European Super League back on the agenda

Here's the full article at the BBC:

European Super League's new organiser open to English club talks

Restrict the clubs' ability to negotiate a new league charter amongst themselves. Reduce their influence in various committees within the Premier League administration, something tangible which reduces their influence inside the league which made it possible for them to defect.

Probably a Quixote thing there but all this talk out in the open after the last fiasco proves it is a congenital condition for that lot.

Gerry, I think we should join.

We would never finish lower than 12th, and there's no relegation.

Agree with you, Mike, we wouldn't have to worry about being shite for most matches in a season!!!!!

We would have joined the first incarnation if invited.

I don't have any doubt of our capacity to pull the ladder up on the rest of footy if it suits. The words "evolution" and "regeneration" will be displayed as brashly as "Fred Karno" in a similar sphere.

Can't wait for this to happen.

I think we are really down to two options:

1. Let them go. The inequities of the FFP rules have allowed clubs who spent vast amounts before FFP, unchecked in some cases, means that their success was bought without sustainability rules in place. They became big money clubs because of the access to what seemed unchecked money in the first place.

With the new rules in place, the status quo is enshrined with those with the most money. They can spend more, get the best, win more... the cycle continues unabated. The ability to challenge or break into the so-called elite teams gets harder every season, as players value outstrip clubs ability to pay. The best go where they can get the most.

FFP therefore limits the ability of any team to break the cycle on a long-term basis. Everton being an excellent example (even if we had spent well, we would have failed to generate enough funds and profit to compete).

Newcastle will find out that to compete with the best means the club has to earn enough to justify its spend. Who outside of the so-called big clubs can do this? It is anti-competitive.

There needs to be a spending cap and a debt level all clubs are limited to. Its not going to happen because of vested interest… turkeys voting for Christmas.

2. Abolish FFP. At the very least, set in place checks and balances that limit transfer monies and wages paid. At least the game on the pitch may then have some resemblance to a competitive competition based on fair play and ability.

Is it anti-competitive? It is if you listen to Liverpudlians, now that their team has had a slow start, Christine!

I've always been interested in current affairs, but I've tried taking a sabbatical from my iPad over the last week, and it's definitely been good for me. It's the same with the football; I haven't watched anything on the television, since we folded at Newcastle. The saturation levels are bad, but it's the biased, agenda-based, contradictory media, that I've definitely had enough of.

But football has never been more popular, so maybe I'm getting old and miserable, and I'm just looking for things that support my outlandish thoughts.

Tony, the problem is, if FFP rules had been in at the start of the Premier League, then we would have a much fairer base to compete on now.

Unchecked for so many years, money not earned was spent with relative impunity until squads of expensive world class talent came together to win titles and generate "profit". The imbalance became so great that, by the time FFP came in, they had amassed talented squads and high income to make it irrelevant in comparison with the rest. The drawbridge was pulled up, making competition in reality grossly unfair.

The same argument is evident with the 5 subs rule. Of course it will favour the bigger clubs with more talented players, making the bias clear and ensuring a level playing field is not achieved. FFP may be theoretically achievable but practically impossible for 85% of clubs.

Hopefully Barcelona and Juventus will not qualify for the next round of the “champions league” and go into financial meltdown.

The owners of Qatar will get bored and dump PSG. The rs will get relegated and go into administration. Florentino Perez will be arrested for embezzlement and tax fraud. The Glazers go down with Trump and share a cell. The other traitors might see the error of their ways and back down.

Only then might football have a chance to recover its soul and be the sport it was meant to be.

Sadly I think its only a matter of time before the ESL is resurrected. As is stated in the post, Real Madrid, Barcelona and Juventus have always wanted this new format.

The fact that there was a backlash from mainly the English fans made the English clubs think again, but the clubs who want an ESL will come back with a new set of proposals that may well get over the non-relegation issue.

I think the problem then for the Premier League and the other leagues around Europe is what do they do about it? Because if relegation is part of the new ESL are these clubs going to be allowed to re-join at Premier League level if they get relegated from the ESL?

Will fans of teams in the ESL be happy travelling across Europe every fortnight? Also, what happens to the Champions League and the Europa League?

Obviously the players playing in the ESL will demand higher wages, and no doubt with Sky and Netflix and others bidding to show the games, there will be more money about.

But surely clubs must realize that the reason many are in financial trouble is, although they are getting more money every year, they are just using it to pay players and agents more money, which is making the clubs poorer.

And with the extra money from the ESL, if they increase players' wages, it's just going to have the same effect.

I have issues with this and got very vocal about it in the summer.

The notion of relegation and promotion is an appeasement measure to make it look like they are trying to be fair and listen. Like the good politicians the footballing authorities are.

As an example and theoretically, the chances are that the English teams wouldn't finish in the relegation places. So I assume there wouldn't be a promotion place for an English team winning the Premier League? It would go to a team from the leagues those teams relegated come from?

Like I say, conceptual appeasement to push their plan through.

Like financial fair play. Sounds good on paper but use of the word fair is a con tactic.

This is the successor to the Champion's League. That was another concept born out of protecting the elite in case they didn't win their respective league and would be denied participation. Make sure they're in it every year; reward failure and near misses.

We won ours and were still denied. When it was still a Champions competition.

I'll shut up before I get into trouble.

Probably means they intend increasing the number of clubs in the ESL possibly to twenty with at least more than one from each country.

Possibly three from the four major leagues, two from the three next biggest and one from each of the remaining two. The one in the lowest league position being replaced by the Champions of their home league, thus relatively reducing "home" leagues to second divisions and thereby dangling the carrot to all clubs. You might feel hard done by though if you finished sixth and got relegated while the ninth club didn't.

It is how the clubs not initially invited react to the possibility of losing TV revenue unless they intend subsidies from part of the money from ESL TV coverage, which means an awful lot of money from somewhere.

I think everyone is on the same page and can see right through these plans... £££

Christine 7, has nailed it for me, I was getting a headache just thinking about it.

The Prem. is even less of a fair comp.since the FFP rules were brought in and if the aforementioned 6 clubs depart, we would be playing in what would effectively be an English 2nd division.

I suppose they could still call what was left the Prem. but it would hardly be worth the same merit would it.

God know how things would be worked out but they would be dustbinning football tradition that has existed since 1863.

This is going to happen.

Maybe in a year, maybe two, maybe five. Maybe with relegation, maybe not.

But whatever the structure of it turns out to be, sooner or later the lure of the big rights money will simply be too strong.

I'm almost at the point where I say "Good riddance".

The rules of the Premier League mean 14 clubs can make a decision against 6. They should flex that power. Change the Premier League rules to state that any participation in the ESL will lead to expulsion from the Premier League. No way back.

Backfill with the top teams from the Championship, if the stadiums meet Premier League standards... backfill down the leagues. Rob & Ryan get their Wrexham promoted to the Football League. Hollywood is happy.

UEFA reforms the Champions League to make it merit-based. No more of these coefficients. If you qualify then everyone goes into the hat.

The best players may initially follow the money but they would eventually come back to the domestic leagues, because the domestic leagues are anchored in the fabric of life in all these countries.

All it takes is a spine...

The wild card is Newcastle... would their new owners try to wriggle into an ESL? Would an ESL allow such a financial powerhouse in the door? Or would the Geordies see a reformed Premier League as their best chance of a league title?!

Of course Juventus and Barcelona want the ESL, they can see their financial clout diminishing each and every season due to the billions Sky is pumping into the Premier League.

They want a league that gives them the Sky money, ensures no relegation and no UEFA chucking FFP rules down their throats...

Oh, but both clubs, and the control freak that's running Real Madrid, say it will be good for European football and help all European Clubs. Will it fuck. Be honest at least.

Everton FC had been formed and won their first league title before Barcelona or Juventus had even started playing football.

Steve 17.

If you ask me, the deluded Geordies would want to remain in the Premier League and try and win a league title. Jeez, there cannot be a person alive on the face of this earth who would remember their last league title, a whooping 96 years ago.

Besides, I doubt very much they would get invited into the ESL, after all, what have they done to warrant such an invite?

I think Spurs would want to stay as well.

8 October 1899 is

22,471 days until

17 April 1961 – the day Spurs last won the league and it is

22,471 days until

25 October 2022 (today)

So having got that - it is nearer the 19th century than today, what chance Spurs winning the title before the 2032-33 season – at which point it their last title will be nearer to before the League was started than "today".

If they join the ESL, they would never win a title ever again. If Newcastle don't qualify, I don't see how Spurs could.

Phil, did you include the extra day in a leap year when working all that out?

Do you think I am an amateur?

(which is what Spurs were in 8 October 1899)

BTW - interesting fact. 1900 was not a leap year. It is only a leap year in a xx00 if the xx is also divisible by 4. 2000 was a leap year, 1600 was and 2400 will be.

Newcastle could be the wild card here if it comes to a vote. The Saudis are hell-bent on destroying golf as we know it, why not football as well?

Before we get all het up about it, remember China and their Super League? They started to poach some of the best players, eg, Hulk, Witsel, Carrasco, Tevez etc…. Paying them ginormous wages – only to fall flat on their face.

An ESL only works if the stars stay with these "glamour" clubs. As we all know, lose the stars, you lose the appeal, and then the broadcast money goes.

Hence my comment about Newcastle being the wild card – they're going slowly, slowly at the moment, but they do have the financial power to strip a hypothetical ESL of the more money-minded Galacticos. I doubt that would be great for everyone else in a reformed Premier League but anyway...

Another idea is for FIFA/UEFA to just say that playing for an ESL club means you don't get to play for your country, and that would end it. But they'd never do that because it would jeopardise the broadcast and sponsor money.

Interesting that Spurs have won more hospital charity cups (four, and even two of them were joint) than Football League / Premier League trophies (two!!). And they think they should be included in a European Super League!

David P,

I gotta say you are a tremendous new addition to this site. TW Newcomer of the Season for me.

Cheers Mike!

Steve, an even better idea is for the EPL clubs to agree never to sign a player who has played for a ESL team and that includes the U18s.

Can you imagine - "Son, City want you to join their academy but, unless you make it, you will never play professional ever again. Better join Everton."

"Ross, we would love to have you back at Goodison now you have lost your place in the Chelsea team but we cannot. Career over. Told you you should not have gone."

Phil, that's a brilliant Idea.

An effort to protect 'entertainment value' and appeasement to player power in that new league will lead to rules that will sterilize the game to some extent. Slide tackles, headers and any other approaches from the Agricultural Era will be discarded.

Then it will be a close call with many fans sticking with the old format while some get distracted by, shall we say, underhanded marketing techniques. Prepare for the ESL to go full cheerleader-TMZ-footballer wives of the ESL rich and famous- and well, you get the idea.

I wish I could fast forward to see the look on some serious footballers' faces when they realize their newfound fans are more interested in their abs and workout videos than they are in ESL players' long-lost art.

Has there been any talk of these clubs coming together and creating the ESL without them actually leaving their domestic leagues?

I would think that, the way they have been sucking up the best players into hugely bloated squads, it would be relatively easy for them to continue to maintain reasonably competitive teams within their domestic leagues, maybe dropping out of the Europa League if there really was a concern about fixture congestion?

Or making their ESL a straight replacement for the Champions League? So that they effectively dropped out of the Champions League, but not their domestic leagues?

The huge subs benches now make this sort of player-sharing approach across different competitions within each club much more viable, and the extra games (ignoring Klopp's idiotic carping) would be easily absorbed into the schedule, by simply making use of those super stadiums on a whole bunch more days of the season.

If stadiums are at capacity and the demand for tickets is there, the extra income can be generated from their excess fans who presumably would pay to go and watch them but cannot get tickets currently.

And then of course they should take complete control of their own TV rights for the new ESL and flog those off to the highest bidder(s) or the ones who come up with the best live TV & streaming packages.

There would be little or no real impact to the domestic leagues, and so no cause for the welter of complaints last time. Yes, perhaps a few of the best players would be on the bench or rested for domestic games... but isn't that what already happens now for the big Champions League squads?

Michael, I expect you're right – the ESL just replaces the Champions League. It's more or less a closed shop ESL already anyway.

If these clubs are willing to break away and form a European Super League, then they should relinquish all affiliations with their national league, including all national cup competitions. I'm sure the remaining 14 clubs in the Premier League would vote on this anyway and demand they are excluded from any further participation in the Premier League.

By being able to have two teams, one in the ESL and one in the Premier League, means they will just become richer and richer and I doubt very much the rest of the Premier League teams would approve of that.

If these clubs want to go and form the ESL, then let them go, with no further participation in the Premier League, FA Cup or Carabao Cup… and never to return!