Vesper

so sloppy in final 3rd

if we do not win it is a fucking disaster

SUBSTITUTES 18 Olivier Giroud 28 César Azpilicueta 33 Emerson 7 N'Golo Kanté 11 Timo Werner 21 Ben Chilwell 16 Édouard Mendy 20 Callum Hudson-Odoi 23 Billy Gilmour use some soon!

I am so stressed out atm about this game ☹️

we MUST win this!!!!!! come on lads, wake the fuck up!

lololol

Ed Woodward resigns as Manchester United chairman

sexy beast 🤣

2020-21 English Premier League Chelsea Brighton & Hove Albion http://www.sportnews.to/mysports/2021/premier-league-Chelsea-vs-brighton-hove-albion-s1/ https://www.totalsportek.com/page-3/

so happy!! 🤩

Florentino Pérez’s absurd attempt to justify the €uropean $uper £eague Really, Florentino? Photograph: Tim Goode/PA Barry Glendenning @bglendenning A CHANGE OF MOOD? Two days after the announcement and now the initial rage has subsided, people are finally starting to see the potential positives of a $uper £eague. Glamorous away trips! To Mumbai! To Tokyo! To Stan Kroenke’s new Enorm-o-Dome in LA! For Tottenham v Inter! In a dead rubber brought to you live by TikHouse Premium! With highlights of the second quarter brought to you on the Gazprom Jumbotron courtesy of Instachat and Zoomparty after the Euro-Con half-time show!!! What’s not to love? OK, so maybe it will take a little longer for folk to see the positives, even if Real Madrid president and people’s champion Florentino Pérez has been trying to help us all see the light. “We are doing this to save football at this critical moment,” he honked, in an attempt to shine a light on the hitherto unremarked-upon benevolence and magnanimity of those billionaire vulture-capitalists whose not-at-all self-serving motives have apparently been misunderstood. “Young people are no longer interested in football. They have other platforms on which to distract themselves. We could get back some of the money we lost because of the pandemic. We have to raise more money organising more competitive games.” The ESL would destroy football as we know it – it’s almost as if they don’t care | David Baddiel Read more While Pérez may have a point, it could be argued that many young people are no longer interested in football because they have been priced out of attending games or watching them on television by gluttonous, cash-crazed money sponges like … well, Pérez. Quite what dividing games into quarters, moving them around the world and sticking them behind an even more expensive paywall will do to help pique the interest of young Madridistas is open to debate. One of very few of the men behind the $uper £eague to stick his head above the parapet since Sunday’s big announcement, Pérez’s quite frankly absurd attempt to justify their attempt to ride a FaceSpace-branded coach and horses roughshod across over a century of tradition and something resembling sporting integrity perhaps explains why the rest of those responsible have remained resolutely tight-lipped. Instead they have chosen to shove assorted managers into the hail of bullets. While Ole Gunnar Solskjær and Thomas Tuchel were relatively reluctant to bite the hand that feeds, their opposite number at Manchester City didn’t hold back. “Sport is not a sport when the relation between the effort and reward don’t exist,” declared Pep Guardiola. “It’s not a sport when it doesn’t matter if you lose. It’s not fair if teams fight at the top and cannot qualify.” The heartwarming sound, there, of a man who knows his employers need him far more than he needs them and quite literally has not a single eff left to give. As anodyne as they can be on the pitch, the Everton hierarchy released a commendably coruscating statement, as they looked down on their counterparts from the moral high ground on their side of Stanley Park, while West Ham have since followed suit. And after a meeting of the Other 14 Clubs, the Premier League has now piped up to strenuously harrumph in the face of the Dirty Half-Dozen’s proposals. “The 14 clubs at the meeting unanimously and vigorously rejected the plans for the competition,” it announced. “The Premier League is considering all actions available to prevent it from progressing. The League will continue to work with key stakeholders including fan groups, government, Uefa, the FA, EFL, PFA and LMA to protect the best interests of the game and call on those clubs involved in the proposed competition to cease their involvement immediately.” Having set the wheels in motion for this sad monstrosity upon its foundation, the Premier League now finds itself frantically trying to apply the brakes. LIVE ON BIG WEBSITE! Join Simon Burnton from 8pm BST for hot Premier League MBM coverage of Chelsea 1-2 Brighton. QUOTE OF THE DAY “I’m appalled and embarrassed. When you talk about Liverpool Football Club and its history and its roots, you could reference seven, eight or nine of grandad’s quotes which are all appropriate to the current situation – socialism, greed and the Holy Trinity – but I also think about one of the less well known comments. It’s from his book, when he spoke about wanting to bring the football club closer to the fans and the fans closer to the football club. And he achieved that. It’s not an understatement to say he would be spinning in his grave at the current situation because it couldn’t be further removed from his ethos. Given the chance I’d happily see the statue removed” – Bill Shankly’s grandson, Chris Carline, has his say. The bronze statue of Bill Shankly stands outside of The Kop at Anfield. Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian RECOMMENDED LISTENING Football Weekly? Football Weekly! RECOMMENDED LOOKING David Squires on … well, you can probably guess. Good luck to all! Illustration: David Squires/The Guardian FIVER LETTERS “Re: yesterday’s Fiver. I know that we expect a bare minimum of effort in our daily tea-time missive but missing out on the opportunity to go full-on ‘€uropean $uper £eague’ is a new low” – Chris Beck (and 1,056 other$). “As news broke about the €uropean $uper £eague, I was stunned by the blatant plagiarism of the Danish Superliga. I suppose the anthem for the new league will be this banger from Danish band Nephew. Does it also mean that the Danish champions will be invited to join as honorary guests?” – Lars Esbjerg. “The sporting world saw fit to mark the Duke of Edinburgh’s passing by observing a minute’s silence before events and avoiding clashes with the funeral. Those luminaries over at the €$£ have gone one better though, establishing an altogether superior class of footballing family who will consort exclusively with each other and receive loads of undeserved cash every year, leaving the plebs to seethe with resentment while nevertheless maintaining a morbid fascination with the whole charade. You have to say, as a royal tribute it’s next level” – Matt Fox. Send your letters to [email protected]. And you can always tweet The Fiver via @guardian_sport. Today’s winner of our prizeless letter o’the day is … Matt Fox. NEWS, BITS AND BOBS Chelsea and Manchester City, in a strange mood shift from their gleeful sharing of that joint statement at bedtime on Sunday, are understood to actually be wavering a bit. Boris Johnson’s back on the sport pages, threatening to use a “legislative bomb” to stop all this madness. Of course he is. Bayern Munich aren’t having any of this €$£ nonsense. “Our members and fans reject the $uper £eague,” sniffed club president Herbert Hainer. “It is our wish as Bayern and our aim that European clubs live this wonderfully emotional competition – [Big Cup] and develop it together with Uefa.” ICYMI, some lads actually kicked a ball around for a bit, with Leeds stopping Liverpool getting into the top four, a hark back to a bygone era when that was a thing. And to replace Portuguese man-shaped cloud José Mourinho, Spurs now want someone who likes the ball in the other team’s half. Sounds like his predecessor. STILL WANT MORE? Supporters of the rich six can now see the price we’ve paid for success, can-kicks Manchester City fan Simon Hattenstone. This outbreak of ruthless self-seeking greed is a sad self-inflicted crisis after the cooperation during the pandemic, sighs Proper Journalist David Conn. Given the names attached to the forthcoming closed shop, the most successful women’s teams may end up excluded from any parallel competition, warns Suzanne Wrack. Shameful! Theft! Greed! Taller Masts To Get Countryside Connected! … what the papers say about current affair(s). “Betrayed”, “Cold and cynical”, “I think it’s a great idea” … mixed pullquote potential for Super League Inc to consider for their posters in this roundup of reaction from Big Website readers. Oh, and if it’s your thing … you can follow Big Website on Big Social FaceSpace. And INSTACHAT, TOO! OH, DO READ BARNEY TOO

Abramovich should be ashamed Tuesday April 20 2021 Matt Law's Chelsea briefing Owner previously beat football's cartel — he cannot now block same chance for others By Matt Law, Football News Correspondent There is a reason Roman Abramovich was not welcomed with open arms by the owners of Chelsea’s Premier League rivals back in 2003 and it had nothing to do with any strong views on Russian politics. David Dein, then vice-chairman of Arsenal, was in Monaco for the Champions League draw when he famously said: “Roman Abramovich has parked his Russian tank in our front garden and is firing £50 notes at us.” Just like the motivation behind the formation of the European Super League, the reason the established two-club Premier League elite at the time did not like Abramovich and what he stood for was purely selfish and borne out of the fear of competition. And, as it turned out, rightly so, as Chelsea have been the most successful team in English football since Abramovich dared to take on the Premier League cartel of Manchester United and Arsenal. Up until Abramovich’s arrival, only Blackburn Rovers in 1994-95 had managed to stop either United or Arsenal winning the Premier League title every season since its inception in 1992. The Premier League had pretty much been a closed shop until Abramovich came in and blew the doors open to those who could afford to and dared to challenge. It could certainly be argued that Abu Dhabi would not have bothered pumping their vast sums of money into Manchester City five years later if Abramovich had not demonstrated that United and Arsenal could be beaten. Which is why it is so disappointing that Abramovich has jumped into bed with Tottenham chairman Daniel Levy and Arsenal owner Stan Kroenke, and allowed Chelsea to board the European Super League train. Levy, remember, is the man who, along with others, lobbied support from Premier League clubs to make sure Newcastle United’s proposed Saudi Arabia-backed takeover did not go ahead. Piracy and human rights issues were quoted as the reasons for the failed bid, but one can speculate that Levy did not fancy the extra competition a rejuvenated Newcastle could have posed - just as Dein and Co did not want Abramovich invading their cartel. Arsenal put all their eggs in the Financial Fair Play basket, hoping it would help to kill off the competition created by Abramovich and followed up by Manchester City and, in Europe, Paris Saint-Germain. Again, Chelsea’s millions were not welcomed by the elite, who wanted to close the gates, but by then it was too late. Tottenham are a club that have not won a trophy for 13 years or a League title since 1961 and Arsenal’s expectations have fallen off a cliff so dramatically that Mikel Arteta’s future has not come under scrutiny in a season in which they could finish in the bottom half of the table. Under Abramovich, Chelsea are a club that do not hand out bonuses for Champions League qualification or finishing second as employees of the Russian billionaire only get rewarded for winning. Club legend Frank Lampard lost his job, despite finishing fourth and reaching the FA Cup final last season and qualifying for the last-16 of the Champions League this term. Abramovich does not recognise ‘success’ in the same way Levy and Kroenke do. And yet everybody, including Tottenham and Arsenal, would be rewarded for mediocrity in a European Super League in which nobody can be relegated. Similarly, those teams would also earn far more than any of the Premier League clubs left behind, no matter how badly they might perform. By agreeing to go along with the European Super League plan, Abramovich has joined forces with those who tried so hard to stop him and is now part of a group denying others the same opportunity he grasped with both hands. That is why, even though Chelsea were not among the drivers of the Super League, Abramovich should be embarrassed and ashamed to call the likes of Levy and Kroenke allies, and why Chelsea fans, for possibly the first time of his reign, should be disappointed with the man who has already fought and beaten football’s cartel. There is still time for Abramovich and Chelsea to remember where they came from and do the right thing. Got a question on Chelsea? Get in touch on Twitter @Matt_Law_DT or by emailing [email protected]

Just wow

Fuck that assclown.

Slabhead stepping up. He should lower the slab on Glazer's orbital socket.

Build a man a fire and he stays warm for the night. Set a man on fire and he stays warm the rest of his life.

Been saying it for years, the Agnelli family are mafia

I want to finish in top 4, hopefully 3rd, and, unless we are kicked out along with Citeh and Real Madrid, win the damn CL. Win the FA Cup too. I want to win win win.

Why The European Super League Is Evil https://defector.com/why-the-european-super-league-is-evil/ After years of rumors about the biggest soccer clubs in Europe conspiring to put together a Frankenstein’s monster of sorts, this weekend the thing finally walked out of its castle and showed its face. On Sunday, it was announced that 12 of the game’s most well-known clubs would be creating something called the Super League. On its face, the Super League intends to be a new competitor to the Champions League, though its effects are sure to reach much further, shaking the very foundations of soccer, threatening to fundamentally reshape the game as we know it, and calling into question core principles at the heart of sports in general. In case you aren’t the biggest soccer head, or if you are but are still having trouble wrapping your mind around what the Super League is and what it might mean, I am here to help guide you through it with this handy explainer. What is the Super League? As laid out on its website, the Super League is a proposed new continental tournament. It intends to pit 20 of the biggest clubs from across Europe against each other in a season-long tournament that will start with a group stage and then advance into a home-and-home knockout bracket to crown a winner. Wait, doesn’t the Champions League already do that? Yes, the Super League is in many respects almost identical to the existing Champions League, and in fact even more closely resembles what the new Champions League will look like once the changes to that competition that were ratified today go into effect. If we already have the Champions League, then what’s the point of the Super League? That is a more complicated question than it might first appear. The critical difference between the Champions League and the Super League is in how teams gain entrance into them. In the Champions League, contesting clubs qualify for the tournament primarily via finishing in the top spots of their domestic league the season prior. That’s where the “champions” in Champions League comes from: It is a tournament comprised of the champions and near-champions of Europe’s individual leagues, itself having evolved from the European Champions Cup, which only included the literal champion of the continent’s domestic leagues. This format follows the logic of the foundational principle of the soccer pyramids the world over, which is the idea of promotion and relegation. The best teams earn the right to compete with the best teams by beating their competitors, thereby either gaining promotion to the next higher league or maintaining their position in the highest tier, while the worst-performing teams are sent to the next league down to make way for the newly promoted ones. Almost everything in soccer is built around this principle that competition alone determines any given club’s place in the pyramid. The Champions League adheres to this logic by conditioning inclusion in the field with some tangible form of on-the-pitch success; every team in the field must earn its place. This is what makes the tournament so prestigious, so popular, and so lucrative, and it is why the winner can rightfully call itself the best team in Europe. The Super League’s “qualification” process is much different. “Qualification” for the 20-team Super League won’t be based on on-the-pitch success, won’t be earned every season with blood, sweat, and goals; instead, it will be guaranteed to the 15 signatory clubs that will found it, with five other teams selected by some as-of-yet-unexplained qualification mechanism. The vast majority—though, importantly, not all—of the 12 clubs that have already signed onto the Super League are the same clubs that are always in the Champions League, but their path of getting there in the Super League will be completely different. Of the 12 teams that have already agreed to be in the Super League, six are from England (Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United, Tottenham), three are from Spain (Atlético Madrid, Barcelona, Real Madrid), and three are from Italy (AC Milan, Inter, Juventus). So if the Super League is made up of all the usual suspects in the Champions League, how is it all that different from the Champions League again? What’s actually going on here? The actual issue at hand, the thing that has inspired the creation of the Super League, boils down to only two things: money and power. Europe’s biggest clubs don’t feel like they currently get enough of either, and so they’re trying to build the Super League to get more of both. In the current system, qualifying for the Champions League is enormously important financially. There is an incredible amount of money in competing in the tournament, primarily in the form of broadcasting rights revenue that is split between the clubs that make it, plus the in-stadium income teams make from selling tickets to what are the very biggest games of the season. Clubs need that money to pay their best players their astronomical salaries, and to pay mountainous transfer fees to acquire more great players, which then ensures continued access to the Champions League’s riches to keep the good times rolling. In the other direction, failure to qualify for the tournament makes paying big salaries and transfer fees much more difficult, and it often makes Champions League-caliber players want to leave your club for one that can offer the big stage and salaries. All of this makes the Champions League a massive reward, but also a massive risk. And it’s that risk that the big clubs behind the Super League want to eliminate. Those clubs don’t like the fact that qualification for the Champions League is so difficult and competitive, and they find it unfair that they, whose star players and globe-spanning fan bases and historical pedigrees lend the Champions League much of its allure and prestige and popularity, have to risk their asses every season to qualify against some nothing club like West Ham United. Why should West Ham, which is currently on track to qualify for next season’s Champions League, get to swoop in and suck up the tens of millions of dollars on offer there? Especially when a club like Liverpool, which historically has played a much bigger role in making the Champions League what it is, and would bring the tournament way more eyeballs and interest and money than West Ham, might miss out, and could potentially lose a star player or two because of it. Wouldn’t it be better, the big clubs’ argument goes, if we had a tournament that gave most of the money to the clubs that actually created it? Romanticism aside, isn’t there more fan interest in Liverpool vs. AC Milan than West Ham vs. Atalanta, and shouldn’t the sport be structured in a way that guarantees those fans the things they really want? Doesn’t that argument hold water though? For instance, I know plenty of people who might tune into a big Liverpool-Milan game but who would never in a million years actually watch West Ham-Atalanta, though they’d like the idea of it. I can totally see why fans’ true interests really would be served better by a steady stream of colossal clubs facing off every week than by leaving things to chance and letting a West Ham team that no one really likes or even thinks is that good take a Liverpool’s place. Something about this smacks of small-market teams in American pro sports complaining that the New York and L.A. teams get all the money and free agents and coverage. Doesn’t soccer of all sports uphold the idea that dynasties at big-city teams are in fact good? There is truth to all of that, but it’s not quite addressing what’s really going on. For one, though all of this is definitely inspired by the American sports model, with its closed leagues and lack of promotion and relegation, there are significant differences that make this a much more concerning development. This isn’t like the small-market vs. big-market parity debate, where less popular franchises in smaller cities complain about not being able to compete with the perennially popular big-city teams that tend to attract better players in free agency. That argument is mostly about whether it’s fair that bigger, more popular teams should be allowed to get so much better than smaller, less popular ones. The Super League argument is close to the opposite; it’s about whether the big clubs should be allowed to lose to the small clubs when the small clubs have gotten good. To stay in the American sports context, the Super League is almost like if the Knicks, the Lakers, the Celtics, the 76ers, the Bulls, and the Clippers found it intolerable that they were not guaranteed deep runs in the playoffs every season because other, less historically important teams have done better on the court, and so they were breaking away from the NBA playoffs to form a new postseason, called the Super Finals. The six Super Finals teams promise to still compete in the NBA regular season, but come playoff time, they would be taking themselves, their players, and their fans to the Super Finals, which they claim is now the true determiner of the world’s best basketball team. Also, they are no longer beholden to the NBA’s salary cap, and have first right of refusal to sign the new class of rookies ahead of the NBA Draft. Good luck to the NBA though! Hm, when you put it like that, that does sound bad. Why should any team, no matter how popular, get to change the rules to guarantee themselves success? Exactly! Under the current system, a club like Manchester United can sign all the superstars it wants, so long as it can pay the bill (and United can afford anything), and if it builds a team that wins, nothing is stopping it from winning every Premier League and Champions League and FA Cup trophy from now to eternity. But if instead of putting together a good team, the Red Devils waste their money on an in-over-his-head manager and can’t convince great players to join them and spend years as the game’s laughing stock, having every advantage imaginable and yet still not being good enough to qualify for the Champions League, then the only one who should have to pay for that is Manchester United, not West Ham! Again, it is a bedrock principle of this sport that the success or failure must be earned on the pitch rather than being handed out by birthright. Soccer as a social institution matters precisely because it treats the rich and the poor, the good and the bad, as total equals before the eyes of the game’s laws. Even the smallest and poorest can beat the biggest and richest if the smallest can prove their superiority on the grass, and if done with enough regularity, clubs that used to be small and poor can overthrow the game’s old nobility and claim the titles for its own. The omnipresence of Europe’s biggest clubs atop domestic league tables and in its continental competitions testify to the enduring, mutually reinforcing nature of greatness and dominance and, yes, wealth, but what really legitimates the system’s purity and moral value is when Porto wins the Champions League in 2004 and Leicester City wins the Premier League in 2016 and when West Ham challenges for a Champions League spot in 2021. And it’s those life-affirming feats of perseverance class mobility that are the exact sort of things the Super League is trying to make impossible. Is there any way to stop this? We shall soon see! One encouraging thing about the Super League is that almost everybody in the soccer world appears to find the idea detestable and viscerally revolting. Probably the best explication of this sentiment came from former Manchester United great turned very good TV pundit, Gary Neville: Fans of several clubs that plan to partake in the Super League have registered their disgust. Even current players have expressed distaste for the plot. Most importantly, though, the domestic leagues and UEFA, the governing body of European soccer and the ones who run the Champions League, have declared war. UEFA’s president, Aleksander Ceferin, called the 12 Super League clubs “snakes” whose planned new league is “disgraceful and self-serving.” He also reiterated that, should the 12 clubs go through with their Super League plan, they will be banned from their domestic leagues, and their players will be banned from competing in international competitions like the World Cup. Spain’s La Liga, England’s Premier League, and Italy’s Serie A have also backed up those words in a statement threatening to oust those clubs from their leagues. Rumors abound that UEFA and the leagues could sanction the Super League clubs as soon as this season. Do the good guys have a shot at winning? First of all, I’d be careful about characterizing the anti-Super League actors as good guys. As is almost always the case in power struggles between elite entities, it’s always best to remember that their own money and power are all anyone is really after. After all, almost all the involved parties on the “good side” have sought changes to the game that would make it easier for the big and rich clubs to further consolidate their own power. The Premier League itself exists because the clubs of England’s old First Division didn’t think they were making enough money, so they broke off and invented a new first division. La Liga has tried its damnedest to rob clubs and fans of a home match by playing a league game in the U.S. instead, solely because it would prove a financial windfall. And Ceferin’s rage is probably borne primarily in his own failure to appease those Super League clubs by the new and big-club-friendly changes to the Champions League that are set to be passed today. (That also goes for the three clubs—Bayern Munich, Borussia Dortmund, and Paris Saint-Germain—that were offered a chance to join the Super League but have at this point declined. I’d caution you not to attribute noble intentions to a club like PSG, which more than any other club in the world is expressly not in it for the money but rather the sportswashing, geo-politically legitimizing benefits the Qatari royal family that owns the club can accrue by proxy to sporting greatness.) Now, institutions don’t need to be morally righteous themselves in order to effect positive changes, or to protect interests that better serve the common good. But it’s good to go into this knowing where the parties are really coming from, if only so that you won’t be surprised when UEFA’s threats turn out to be bluster and they wind up signing off on the Super League as long as it cuts them in on the deal. The fact that all the powers that be seem to agree that what soccer most needs is more money, more power for the biggest and most famous clubs, more conglomeration of capital and power amongst the few, more decisions made with an eye toward the casual fan who watches on TV instead of the diehard local, is why it’s hard to really believe something like the Super League won’t happen sooner or later. The forces that led the sport here aren’t new, and they aren’t even limited to soccer or sports in general. Every industry in the world is presently tending toward monopoly, capital conglomeration, deregulation. In that sense, the European Super League is a lot like Amazon, or Netflix, or Disney, or Uber, or Facebook, or the superhero-centric movie industry, or Spotify, and so on. All are forces that make the world a little bit worse for the sake of being a little bit more convenient, until you wake up and the world is much worse and less varied and interesting, and the new status quo has become so normalized that you’ve forgotten the words that could articulate what it is the world has lost. This explainer can only scratch the surface on the nearly infinite knock-on effects of the Super League. Does anyone really think the Super League idea, if it proves “successful,” would be limited to Europe, or to soccer? How long until the biggest national teams—as was rumored to happen in 2018 back when the U.S., the Netherlands, and Italy, among other prominent nations, failed to qualify—break away to form their own, private World Cup? What will it mean for the unique, culturally specific playing styles that differ from city to city, from country to country, if all of the world’s money and interest is siphoned off by the 15 biggest clubs in the world? What will it mean for interest in the sport if it’s all a TV show, completely divorced from its local context? Isn’t a game like Barcelona vs. Juventus exciting because it is rare, and wouldn’t regular matchups between the same teams every year get boring? Wouldn’t the MLSification of elite European soccer lead to, well, the MLSification of it, where no one is all that pressed to get good since there is no threat of relegation and the checks will keep coming regardless? I could go on and on, but there is one question I keep returning to that is at the heart of the Super League question and what it means now and going forward: What are sports for? If sports are simply economic concerns divorced of anything other than that which the market rewards, vehicles for the enrichment of the entities that own them and the employees who work there, then the Super League probably is a good development and will happen either in this form or something else. But if sports are to serve some deeper purpose, something human that deals with interactions and identifications of real people and places and principles, then there’s no other way to see the Super League other than as a direct attack on the possibility that something, even something as silly as a game, can and should mean or serve something greater than its own bottom line.

GLOBAL How America Ruined Soccer Plans to form a breakaway tournament highlight a political moment. https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2021/04/european-super-league-football/618636/ When I was a teenager, my hometown football—soccer—team was bought by a local businessman who began his career as a safecracker, became friends with Donald Trump, and ended his days broke and in jail. George Reynolds, who died last week, lived an Englishman’s version of the American dream: He got rich, bought a local institution, then went bankrupt. For a moment, his ownership sparked a kind of giddy hope among the club’s supporters, who were sold promises of the big time. Reynolds, who made his money selling chipboard kitchen worktops, had bought the club, Darlington F.C., on a whim and pledged to take it from a lower English-football division all the way to the top, to compete in the Premier League and the holy grail of European football: the Champions League. To do this, he sold the club’s tiny grounds in the town’s center and built a 30,000-seat stadium on its outskirts, which he named the Reynolds Arena. He would attend games in a knee-length fur coat, rising from his seat to wave to the fans chanting his name. The dream quickly collapsed. Although a few thousand fans continued to loyally traipse out to the new stadium to support Darlington, they were surrounded by row after row of empty seats. The club was old, and had generations of loyal supporters, but the town was small. Soon enough, both the club and Reynolds folded under the absurdity of it all: The team literally went out of business and had to be started again from scratch. It now plays on grounds it shares with a local rugby club, while its old arena sits empty—a monument to hubris. After the club went bankrupt and was sold off in 2003, Reynolds was stopped by the police with £500,000 in cash in his car and jailed for money laundering and tax evasion. RECOMMENDED READING America’s Wildly Successful Socialist Experiment TOM MCTAGUE Why Americans Call Soccer 'Soccer' URI FRIEDMAN Photos: Soccer Fields Around the World ALAN TAYLOR The whole sorry story is a testament to the problems of modern European football, but also to what makes it unique. The saga also helps explain the almost immediate furious reaction to yesterday’s declaration by 12 of the continent’s richest clubs that they will form a breakaway European Super League modeled on the American National Football League, one in which teams do not rise and fall between leagues, regardless of their fortunes on the field. Read: What is the most significant sports victory of all time? Reynolds’s vision was predicated on the nature of European football—which is rooted in geography, and history, and hierarchy. The fundamental truth of European football is that any club from any country can, in theory, keep winning its matches and end up in the top leagues, playing against the biggest teams in the world. For this to be possible, however, the opposite must also be the case: If the biggest teams lose enough games, they can fall down the pyramid of leagues and end up playing the likes of Darlington in front of a few thousand fans. The new European Super League is an attempt to break free of this structure entirely. In this new competition, at least 12 clubs—including Manchester United, Real Madrid, and Barcelona—will form a new league that they cannot be kicked out of, no matter how badly they perform. They will play one another and share a new and large pool of revenues, separate from the national leagues of the countries where they were born and raised. The proposal is the most seismic challenge to the European football model since its inception. It rips away the foundations of the whole edifice in an attempt to create a new superstructure. Within hours of its announcement, the plan was condemned by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and French President Emmanuel Macron. National governing bodies that run the game in individual countries across Europe threatened to suspend clubs that joined from their domestic competitions, and to bar players for those clubs from representing their country. It is a remarkable moment of European unity, intended and unintended. Yet in many ways, the very idea of a breakaway super league also points to the disconnect that helps explain Brexit and other so-called populist movements in Europe: the sense of powerlessness and rupture. Read: American meritocracy is killing youth sports The attempted breakaway is being led in large part by the English, whose teams are the richest in the world. But while six of the participating clubs are from England, only one of them is owned by an English person. Three are owned by Americans (Liverpool, Arsenal, and Manchester United); one by a Russian oligarch who no longer lives in London (Chelsea); and one by a Middle Eastern statelet, Abu Dhabi (Manchester City). If anything, this English-led revolution is a consequence of the English Premier League’s extraordinarily successful globalization. The owners of England’s grand old clubs do not want to risk their assets being relegated from the pinnacle of European competition should they perform badly. To avoid this, they are ripping the clubs from their homes. And what can ordinary fans do about it? Nothing. This moment seems to represent an age. In the same way that fans have no real power over their clubs, what real power do today’s workers have over the multinational corporations they work for? A Japanese company can have more influence over the lives of its workers in North East England than does the government those workers elected. The English Premier League is the richest, most successful soccer league in the world, in large part because it is the most open to the world’s money and markets. It may now die as a result—taking part of the soul of European soccer with it. TOM MCTAGUE is a London-based staff writer at The Atlantic, and co-author of Betting the House: The Inside Story of the 2017 Election.

Manchester City and Chelsea were ultimately 'backed into a corner' on Friday regarding the European Super League plans, according to emerging details on Sunday night. The two aforementioned clubs were among six Premier League sides to officially announce their involvement in a new Super League - funded by US-banking giant JP Morgan, and managed by top officials at the likes of Real Madrid and Juventus in chairman and vice-chair positions. According to the information of Mike Keegan of the Mail, Premier League duo Chelsea and Manchester City have been described as being 'backed into a corner' on Friday, over the plans surrounding the formation of a European Super League.

Chelsea and Man City "basically given the option" as additional details over European Super League progression comes to light Chelsea and Manchester City were informed that the new European Super League was going ahead last week, according to the latest information to emerge on the matter on Monday evening. https://www.si.com/soccer/manchestercity/news/Chelsea-and-man-city-basically-given-the-option-as-additional-details-over-european-super-league-progression-comes-to-light Chelsea and Manchester City were informed that the new European Super League was going ahead last week, according to the latest information to emerge on the matter on Monday evening. As the hours roll by, more and more information appears to be shared on the developing situation surrounding what is a landmark moment in football history, as the game is divided into those in favour of what is dubbed the ESL and those who oppose the plans. Additional information from Matt Law of the Telegraph on Monday night has revealed that Chelsea and Manchester City, who some believe were the last to throw their names into the six clubs from the English top-flight joining the European Super League, were informed that the competition was going ahead last week. READ MORE: Confirmation of a European Super League READ MORE: Man City release statement on Kevin de Bruyne injury Law continues by highlighting that both Manchester City and Chelsea were "basically given the option" of getting on board with the European Super League plans, or risk being left behind entirely. It is reaffirmed, as previously expected by some, that neither club were the drivers of the plan, and that is understood in some corners to fall heavily on the likes of Liverpool and Manchester United. READ MORE: Man City fans protest against Super League outside stadium READ MORE: Man City expect Liverpool transfer hit this summer From the side of Manchester City, there has still been no comment from any senior member of the club's hierarchy, the management, or any of the players. The logical assumption to defend the latter two would be that they are under strict legal obligations given their status as employees of the football club. However, in other corners of football, Monday saw several high-profile names speaking openly about the threat of a European Super League, including former Manchester United and now PSG midfielder, Ander Herrera, as well as former Arsenal star Mesut Ozil.

Florentino Perez insists Super League agreement is "binding" after two years of secret planning Real Madrid chief Florentino Perez, the president of the new European Super League, has revealed clubs have been in secret talks for over two years and insisted no-one will back out from the "binding" agreement https://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/super-league-agreement-binding-perez-23944250