leagues before quarters, semis and finals. That way you get the majority big games, all the knock out games have something actually riding on them instead of some shitter playing 4 games as whipping boys in an early league format, and each year you still have to qualify to make it into those 8 groups, so it's not a closed shop to get there in the first place. You could make the groups bigger into mini leagues but the trouble with any league format is by definition there will be a load of games with nothing riding on them and them being played out for the sake of it (and lets face it even if you have Real Madrid vs Barcelona, if they're playing a friendly or for a nothing place in a league, it makes for an uninteresting spectacle). All a league does really is remove the liklihood of an upset, and increase the volume of games."

[El Scorchio]

it is- I mean there's huge double standards from UEFA here. Given that this is just a really far gone/next level version of their own business model only with them cut out of it.

[,]

"Top football is rotten and corrupt to the core and we all know this whether it is FIFA or UEFA. Look for example at the graft which took place in order to get the next WC to Qatar in the middle of the European football season. To get a form of ESL up and running will eventually come about when the top clubs get their act together by means of bribery, or putting a poodle of their own in place."

[Dandy Lyon]

"MLS clubs trade for around 10 times their revenue. The major reason for this is they are in a closed shop. Premier League clubs trade for around 3 times their revenue. The Snidey Six owners, especially those from US would see that and hoped the new league would have added similar value. Now that this isn’t going to happen, they may well think their ‘business’ has peaked and will look at selling up and getting out. Hopefully anyway."

[Pub Bigot]

"If we had a German model, this wouldn't even be a question. That is the future we should strive for. Personally, unless West Ham are in Europe, I don't care. I might catch the odd game on the box with mates who support those clubs, or if Liverpool are playing as the Mrs is a red, but even then I'm on my phone and probably on here."

[El Scorchio]

"Steady 1:18 Totally agree- it's actually just a really short sighted money grab. Very quickly 'tiers' even amongst the 'founders' will be established. Barca, Real and a couple of others will end up at the top and the likes of Arsenal and Spurs will just be their whipping boys. Then they'll want to renegotiate the money with of course Barca, Real and those few others getting more- because it's only fair- and they'll manage to distance themselves even from the other 'important' clubs. It's so transparent. Fans of all the other teams are going to be sick of watching their club get battered all the time and aren't going to pony up for tickets so most games will be in empty stadiums. (Travel costs to away games will be astronomical) The fans might even fuck off and support someone else, and the 'founders' who are stuck at the bottom of the table constantly will just be looking for a way out. All this will end up doing is pushing 2-3 clubs even further to the top of the pile and spitting out a bunch more of them along the way."

[zico]

"We all know that the Champions League is boring, as is Euros or World Cup Qualification because FIFA and UEFA want the minnows playing the big guns with more games but it does make for a poor spectacle. As others have said straight knockout for Champions only like the old European Cup is the best option football wise but obviously not money wise,. I'd get the Cup Winners Cup back as well but again it's not going to generate money. Don't know what the answer is to tick all boxes."

[cholo]

"""He (Perez) then came out and said clubs won't be able to afford Mbappe or Haaland if there's no ESL"" Perez is clearly either a complete idiot, or thinks everyone else is. Probably a bit of both."

[Sydney_Iron]

"Reports coming in that the EPL is writing to senior executives of the six clubs to request that they stand down or the other 14 clubs will get together and do it for them Also, Perez is a deluded fool if he thinks anyone is buying into him 'saving football'. He just wants the means to be able to buy Mbappe or Haaland, he couldn't give a toss about any other club. He then came out and said clubs won't be able to afford Mbappe or Haaland if there's no ESL. Well maybe that's a good thing if it stops clubs from spending ludicrous amounts of money on transfers and wages, that's the real way of 'saving football'. He did however say that the ESL contracts are binding and no club has actually left yet. The legal ramifications that come out of it will be interesting to watch. I think previous posters in here are right, if you break your ESL contract, pay an exit fee directly to Perez"