New European Super League

Discussion in 'General Football & Other Sport' started by The Voice of Reason, Apr 19, 2021.

  1. lowerrous

    lowerrous First Team

    UEFA could also just be bluffing - for instance, I think they'd be massively shooting themselves in the foot if they do somehow ban players at SL clubs from participating in the Euros, and they'll surely face a tonne of lawsuits if they try and kick out the clubs from the current CL competition when there are still games to be played (and televised) and nothing seems to be entirely formalised.

    The nature and speed of the comments coming from UEFA suggests that they are in full-blown panic mode (or that this whole thing has been orchestrated in advance somehow by UEFA and the top clubs to try and get some other potentially unpopular changes in football's structure over the line, enabling fans, pundits, domestic leagues etc. to accept them as a "lesser of two potential evils").
     
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  2. Not if the best players want an international career
     
  3. Mavu

    Mavu Academy Graduate

    Ensure competitiveness...
    Or ensure profits?
     
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  4. Rookery Refugee

    Rookery Refugee Reservist


    What I recall that we voted for was a distribution that was more heavily weighted by league position. Made some sense for a club like us that gets less money from it's ticket sales, if we punch above our weight, we could have done well. Calculated risk. Regardless, it's all about money. The big clubs:

    1) Generate the most of it
    2) Want more of it
    3) Will get it one way or another

    The only leverage that the smaller fish have is that the big boys need someone to play against.

    The wild card in this is the players
    A) I think they're going to want more of the money
    B) If the various bodies stick to their guns on things like the Euros and World Cup, then the players may end up adding some leverage to the smaller fish and governing body arguments.

    If this does survive, you wonder if we'd see things like:
    - The big 6 being kicked out of the FA cup
    - more "playoffs" being introduced to drive up TV revenue things like: the bottom 4 play in a end-of season tournament so that one of them avoids relegation... the top 4 playing in some sort of playoff to determine the "Premier League Cup" or something similar. (not advocating for these - but they'll need to gin up TV revenue from somewhere).

    The challenge here will be all the egos involved. This group of big money men are organised and way ahead in terms of planning. The opposition has to pick a leader, pick a strategy, and get everyone to close ranks. That will be hard. Especially because probably the best leader would be UEFA. None of the FAs and certainly not FIFA will like that.

    All that aside, the whole ESL only works because the Big 6 said yes. The PL makes more money, and has more fans worldwide. Without those teams, this thing dies. So UEFA, the PL the UK Government need to get aligned at a minimum - and immediately reach out to the Bundesliga, Ligue 1 and probably La Liga. In addition to many of the things already proposed, do whatever they have to make this deal very unpleasant for the players who would play on these teams. That will stir them up to want more money even faster.

    As you've said, this is all about the money to the owners. They need to make it clear that a lot of other sources of money will dry up, more will go to the players and this will be a huge headache.

    At the end of it all, the big clubs will still make more money, but they *might* be able to kill this league.





    .
     
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  5. lowerrous

    lowerrous First Team

    I'd be very surprised if UEFA and FIFA went through with such a threat, at least on a long-term basis anyway. They would both miss out on the top players from their competitions and much of the lucrative sponsorship and TV revenue that goes with it.

    It's not the national teams who are paying the best players £300k+ per week. The SL clubs will remain those able to offer the big bucks and increasingly may be more able to relative to those clubs stuck in the less lucrative domestic leagues.

    No chance will the players turn their backs on such contracts in the SL just for the sake of earning a few pennies playing in a Euro or a World Cup for a few weeks every 4 years.

    Players may feel aggrieved, sure, but it would make UEFA and FIFA seem like the petty bad guys (and them doing such a thing really would be petty and pathetic tbh - it's unnecessary and they're last-ditch using it as a bargaining chip because they don't want to lose that lovely large CL tv revenue; they don't own the best players either).
     
    Last edited: Apr 19, 2021
  6. wfcmoog

    wfcmoog Tinpot

    How can they? They've got no ground. Got no fans.
     
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  7. a19tgg

    a19tgg First Team

    Klopp trying to dodge the question on MNF.
     
  8. a19tgg

    a19tgg First Team

    ... and getting wound up by Leeds wearing T-shirt’s about earning champions league qualification and football being for the fans
     
  9. ForzaWatford

    ForzaWatford Squad Player

    Leeds put the banner up in their dressing room, which I can get behind. I don't think i've ever wanted Leeds to win a football match before.
     
  10. miked2006

    miked2006 Premiership Prediction League Proprietor

    And he spent all those years cultivating his obviously fake cool, ‘man of the people’ persona, which the BBC etc. lapped up.
     
  11. ForzaWatford

    ForzaWatford Squad Player

    On a side note, I remember having an interview at Playstation a couple of years ago for a job doing the marketing for their Champions League sponsorship. Had 4 interviews before getting rejected... But I remember them being devastated that Man United had been knocked out because it effects the views and the value of their sponsorship so much. The guy interviewing me was a Chelsea fan and he said he'd rather see a Madrid V Barca final than a Chelsea one because it'd be better for his job...
     
  12. wfcmoog

    wfcmoog Tinpot

    You are an old fashioned fact
     
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  13. Bwood_Horn

    Bwood_Horn Squad Player

    Kai Humphries original tweet:

    The Beano's response.
     
  14. Teide1

    Teide1 Squad Player

    I knew I could rely on WFCMoog!
     
  15. wfcmoog

    wfcmoog Tinpot

    Exactly, so let them **** off and a new elite will emerge.

    Fairweather fans will not stick with watching the same 14 teams take turns to batter spurs, and it will lose its lustre.

    These club only hold the status they hold because they've been able to be successful in competition. Once you take away that competition, it's Harlem globetrotters stuff. All entertaining and such but not really compelling in the long term.

    The best outcome for this would be let them go and cut them off entirely. There would be a battle for a short while, but the fans of the other clubs in Europe and the fans of these clubs who value real competition far outnumber those who will stick around to watch these tepid, closed shop affairs between the same clubs.
     
  16. wfcmoog

    wfcmoog Tinpot

    100%. The ESL is short term and doomed without the other competitions.

    The simple fact is, you can't guarantee a club's elite status just because you want to. You need to earn it by winning and being the best.

    These clubs have lost sight of that and no matter how much football has changed for the worse, the fundamental fact stands, that just being a once good team doesn't make you one forever and they can't change that, no matter how many deals with the devil they sign.
     
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  17. Burnsy

    Burnsy First Team

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  18. Arakel

    Arakel First Team

    Given that the German model seems to have held the line amazingly well, I wonder if it would be possible to get traction on similar requirements in the UK (i.e. something like all clubs must be at least 51% fan owned)?

    Might never be a better time to push for that than now.
     
  19. Arakel

    Arakel First Team

    If there is one thing I have confidence in when it comes to UEFA and FIFA, it is their ability to look after themselves first.

    A breakaway ESL is a huge problem for them, so they have a huge incentive to find a serious, credible solution here. Any capitulation is going to be met with huge opposition by most fans, and if they are perceived to be weak they might find their members buggering off to form something new in a wholesale fashion.

    It feels like this might be a watershed moment for football, where everyone has finally been forced to look at what's really going on and can't deny the truth anymore. Hopefully this will lead to much needed action to return the sport to the fans and restore some semblance of sanity. It would be a great time for a national fans movement to put pressure on the government to make the changes the vast majority of us want.
     
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  20. Rookery Refugee

    Rookery Refugee Reservist

    They're all bad guys and it's all about the money.

    My view on this is that I think that what drives a lot of the interest in any sporting competition is ANTICIPATION/HOPE. This is why the transfer window is so huge for gambling. Doing this removes a lot of that hope, and in general would diminish some of the interest. How much, who knows? I hope it fails. If it doesn't though, all is not lost. If you look at the US, the NFL is massive - the most profitable sports league in the world. But college football is huge too. So, there would certainly be a lot of money still made. The real question would be - as others have pointed out - is what happens to the TV deals around the world? If the games don't matter as much, and the top 6 are flattening everyone else, what then. If I'm in the US I'm certainly not paying NBC for the priviledge of watching Arsenal vs. Chelsea every week, or even Tottenham vs. Watford if the spuds have a payroll 20 times ours and we get thrashed 5-0. The spigot will slow down if not get shut off.
     
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  21. Burnsy

    Burnsy First Team

    If there’s one thing I also have confidence in them to do, is to have people in place taking back-handers in exchange for their vote/power. There’ll undoubtedly be individuals at both associations who will be looking to line their pockets whilst waving things through.
     
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  22. CarlosKickaballs

    CarlosKickaballs Forum Picarso

    This might be true on a macro scale but on a personal level do the fans of Russian or Polish teams really care about the relative strength of their domestic league to the premier league or la liga elite? They might contemplate while waiting for the bus or having #bantz at the pub whether they could beat Real Madrid on a Wednesday night in Siberia, but I imagine ultimately all they care about is seeing Lech play well in their own league? At a European level it would also matter at the moment, but probably won't anymore in the same way - so who cares how 'good' the London All-Stars and Barcelona Super-Stripes are?

    If we discovered on SWEEPS-11 there was a league of players who make Messi look like Gray would it matter to us here? Apart from me who would make the SWEEPS-11 ALL BLACKS my first team and MANCHESTER CITY my new 4th team.
     
  23. a19tgg

    a19tgg First Team

    I said this in the other thread, a club like spurs has only been able to get themselves into this position because of the popularity of the Premier League, and the Premier League is only so popular because of the more even distribution of TV money making it more attractive than say, Spain where Barca and Real suck up far more of money.

    I mean we were able to become a better/more favoured club than Udinese because of that fact.

    If Spurs were a Spanish club they’d be nothing, these idiots want to create a closed shop and ring fence revenues when it was the opposite that got them where they are in the first place.
     
  24. GoingDown

    GoingDown "The Stability"

    But the PR value is fantastic for the greatest-evah 6 former players isn't it? They throw their hands up at the very idea of being eaten by the monster they've spent the last 10 years making fat.

    They've treated the elite-6 in such a manner that their owners believe all the hype. Other clubs laughed at, belittled and kept down whilst every tiny little ounce of coverage is lended to them and wrung out til dry.

    You only have to watch a broadcast from the USA to see how the league is viewed. 6 clubs on the logo for the coverage and it's not hard to work out which ones.

    The press, the TV money, the weighted coverage, the laughable choices of FA Cup games over the years, a disgusting youth recruitment policy, super 6 superfan pundits, ignoring financial irregularities, everything has basically enabled these clubs to make this decision. And you know what, fair play to them.

    If they truly believe that football fans, globally, only watch them and a selection of other teams from Europe and will pay through the nose to watch it every year, then go forth and set the world on fire.

    Local English fans are one of the smallest groups that any club care about these days and the endless laughable sanctimonious b*llocks from the 'earn it' t-shirts, Gary Neville's 'Avengers Assemble' rallying cry down to the 'this is what being at the heart of the community is about' from our very own club today, it makes no difference.

    And it shouldn't. They are responsible. Every single one of them. You treat a league like it belongs to only 6 teams, they'll eventually believe it.
     
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  25. Arakel

    Arakel First Team

    Given the US case against FIFA a little while back, it would be a brave (or stupid) person who takes a bung when the whole world's eyes are on this!
     
  26. Arakel

    Arakel First Team

    One rule for me, another for thee.
     
  27. foxywfc

    foxywfc Reservist

    Some funny comments
    Spurs joining the SL is like me walking into the crucible and putting 50p on the table.
    Spurs joining the SL is like bananaman being an avenger.


    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
     
  28. lowerrous

    lowerrous First Team

    Thought-provoking post.

    I'd never heard of SWEEPS-11 before, but surely given the fortuitous name of their planet for a football club they'd just call themselves SWEEPS-11?

    Or at a stretch the SWEEPS-11-XI.
     
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  29. a19tgg

    a19tgg First Team

    One thing I can’t reconcile,

    This presumable replaces the CL?

    Presumably there will still be the Europa league or equivalent?

    How would that work in therms of qualification if the big 6 are still in the league?

    They’ll either be untouchable and finish top 6 just through the sheer power of their squads, so does qualification for the other European positions go from 7-11 say?

    Or maybe they’ll rest players or enter B teams and not finish top 6, the natural downside of this is the league will be massively down-valued, and how does qualification for the other European league work then? Just via the first spots that aren’t occupied by big 6 teams?

    So you could have half the league playing in Europe somehow?
     
  30. Keighley

    Keighley First Team

    That is many, many miles down a long road at this stage, surely.
     
  31. lowerrous

    lowerrous First Team

    Wow, a post from GD I actually find very sensible.

    The level of hypocrisy from the likes of Sky and Gary Neville is breathtaking. One shouldn't forget that Gary Neville owns Salford City with Singaporean billionaire Peter Lim, and if ever Salford City were ever in a position to join such a Super League you can bet your bottom dollar that they'd bite your hand off for it. Likewise with Leeds Utd, joint-owned by Singaporean 'Aser Group Holdings', and the US '49ers Enterprises' (who also co-own the San Francisco 49ers, and will no doubt be looking on enviously at the Glazers at Man Utd right now).
     
  32. a19tgg

    a19tgg First Team

    But will presumably need to be resolved one way or the other?
     
  33. Lloyd

    Lloyd Squad Player

    We're swimming in the same swamp as the 'big 6' - greed drives everything in football and all clubs exploit the loyalty of their fans by extracting money from them at every opportunity. I've had enough of it. And then, of course, there's VAR...
     
  34. El distraído

    El distraído Johnny Foreigner

    Well said, and I agree with you. The PL has created a monster.
     
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  35. CarlosKickaballs

    CarlosKickaballs Forum Picarso

    Sweeps 11 are tinpot / our rivals
     

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