The European Leagues & Competitions Thread V2

[NikkiCFC 7,942]

UEFA is most pathetic and crybaby organization ever. Threatening players wont play EURO? Haha they are doing most damage to themself. I do not like this Super League idea completely but I understand clubs.

If any of us have business worth 1m and we have a chance to make 5 times more, will we do it? Yes. So UEFA instead of crying should double their budget and make it 6 billion per season. If they did that clubs would not do this. Sadly, it is all about money...

[Vesper 28,768]

we are going to lose a shit tonne of players

UEFA and FIFA are rapidly moving to ban all our players, and women too

 

No

FIFA World Cup
Men's Olympic Football Tournament (U-23)
FIFA U-20 World Cup
FIFA U-17 World Cup
Boys' Youth Olympic Football Tournament (U-15)

FIFA Women's World Cup
Women's Olympic Football Tournament
FIFA U-20 Women's World Cup
FIFA U-17 Women's World Cup
Girls' Youth Olympic Football Tournament (U-15)
 

FIFA Club World Cup
FIFA Youth Cup

FIFA Women's Club World Cup 

 

no 

UEFA European Championship
UEFA Nations League
UEFA European Under-21 Championship
UEFA European Under-19 Championship
UEFA European Under-17 Championship
UEFA Women's Championship
UEFA Women's Under-19 Championship
UEFA Women's Under-17 Championship

UEFA Champions League
UEFA Europa League
UEFA Europa Conference League
UEFA Super Cup
UEFA Youth League
UEFA Women's Champions League
 

 

[whats happening 1,525]

calm down, they will (can not) ban the players.

[Vesper 28,768]

this is all madness

we are committing club suicide right in front of the world

[Vesper 28,768]

1 minute ago, whats happening said:

calm down, they will (can not) ban the players.

of course they can

[Vesper 28,768]

'European Super League a hostile takeover from capitalist robber barons'

The European Super League plans of Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United and Tottenham have left their fans embarrassed and ashamed

https://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/european-super-league-hostile-takeover-23944037

[Vesper 28,768]

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

[0007 511]

Papa Perez talking about making matches shorter in order to attract more young people...what a shitshow...this is Trump-esque kind of  speech. 

 

 

[Vesper 28,768]

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.

[Vesper 28,768]

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.

[Randomshit 10]

Awww. Poor multi billion companies of city and Chelsea with endless pockets of their owners were "backed into a corner". Bullshit. 

If this is true, then the club and the board are a joke and even more worthless than I imagined. Who could not even do their basic research and just went ahead blindly trusting snakes and egotistical assholes like Perez and Woodward. Idiots.

[OneMoSalah 8,776]

10 minutes ago, Vesper said:

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

Well if it is legally binding, getting out of it as we and City are meant to be reportedly considering, although now who knows if anyone is actually considering that, will probably be an absolute fucking disaster as well. Is it not meant to be a 23 year commitment apparently? Any club trying to get out of that will end up bankrupt if it is binding as Perez says. Or end up not being able to get out. Which will lead to the sanctions FIFA, UEFA, the FA have said they will seek.

5 minutes ago, Vesper said:

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.

This being backed into a corner doesn’t mean anything though or should it save us and City from any criticism, end of the day it was still the club’s decision to sign up for it.

I mean we could have said no like Bayern, PSG, Dortmund and Porto did. Theres been huge mentions of we had doubts, City had doubts. If you have doubts, don’t jump head first into something like this, a league that could end up fracturing football all over the world., even for all the money on offer.. its not exactly difficult. 

Edited April 19, 2021 by OneMoSalah

[Vesper 28,768]

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.

[NikkiCFC 7,942]

3 minutes ago, OneMoSalah said:

This being backed into a corner doesn’t mean anything though or should it save us and City from any criticism, end of the day it was still the club’s decision to sign up for it.

I mean we could have said no like Bayern, PSG, Dortmund and Porto did. Theres been huge mentions of we had doubts, City had doubts. If you have doubts, don’t jump head first into something like this, a league that could end up fracturing football all over the world., even for all the money on offer.. its not exactly difficult. 

But it is difficult. Imagine this situation. Our club receive info that 11 of biggest European clubs are signing for new Super League. And others will also join. I think they started panic, what if we do not join and stay with UEFA and lets be honest, without these clubs CL is less worth than Europa League. So it is not hard to imagine why they chose something that is much more perspective. If this go through what will happen with Bayern and PSG? They will play that competition under UEFA but who will watch that? Champion of Super League will be European champion not team that faced Sevilla, Dortmund...

[NikkiCFC 7,942]

And why are people so sure players are against it? They also do not have all infos yet but Super League can make players make 3 or 4 times more money because clubs will as well. There are many players who will like that.

[Vesper 28,768]

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.

[NikkiCFC 7,942]

 

[NikkiCFC 7,942]

PSG will join soon.

And this is funny...