PEP GUARDIOLA insists the Premier League must be preserved amid new plans for a European Super League.
The Prem Big Six are being tempted by up to £310m each plus a minimum of £130m per year to join the breakaway alternative to the Champions League.
Pep Guardiola wants to protect the Premier League amid plans for a European Super LeagueCredit: AFP
But the former Barcelona and Bayern Munich chief, 50, does not want to see anything that potentially harms the domestic game.
And instead he put forward his view that the number of teams in the English top flight could be reduced to improve the quality of the product.
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The City boss said: “I want to protect the local leagues. I like to play against Leicester, Brighton, Burnley, Arsenal, West Bromwich, Liverpool…I love it.
“To make an incredible, super European league, you have to make an incredible, super Premier League. For that you have to reduce the teams, less quantity.
“What we should do is make every single league in Europe stronger than it is now – if that means less teams, a better Championship, League One and League Two with less teams in every competition, go for the quality not the quantity.
“But I have the feeling we cannot lose what the local leagues mean, what it means for example to play in the FA Cup tomorrow or what it means to play in the leagues.”
Guardiola’s stance against the breakaway competition was also shared by La Liga chief Javier Tebas, who slammed “selfish” Euro giants for backing the idea.
I want to protect the local leagues. I like to play against Leicester, Brighton, Burnley, Arsenal, West Bromwich, Liverpool…I love it
Pep Guardiola
La Liga’s three biggest guns, Atletico, Barcelona and Real Madrid, are also pivotal to the idea, which is the brainchild of Bernabeu President Florentino Perez.
And as further details of how the competition would be ENTIRELY run by the “founder” clubs, including a form of Financial Fair Play on transfer and wages spending, Tebas went after his three potential mutineers.
Tebas, 58, said: “This is a clandestine and unviable project that would do a lot of damage to European football.
“I know what is going on and what is being discussed.
“Those clubs working on this project behind the back of football institutions are not loyal to the competitions in which they participate.
“I don’t understand why we should want change because of the theoretical selfishness of a few clubs.”
Rattled Fifa and Uefa corralled the other five confederations into a statement explaining players would be banned from the World Cup if they played for clubs who joined the rebel league.
Tebas added: “Fifa and the confederations are aware of the damage it would do to the current football ecosystem.
“There would be no more money for most, just more concentrated in a few clubs. I also am sure it would be a failure in the medium term.”
The 15 “founder” clubs would be assured of between £130m and £213m each year according to projections in an 18-page document circulated in recent weeks, which sparked the Fifa statement.
Each club would have one sit on the League Board, which would also have six committees with jurisdiction over elements of the League and an independent chief executive.
Man City boss Pep Guardiola speaks to the press following his team’s 0-2 victory over Man Utd in the Carabao Cup
Source: Soccer - thesun.co.uk
