Soccer

Subterms

    More stories

    • 75 Shares149 Views

      in Soccer

      How Europe's Super League Fell Apart

      by

      LONDON — For 48 hours, soccer stood on the brink. Fans took to the streets. Players broke into open revolt. Chaos stalked the game’s corridors of power, unleashing a shock wave that resonated around the world, from Manchester to Manila, Barcelona to Beijing, and Liverpool to Los Angeles.That internationalism is what has turned European soccer, over the last 30 years, into a global obsession. The elite teams of western Europe are stocked with stars drawn from Africa, South America and all points in between. They draw fans not just from England, Italy and Spain, but China, India and Australia in numbers large enough to tempt broadcasters across the planet to pay hundreds of millions of dollars for the rights to show their games.But while soccer is now the biggest business in sports, it remains, at heart, an intensely local affair. Teams rooted in neighborhoods and based in small towns compete in domestic leagues that have existed for more than a century, competitions in which the great and the good share the field — and at least some of the finances — with the minor and the makeweight.An uneasy truce between the two faces of the world’s game had held for decades. And then, on Sunday night, it cracked, as an unlikely alliance of American hedge funds, Russian oligarchs, European industrial tycoons and Gulf royals sought to seize control of the revenues of the world’s most popular sport by creating a closed European superleague.How that plan came together and then spectacularly collapsed is a story of egos and intrigue, avarice and ambition, secret meetings and private lunches, international finance and internecine strife. It lasted just two frantic, feverish days, but that was more than enough time to shake the world.The SecretLast Thursday, Javier Tebas and Joan Laporta were supposed to be having a cordial, celebratory lunch. A few days earlier, Laporta had been elected to a second term as president of F.C. Barcelona. Tebas, the outspoken, unashamedly bellicose executive in charge of Spain’s national league, wanted to be among the first to congratulate him on his victory.It did not turn out that way. Laporta revealed to Tebas that Barcelona was almost certainly joining a dozen or so of Europe’s most famous, most successful teams in a breakaway competition, one that would effectively unmoor its members from the game’s traditional structures and, crucially, its multibillion-dollar economy.The threat was nothing new. There has long been a perception, at least among soccer’s rich and powerful teams, that since they have the most fans, they generate the bulk of the sport’s revenue. It follows, then, that they should be treated to a greater slice of its income. Like clockwork, every few years they would float a plan to group the best teams together in a single competition. And, like clockwork, the grand plan would fail to materialize, the big clubs bought off by promises of more power and more money if only they would agree to stay.But Tebas felt this new effort was more serious, more real. Laporta told him that a half-dozen teams had already committed. Several more had been told that they had until the end of the weekend to decide.Tebas raised the alarm. He called officials in leagues across Europe. He called executives of powerful clubs. And he reached out to Aleksander Ceferin, the president of European soccer’s governing body, the organization that Tebas knew had the most to lose.Aleksander Ceferin, the president of European soccer’s governing body, excoriated the executives leading the Super League as “snakes” and “liars.”Richard Juilliart/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesCeferin, a lean, plain-spoken 53-year-old lawyer from Slovenia, was baffled. Only a few weeks earlier, his close friend and ally Andrea Agnelli, the president of the Italian league champion Juventus, the scion of one of Europe’s great industrial families and the leader of the association representing European soccer clubs, had assured him that whispers about a new round of breakaway talks were only “a rumor.”Just a day earlier, in fact, Agnelli and his organization had recommitted to a suite of reforms to the Champions League, European soccer’s crown jewel and its biggest moneymaker. Everything was set to be approved on Monday.Still, the drumbeat of rumors continued, and Ceferin felt he needed to be sure. So as he slid into the front seat of his Audi Q8 on Saturday to start the eight-hour drive from his home in Ljubljana to his office in Switzerland, he decided to get to the bottom of things. He placed a call to Agnelli. His friend did not pick up.Ceferin — the godfather to Agnelli’s youngest child — texted the Italian’s wife and asked if she might get the Juventus president to call him urgently. He was three hours into his journey when his cellphone rang. Breezily, Agnelli reassured Ceferin, again, that everything was fine.Ceferin suggested they issue a joint communiqué that would put the issue to rest. Agnelli agreed. Ceferin drafted a statement from the car and sent it to Agnelli. An hour later, Agnelli asked for time to send back an amended version. Hours passed. The men traded more calls. Eventually, the Italian told Ceferin he needed another 30 minutes.And then Agnelli turned off his phone.The RevoltThe reason that the threat of a superleague had carried so much menace for so long is that much of soccer’s vast economy rests on a fragile bond.Both domestic championships — like England’s Premier League and Spain’s La Liga — and Pan-continental tournaments like the Champions League to some extent rely on the presence of the elite clubs to attract fans and, through them, broadcasters and sponsors. Without them, the revenue streams that filter down to and sustain smaller teams might collapse.For decades, the system rested on appeasing the rich teams just enough to encourage them to retain their loyalty to the collective. All of a sudden, that trust was fraying.As he arrived in Switzerland, Ceferin fielded two more calls that made clear how real the threat to European soccer’s future had become. Two teams, one English and one Spanish, informed him that they had been pressed to sign up for the breakaway league. They had decided to accept, but wanted to remain on good terms with European soccer’s governing body.Ceferin’s response was polite, but blunt. If they allied with the rebels, they should prepare for an all-out attack.With his inner circle, Ceferin got to work. They broke the news to some board members of the European Club Association, the umbrella group of about 250 European teams. Its president, Agnelli, and senior executives like Manchester United’s Ed Woodward had misled them about supporting the Champions League reform plan, they said.They told the clubs that, even though the breakaway clubs intended to remain in their own domestic leagues, too, the plan would see the value of those competitions’ broadcast deals collapse. Sponsorships would evaporate. It would decimate the rest of soccer’s finances. “They were outraged, they couldn’t believe it,” Ceferin said in an interview on Wednesday. “Even mafia organizations have some sort of code.”By lunchtime on Sunday, the roster of the insurgents was known. Ceferin started referring to them as the Dirty Dozen. As well as Barcelona, Real Madrid and Atlético Madrid had signed up from Spain. There were six from England: Manchester United, Manchester City, Liverpool, Chelsea, Arsenal and Tottenham. In Italy, Juventus had been joined by A.C. Milan and Inter Milan.New graffiti in Italy featured an image of Andrea Agnelli. It was titled “Il Golpe Fallito,” the failed coup.Filippo Monteforte/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesNot all of them were equal partners. Executives at Manchester City and Chelsea, for example, had only learned on Friday that the plan was in motion. They had been told that they had no more than a day or so to decide whether they were in or out. Either way, they were warned, the train was leaving the station.City quickly succumbed, but others proved more resistant. Bayern Munich and Paris St.-Germain, the dominant forces in Germany and France, had both been approached. They had declined the offer, preferring to stay — at least for the moment — aligned with the rest of Europe.They supplied some of the intelligence that allowed UEFA and national leagues in Spain, Italy and England to plan their counterattack. When the group learned that an official statement revealing the creation of the new competition, called the Super League, would be made late Sunday, they made plans to issue their own — disavowing the project.But before they could, the news leaked. The public outcry, particularly in Britain, was immediate. Fans hung banners outside their teams’ stadiums, and lawmakers took to the airwaves to denounce the rebels for their greed and disrespect toward soccer’s traditions.Gary Neville, a former Manchester United captain, unleashed a several-minute tirade against his former team and Liverpool, English soccer’s two most popular teams. The screed went viral, and it was soon being shared by opponents of the project via the messaging application WhatsApp.This was precisely what some of those involved with the project had feared. There had been doubts that the plan was ready to go live; insiders worried that it might not survive a fierce initial backlash. “This is not the time to do it,” an executive involved in the project warned. The executive suggested holding off until summer.By then, it was hoped, the clubs might have found a frontman for the breakaway. Florentino Pérez, the president of Real Madrid, had been the driving force behind much of it; it was, to some extent, his brainchild. But his peers were aware that he would struggle to convince an English audience, in particular.The Manchester United co-chairman Joel Glazer, whose family also owns the Super Bowl champion Tampa Bay Buccaneers; Chelsea’s Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich; and Arsenal’s Stan Kroenke, who controls nearly a dozen professional teams, almost never speak publicly. Manchester City’s owner, Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan, a member of the royal family of Abu Dhabi, doesn’t speak to reporters at all. And others considered for the role — like Liverpool’s majority owner, John W. Henry — were unwilling to accept it.There were also concerns that the rebels’ communications strategy — marshaled by Katie Perrior, a political operative close to Boris Johnson, the British prime minister — was too focused on winning governmental, rather than popular, support. There had been no effort to consult, involve or win over fans, players or coaches. An outcry might destroy everything before the lobbying effort could begin in earnest.Those concerns were not heeded. Agnelli, theoretically a voice for all of Europe’s clubs in his governance roles and a close friend of Ceferin, was feeling the strain of being, in effect, a double agent. He had protected the rebels’ secret for weeks, shading the truth — or worse — in talks with friends and allies. On Monday morning, though, he would have to sit on the dais with the rest of the UEFA board as it voted to approve changes to a Champions League that would be under mortal threat from the Super League.He knew the league was happening. With the signatures of Chelsea, Manchester City and Atlético Madrid in hand, the founding members were set. The financing, delivered by the Spanish advisory firm Key Capital Partners and backed by the American bank JPMorgan Chase, would mean billions in new riches. Agnelli simply needed the news out.Glazer, one of Manchester United’s co-chairmen, agreed. He was adamant it was time to press the button.And so, despite all the doubts, the clubs showed their hand just after 11 on Sunday night in London. An official announcement, published simultaneously on the 12 teams’ websites, revealed that they had all signed up to what they called the Super League. But by then, the narrative that the project was driven by the greed of a few wealthy clubs and their leaders had taken shape.“It was dead in the water by 11:10,” the executive involved in the plan said. “Everyone had climbed their hill and would not be able to come down.”Florentino Pérez, the president of Real Madrid.Rodrigo Jimenez/EPA, via ShutterstockUncivil WarBy first light the next day, the battle lines had been drawn. And it was quickly clear that the breakaway 12 had next to no support.But rather than mount a public defense, sending out a phalanx of officials to make a case that the league was good for soccer’s entire pyramid, arguing that it would shower millions on the teams and leagues left behind, the Super League’s first act was to deliver a letter to Europe’s governing body, UEFA, and soccer’s global leadership at FIFA.The league, the letter informed the governing bodies, had already filed motions in several European countries to prevent anyone from blocking the project.Ceferin, meanwhile, was back to working the phones to rally opposition. He sought the support of Gianni Infantino, the FIFA president, even though the men rarely saw eye to eye. He also had a lengthy call with Oliver Dowden, the lawmaker responsible for sport and culture in Britain. Dowden said the British government would do everything in its power to stop the breakaway clubs from “stealing” the game.Soon Johnson, the British prime minister, was being interviewed on television, staking out a position against the plan in a savvy play for public support. His French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, issued a statement condemning the plan. Prince William posted a tweet expressing his “concerns” about the Super League.By the time he appeared in public on Monday, Ceferin had led a UEFA executive committee meeting where Agnelli was notable by his absence. Agnelli had resigned his board post — and his role as head of the European clubs group — minutes after the Super League’s late-night announcement. With his seat empty, the remaining members voted through changes to the Champions League, and then got back to work in their effort to crush the new league that was threatening it.Ceferin, stern-faced, then excoriated the breakaway group in his first comments to reporters. He reserved specific vitriol for Manchester United’s Woodward, who he felt had misled him, and for Agnelli. Ceferin called the men “snakes” and “liars,” and described how they had led him to believe he had their full support for the Champions League revisions.“Agnelli is the biggest disappointment of all,” Ceferin said. “I have never seen a person who would lie so many times and so persistently as he did.”By then, the acrimony was spreading across the European soccer landscape. The Premier League held a meeting without its six rebel teams, and the remaining 14 clubs discussed what punitive measures to take against those who had signed up for the Super League. Daniel Levy, the chairman of Tottenham, one of the rebel clubs, asked Paul Barber, the chief executive of Brighton, to share a message of regret at the meeting. He did, but few seemed interested in Levy’s sentiment.In Italy, a hastily arranged meeting was even more febrile. Owners and executives of the teams in Serie A, the country’s top league, turned on officials from Juventus, Inter and Milan. Tensions were already soaring; cash-poor teams, their budgets devastated by the coronavirus pandemic, had been arguing with their richer rivals over television contracts and whether to accept investment from a consortium of private equity companies.Now Agnelli, who had quickly become a lightning rod for the Super League, was called a traitor by the chairman of Juventus’s crosstown rival, Torino. Agnelli, in a typically pugnacious manner, was said to have retorted with an expletive, saying he did not care if Juventus remained in Serie A.“It’s a betrayal,” the Torino president, Urbano Cairo, told reporters. “It’s what a Judas does.”English teams, notably Liverpool and Chelsea, had other reasons to be concerned. Their fans were already gathering outside the stadiums from which they had been barred by the pandemic, hanging banners denouncing the Super League on walls and entry gates.Late in the afternoon, hundreds of angry supporters surrounded Liverpool’s team bus as it made its way to Leeds United’s Elland Road stadium for a game. Inside the stadium, the Leeds players wore T-shirts expressing solidarity with soccer’s current system during warm-ups. When Leeds scored a late goal to secure a 1-1 tie, its official Twitter account mocked the visitors.Leeds United players warmed up Monday in shirts bearing a slogan opposing the proposed European Super League. Other clubs left out of the plan soon did the same.Lee Smith/Agence France-Presse, via Pool/Afp Via Getty ImagesPlayers, too, were starting to make their views known. Manchester United’s squad had demanded a meeting with Woodward to express not only their fury at being forced to find out about the plan through the news media, but their disapproval of the idea itself. Several other high-profile stars, playing for teams not involved in the breakaway, had posted messages disavowing the plan on social media.On Monday evening, after his team’s game with Leeds, Liverpool’s most senior player, James Milner, revealed that he and his teammates had not been consulted about the club’s involvement in the plan. “I don’t like it, and I hope it doesn’t happen,” he said.Inside the clubs, unease was mounting. The plan had been kept secret even from high-level executives — “It was an ownership thing,” said one executive at one of the teams involved — and there had been little warning of what was to come. At some clubs, an all-staff email flashed around just before the statement was released.At others, high-profile figures were left to read about it on social media. Paolo Maldini, a legendary former player and now an executive at A.C. Milan, had heard nothing until it was announced. Michael Edwards, Liverpool’s sporting director, was blindsided. Some started to worry about the safety of their families as the outrage spread.A wall in Barcelona. Outrage among fans was not limited to England.Nacho Doce/ReutersIn Switzerland, Ceferin was in his hotel room, drafting and redrafting a speech he was to make the next day at UEFA’s annual meeting. He had already started to field calls from Super League clubs, mainly from England, concerned about the growing backlash and the possible consequences they — and their players — could face by signing up for an unsanctioned tournament.In January, FIFA had warned clubs and players that anyone taking part in a breakaway league risked banishment from events like the World Cup. Earlier Monday, Ceferin had repeated the threat, but now his tone was softening.“I had a feeling they wanted to repair this mistake and they didn’t know how to do it,” Ceferin said. So he changed his speech. Now, it offered an olive branch to those teams he knew were searching for one.He inched closer to winning them back when Pérez, the Real Madrid president, made what was in hindsight the disastrous — if brave — decision to defend the Super League plan on a flashy, late-night television show.Largely unchallenged by the hosts, he pledged that the league was an altruistic venture even as it funneled ever more billions to a handful of rich teams, and to lambast the Champions League reforms that Agnelli, now the Super League’s vice chairman, only weeks earlier had described as “beautiful.”In the headquarters of the other Super League clubs, executives held their heads in their hands. Still, though, they remained mute, unwilling to go public to defend a plan that Pérez claimed had been designed expressly to “save football.”The CollapseAs Ceferin prepared to deliver his keynote address on Tuesday morning in Montreux, reports began to emerge that several teams — Chelsea and Manchester City among them — were considering dropping out. Television networks and sponsors had come out against the breakaway plan, and the British government was threatening official action to block it.Any doubts among the teams hardened as FIFA’s Infantino dispelled growing speculation that he secretly harbored hopes the project would succeed.“Either you are in, or you are out,” FIFA’s president, Gianni Infantino, warned the breakaway teams.Richard Juilliart/UEFA, via Associated Press“If some elect to go their own way, then they must live with the consequences of their choice, they are responsible for their choice,” Infantino said, raising again the possibility that the renegade clubs and their players could face excommunication. “Concretely this means, either you are in, or you are out.”Then it was Ceferin’s turn. He talked about greed and selfishness, but also about soccer’s importance in the fabric of European culture, and in the lives of the millions who follow the game across the Continent. He then made his direct pitch to the English clubs, the one he had written into his draft hours earlier.“Gentlemen, you made a huge mistake,” he told them, staring directly into the cameras. “Some will say it is greed, others disdain, arrogance, flippancy or complete ignorance of England’s football culture. It does not matter.“What does matter is that there is still time to change your mind. Everyone makes mistakes.”Within hours, the project’s demise started to snowball. In a meeting with the Premier League chief executive Richard Masters and fan groups from all six English teams, Johnson said he was considering detonating “a legislative bomb” to halt the putsch. More and more players came out against the idea. Marcus Rashford, Manchester United’s homegrown striker, posted an image on Twitter that read: “Football Is Nothing Without Fans.” Liverpool’s entire squad released a simultaneous message disavowing the project.The team captain, Jordan Henderson, had convened a meeting of his counterparts at every Premier League team to discuss a concerted response. Manchester City’s respected coach, Pep Guardiola, declared his opposition to the mere idea of a closed league of superclubs, saying that “it is not sport if you cannot lose.” It was a turn of events that the rebel clubs had not foreseen.As evening drew near, hundreds of fans gathered outside Stamford Bridge, Chelsea’s home stadium, to protest the plan before the team’s game with Brighton. They blocked streets, and surrounded the bus carrying the players when it arrived. Petr Cech, a club legend, went out to try to speak to the protesters. Inside, team officials leaked the news that Chelsea was exploring ways to exit its Super League contract.But it was Manchester City that was the first to break ranks officially, releasing a short statement saying it was pulling out.Manchester City, the Premier League leader, was the first founding member to back out.Jon Super/Associated PressThe Super League executives were stunned, unsure of what was happening. That night, Arsenal and its North London rival Tottenham announced their departures within minutes of each other. Manchester United confirmed that Woodward — its top executive and one of the main architects of the Super League — would leave the club at the end of the year. Then came a statement from the club that it was withdrawing, too. Almost immediately, Liverpool confirmed it was out.The Super League, having lost half its members, and its entire foothold in England, was finished. Inter Milan dropped out a few hours later, and then, as the clock ticked to the 48-hour mark since its grand announcement, the Super League released an unsigned statement acknowledging that the plan was no longer viable.By then, Ceferin was back in Slovenia, having completed the eight-hour return trip from Montreux. He stayed up until about 2 a.m., digesting the news. He released a statement welcoming back the English teams into the European fold. He started to respond to the thousands of messages that had swamped his phone over the previous two days.Then he closed his laptop, and helped himself to a double whiskey. More

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in Soccer

      In Chaos of Super League Fiasco, Johnson Seizes an Opportunity to Score

      by

      The British prime minister was able to take the moral high ground by opposing the breakaway European soccer league that proved to be highly unpopular with fans.LONDON — Fans loathed it, politicians opposed it and even Prince William, warned of the damage it risked “to the game we love.”So swift and ferocious was the backlash to a plan to create a new super league for European soccer that on Wednesday six of England’s most famous clubs were in disarray, issuing abject apologies as they disowned the failed breakaway project they had pledged to join.Yet not everyone was a loser. For Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain, the crisis has presented a rare opportunity to seize the moral high ground on an issue that matters to many of the voters who helped him to a landslide victory in the 2019 election.Threatening to use any means he could to block the plan, Mr. Johnson positioned himself as the defender of the working-class soccer fans whose forebears created England’s soccer clubs — and the enemy of the billionaire owners who now dominate the English game.“Boris Johnson is a populist by instinct,” said Anand Menon, professor of European politics and foreign affairs at King’s College London, adding that the prime minister spotted a political opportunity in a sporting disaster. The backlash to the super league plan was so complete that Mr. Johnson’s opposition was a “no brainer,” he said — the political equivalent of scoring in an open goal.“His only slight gamble in trying to stop it was that he might lose, but it was hard to see how that could happen,” Professor Menon said. Once English and international soccer authorities threatened reprisals against the super league clubs and players, their position was untenable, he said.Prime Minister Boris Johnson has positioned himself as the defender of the working-class soccer fans whose forebears created England’s soccer clubs.Rob Pinney/Getty ImagesOthers believe that there could be risks down the line, however, and that in allowing his government to threaten to put everything on the table to prevent the formation of the new league — even raising the prospect of tampering with the ownership of soccer clubs — Mr. Johnson might have raised expectations that could not be fulfilled.Significantly, the government refused to rule out suggestions that it could legislate over ownership or copy German rules that give fans real control by preventing commercial investors from owning more than 49 percent of clubs.In the short-term, however, the soccer crisis has helped Mr. Johnson by distracting attention away from negative headlines over a lobbying scandal largely centered on one of his predecessors, David Cameron, and his contacts with a current cabinet minister.On Wednesday that issue crept closer to Mr. Johnson with the emergence of text messages he sent to a businessman and Brexit supporter, James Dyson, promising that Mr. Dyson’s employees would not have to pay extra tax if they came to Britain to make ventilators during the early stages of the pandemic. Mr. Dyson’s company announced in 2019 that it would move its headquarters to Singapore, citing growing demand in Asia.In recent months, the successful roll out of vaccines against Covid-19 has revived Mr. Johnson’s fortunes after a succession of missteps last year when the government’s handling of the pandemic faltered.So prevalent is soccer now in Britain’s national life that it cropped up then, too.In April 2020, the health secretary, Matt Hancock, attacked highly paid soccer players, calling on them to “take a pay cut and play their part,” during the pandemic. But within months the government was outmaneuvered by Marcus Rashford, a star player for Manchester United and England.Invoking his own poor childhood, Mr. Rashford galvanized a campaign against child poverty, and ultimately forced Mr. Johnson to change policy over free school meals.This week the boot was on the other foot as Mr. Johnson was able to condemn the super league plans before Mr. Rashford, whose club initially signed up to the proposals.It required no expertise to be “horrified” at the prospect of the super league “being cooked up by a small number of clubs.,” wrote Mr. Johnson in the Sun newspaper.“Football clubs in every town and city and at every tier of the pyramid have a unique place at the heart of their communities, and are an unrivaled source of passionate local pride,” he added.Never a big soccer fan himself, Mr. Johnson framed his opposition to the plan in his belief in competition.Each year the three worst performing clubs are relegated from England’s Premier League — its top domestic tier — while the top ones qualify to play in European competitions the following season. The European Super League proposal would have seen a number of big soccer clubs becoming permanent members — something that Mr. Johnson likened to creating a cartel.In fact, when England’s first Football League was established in 1888 it was on a similar model and its membership was not selected on merit, said Matthew Taylor, professor of history at De Montfort University, Leicester who has written widely on soccer.Yet the furor over the European Super League illustrates the growing role soccer has played in national life in recent decades.An anti-Super League banner hanging from one of the gates of Stamford Bridge stadium in London where Chelsea fans were protesting on Tuesday.Matt Dunham/Associated Press“In the last 15-20 years it seems to be so pervasive and so significant to British culture — very broadly defined — that politicians have to say something,” Professor Taylor said.No longer does it seem odd for politicians and members of the government “to make statements on issues that 40-50 years ago would have been seen as private matters,” he added.That change first became noticeable under Tony Blair’s premiership as the growing success of the English Premier League, combined with the country’s “cool Britannia” branding, gave soccer a great profile.But soccer can be dangerous territory too for politicians. Mr. Cameron was much mocked when he once appeared to forget his long-running claim to support the Birmingham team Aston Villa and seemed to suggest he favored a rival that played in similar colors.Mr. Johnson, who appears to prefer rugby to soccer, has avoided that fate by never declaring his allegiance to any team.But suggestions that the government might legislate to control the ownership of clubs seemed to conflict with Mr. Johnson’s free-market instincts.Although a Saudi Arabian plan to buy the Premier League club Newcastle United ultimately failed, Mr. Johnson promised the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, that he would investigate a holdup to the proposed take over, according to British media reports.“One of the many dishonesties in all this is that it would allow money to corrupt football,” said Professor Menon, referring to the European Super League plan. “Money has already corrupted football. Rich clubs get richer.”The professor said he believed that very little would ultimately change because any substantial intervention would upset the successful operations of the Premier League, and therefore annoy fans.But Professor Taylor pointed to Germany as a successful alternative model, and said that in threatening to intervene in the running of soccer Mr. Johnson might ultimately disappoint some of those who are applauding him now.“Having made such a significant and bold statement, I don’t think this discussion will go away now,” Professor Taylor. More

    • 125 Shares119 Views

      in Soccer

      A Super League Plan, but No One to Defend It

      by

      The organizers of a European soccer league didn’t believe in their idea enough to defend it.They must have known those they had abandoned would cry havoc. No matter how wealthy or out of touch the billionaires and oligarchs and princes behind the scheme for a European superleague were, they could not have imagined that the leagues, federations and clubs they planned to jettison in pursuit of bottomless wealth would greet their plan with garlands and cheers.They must have anticipated, too, some sort of backlash from fans. They could not have expected the greatest change in half a century to the world’s most popular sport — a sport with a ferocious, intensely personal passion coded into its genes — would be met with acquiescence and apathy, let alone universal approval.As they war-gamed how the launch of their galaxy brain idea might play out, how the prospect of a fundamental redrawing of the landscape of European soccer might be received, at least one scenario must have involved banners being draped from railings and protests swelling on the streets.Perhaps they did know. Perhaps they thought they could lose their fans and their peers and their former institutions and still ride it out. Perhaps what scuppered a project that has — for all the sophistry of Florentino Pérez, the two-day president of the 48-hour revolution — been years in the making was the fact they lost everyone else, too.Fans and players who were never asked for their opinion offered it anyway.Christopher Furlong/Getty ImagesBy Monday, less than a day into their brave new world, they had lost the governments, and they had lost the European Union. Not long after, they lost the television networks that, ultimately, would have had to pay for the whole thing.Then they lost the players and the managers, the stars of the show they were hoping to sell around the globe so that they might grow fatter still on the profits: first Ander Herrera and James Milner and Pep Guardiola and Luke Shaw and then, in a matter of hours, dozens more, whole squads of players, breaking cover and coming out in opposition to the plan.By Tuesday, there was scarcely anyone they had not lost. They had lost Eric Cantona. They had lost the royal family. They had lost national treasures. They had even lost the luxury watchmakers, and without the luxury watchmakers, there was nothing left to lose but themselves.Europe’s new Super League, created only two days earlier, was dead.Atlético Madrid had, quietly, been the first to blink, contacting UEFA on Tuesday morning to start to pick a way back. A few hours later, Chelsea followed, then Manchester City became the first to say so publicly. Pérez was supposed to be making a television appearance by then; he pulled out, reportedly because he was holding meetings with his fellow rebels.If he had tried to persuade them to hold the line, it did not work. The remaining English contingent — Liverpool, Manchester United, Tottenham and Arsenal — released nearly simultaneous statements just before 11 p.m. in Britain, confirming they were no longer involved. Only one of them, Arsenal, actually thought to apologize. Inter Milan bowed out soon after.An hour or so later, officials were confirming that the project was dead in the water. Pérez, on Spanish television Monday night, had fretted that young people did not have the attention span for soccer anymore. His solution to that problem, it turned out, had a half-life so brief a goldfish might have followed it.But it was not only how quickly it all dissipated — Sunday’s future of soccer did not even make it to Wednesday — but how easily those who had designed it and signed on to it seemed to capitulate. It is not just that they lost the fans, the leagues, the broadcasters and the sponsors. It is that at no point did they seem interested in even trying to win them over.The prospect of a Super League has been the great Damoclean threat hanging over European soccer for the better part of two decades. It has been wheeled out without fail every two or three years, the trump card in each and every negotiation with UEFA — and others — to concentrate more money and more power in the hands of a select few.And yet, in the Super League’s 48 hours of existence, only one of its architects spoke publicly: Pérez, giving an interview to “El Chiringuito,” a gaudy, late-night Spanish sports talk show, the equivalent of announcing the onset of war on the shopping channel. In a way, he deserves a little credit for that, for the willingness to own his decision.Florentino Pérez, Real Madrid’s president, was the only Super League founder who tried to defend it.Gabriel Bouys/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesBy contrast, none of his colleagues and co-conspirators uttered a word: not to the news media, not to the fans, not even to the godfathers of their children. Andrea Agnelli, the president of Juventus, had never previously been reluctant to give voice to some of his harebrained ideas about how to improve soccer; now that he had settled on one, he did not seem quite so willing to defend it.John Henry, Liverpool’s principal owner, has never hidden his belief that soccer needs to find ways to curb its spending, but this time he declined to make his case publicly, although he did offer an apology on Wednesday morning. Nor did the Russian plutocrat or the deputy prime minister of a Gulf state or the activist investor or the owner of a ranch the size of Los Angeles.There was no attempt to sell the idea, no attempt to outline the benefits, as they saw them. A high-profile public relations firm in London had been hired to handle the launch, and yet as the criticism grew more voluble and more shrill and more ferocious, there was no response whatsoever, no attempt to shape a more favorable narrative.For all the work they had done, for all the millions they had spent, for all the legal documents they had filed, nothing about this project seemed complete. The architects could not even figure out a way to make each owner produce a statement to be published by their own club explaining why they had joined the breakaway league. It was all, in some way, unserious: There was a cobbled-together website, an uninspiring logo and an American banker, but no broadcaster, no suite of sponsors and, in the end, no commitment to see any of it through.That is hardly a propitious trait for the custodians of institutions that are, though they are run like businesses and treated as entertainment complexes, also cultural and social touchstones. If they are this disloyal to their own much-cherished ideas, imagine how worrying it would be if they were in charge of things they do not, at heart, care about at all.And yet there is, in this whole, sorry mess, something deeply encouraging for soccer. What has given rise, in part, to the inequity the Super League was supposed to address is the need to placate this very group of owners, to meet their ever-increasing demands, to give them what they want.They have, though, now shown their hand. They have played their card. The reaction should not be to say that enough is enough. It is to ask if, after all the horse-trading and all the plotting, after years and years of bending and shaping and cracking the game so that it suits them more, what they have eventually produced is a website, a brand name and a waterfall of acrimony and scorn that they do not even have the courage to try to stanch. Is this, really, all they have got? More

    • 100 Shares129 Views

      in Soccer

      Europe's Super League Plan on Brink of Collapse

      by

      Chelsea and Manchester City are said to reverse course, imperiling a project that would have remade world soccer.Plans for a European soccer superleague appeared on the brink of collapse on Tuesday, a potentially spectacular implosion for a multibillion-dollar proposal that had prompted howls of outrage from nearly every corner of the sport since it was announced on Sunday.Chelsea, one of six English teams that had signed up as founding members of the new league, was preparing documentation to officially withdraw from the project, according to a person familiar with the club’s discussions. A spokesman for the club declined to comment.Manchester City, which leads the Premier League, was also close to pulling out of its agreement, according to people with knowledge of the situation. City’s about face came soon after its celebrated Spanish coach, Pep Guardiola, had slammed the plans for a closed competition, saying, “It is not a sport if it doesn’t matter if you lose.” A Manchester City spokeswoman, citing legal reasons, declined to comment on the club’s plans.The loss of two giant Premier League clubs would most likely be a death knell for the Super League, stripping the project of some of the competitive legitimacy that would have made it attractive to sponsors and broadcasters, and forcing the other clubs — especially the four other Premier League teams that had signed on — to rethink their participation.Other top clubs in Europe had already rejected the project. The French champions Paris St.-Germain, a deep-pocketed team that had been courted by the Super League, announced Tuesday that it would not take part. Its decision came a day after the German powerhouses Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund had gone public with their opposition. The perennial Dutch champion Ajax, a four-time winner of the Champions League, soon came out against the plan as well.The Super League, an alliance of a dozen of the world’s best, richest and most popular teams, would have redrawn soccer’s structures and economics, and brought about one of the largest redistributions of wealth in sports history by funneling billions of dollars to a handful of clubs that would be permanent members of the new elite competition. Some of the biggest brands in soccer — including Real Madrid, Manchester United, Liverpool and Juventus — were to be part of the league.Instead, it appeared set to fall apart amid a growing wave of internal revolt, political threats, fan outrage and, most ominously, humbling U-turns by several of its founding teams.European soccer officials had erupted in fury over the plans over the weekend, seeing them as a direct challenge to the domestic leagues and continental competitions that have served as the backbone of European soccer for a century.That outrage soon spread. Players on the prospective Super League clubs came out publicly against the plan. Coaches did little to disguise their opposition. And politicians in England and France pledged to oppose the plan with official action.Hundreds of fans protesting the Super League marched on Chelsea’s stadium before its game with Brighton on Tuesday, a day after Liverpool fans had surrounded the team’s bus as it arrived for a Premier League game at Leeds United.Chelsea, like some of the other founding clubs, has been taken aback by the strength of opposition to the proposals from its fans and the wider British public. The strength of feeling led to the team’s change of heart, according to the person with knowledge of the club’s plans.The Guardian newspaper reported the team was forced to pull out after a revolt by players concerned they would not be able to participate for their national teams in global events like the World Cup or regional tournaments like this summer’s European Championship and the Copa América in South America.Those threats had come from UEFA, which oversees soccer in Europe, including the Champions League, and FIFA, the sport’s global governing body.FIFA had warned clubs in January that it would bar them and their players from international competitions if they pressed ahead with plans for a new league, and the organization’s president, Gianni Infantino, seemed to renew that threat — without repeating it — in an address to a European soccer congress on Tuesday in Switzerland.“If some elect to go their own way then they must live with the consequences of their choice, they are responsible for their choice,” Infantino said in a speech to European soccer leaders in Montreux, Switzerland. “Concretely this means, either you are in, or you are out. You cannot be half in and half out. This has to be absolutely clear.” More

    • 125 Shares169 Views

      in Soccer

      FIFA's Infantino Issues Super League Warning; P.S.G. Won't Join It

      by

      As opposition mounts to a breakaway European league, Paris St.-Germain opted out and an Italian team president called a rival backing the plan “a Judas.”Either you are in, or you are out.The president of world soccer’s governing body, FIFA, delivered a short but powerful message on Tuesday to the dozen rich and powerful European clubs whose planned breakaway Super League has threatened to upend the decades-old structures that underpin the world’s most powerful sport.“If some elect to go their own way then they must live with the consequences of their choice, they are responsible for their choice,” the FIFA president, Gianni Infantino, said in an address to European soccer leaders at their congress in Montreux, Switzerland. “Concretely this means, either you are in, or you are out. You cannot be half in and half out. This has to be absolutely clear.”Infantino’s intervention came amid mounting fury against a proposed European Super League that has turned the sports project into a national emergency in the three countries — England, Spain and Italy — that are home to its 12 founding members. More

    • 125 Shares139 Views

      in Soccer

      Battle Over Super League Begins With Letters, Threats and Banners

      by

      The founding members of a league that would reshape soccer have warned the sport’s leaders that they will fight any effort to block their plans.LONDON — The superclubs have called in the lawyers. The president of European soccer has responded, calling the teams’ leaders “snakes and liars.” And the fans want no part of any of it.The pitched battle to pursue, or prevent, a breakaway European soccer superleague started to take shape on Monday, hours after the stunning announcement late Sunday night by 12 of the sport’s richest and most popular teams that they were forming one.The plan threatens to redraw the European soccer economy, from rich clubs in the Premier League to tiny ones in every corner of the continent, and funnel billions of dollars toward a handful of wealthy elite teams. It would represent one of the biggest wealth transfers in sports history, imperil the future of marquee events like the Champions League and threaten the existence of the domestic leagues and the smaller clubs that were left behind.By first light on Monday, the fight was on. In a letter written by the breakaway teams, they warned soccer’s authorities that they had taken legal action to prevent any efforts to block their project.A few hours later, Aleksander Ceferin, the president of European soccer’s governing body, UEFA, used his first public appearance to denounce the group behind the plan and vowed to take stern action if it did not reverse course. He raised the possibility of barring players on the participating teams from events like the World Cup and other tournaments, and threatened to banish the rebel clubs from their domestic leagues. Sunday’s announcement, he said, amounted to “spitting in football fans’ faces.”By then the outrage was spreading. In Germany, Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund — clubs seen as potential joiners of the breakaway league — distanced themselves from the plan. In France, Paris St.-Germain midfielder Ander Herrera lamented “the rich stealing what the people created.” In Spain, La Liga has convened a meeting of its clubs but will hold it without the three teams — Real Madrid, Barcelona and Atlético Madrid — who have agreed to join the Super League.And in England, coaches and players revealed they had not been consulted on the move, fan groups united in their opposition to the proposal, and, in Liverpool, supporters demanded the club remove their banners from the team’s stadium before its next home game on Saturday.“We feel we can no longer give our support to a club which puts financial greed above integrity of the game,” one of the groups said on Twitter.Aleksander Ceferin, the president of European soccer’s governing body, threatened to punish the clubs leading a breakaway league, then offered them an olive branch.Richard Juilliart/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAs they went public on Sunday with their plans for the European Super League, though, the proposal’s backers simultaneously wrote to the president of FIFA, world soccer’s governing body, and to UEFA’s Ceferin saying that they would like to work with the organizations but that they had also taken measures to protect their interests.The group includes a dozen top teams from England, Spain and Italy, such as Manchester United, Liverpool, Real Madrid and Juventus, and its six-page missive made clear its intent to proceed, and to overcome any opposition.Rumors of the creation of the breakaway competition, which hopes to add three more permanent founding members to what will be an annual 20-team league, prompted FIFA in January to bow to pressure from UEFA and issue a statement that threatened severe repercussions against players and clubs involved in any unsanctioned tournament. FIFA issued a statement of “disapproval” of the breakaway plan on Sunday, but notably did not repeat the threat of expelling those who took part.Faced with that threat, though, the company created to control the new Super League said in its letter sent on Sunday that motions had been filed in multiple courts to prevent any moves to jeopardize the project, which, its organizers said, has $4 billion of financing in place.The company has “taken appropriate action to challenge the legality of the restrictions to the formation of the competition before such relevant courts and European authorities as may be necessary to safeguard its future,” said the letter, a copy of which was reviewed by The New York Times.At Arsenal, some fans vented their anger at the owner Stan Kroenke.Tolga Akmen/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe superleague the clubs have agreed to form — an alliance of top teams closer in concept to closed leagues like the N.F.L. and the N.B.A. than to soccer’s current model — would bring about the most significant restructuring of elite European soccer since the creation of the European Cup (now the Champions League) in the 1950s.Yet even as it detailed its pre-emptive legal actions, the six-page letter invited soccer’s leaders to hold “urgent” talks to find a common path forward for a project that the group says will benefit soccer even beyond the narrow group that will enjoy unparalleled riches. Under the plan announced Sunday, the 15 founding members of the Super League would share an initial pool of 3.5 billion euros, about $4.2 billion.That equates to some $400 million each, more than four times what the winner of the Champions League took home in 2020. In the letter, the founders of the Super League said they did not wish to replace the Champions League, but instead wanted to create a tournament that would run alongside it.The damage to the prestige and value of the Champions League, though, would be immediate and run into the billions of dollars, turning what has for decades been club soccer’s elite competition into a secondary event, one that is unlikely to retain anything close to its current commercial appeal.In a concurrent effort to make the event more valuable, UEFA on Monday ratified the biggest changes to the Champions League since 1992. And then Ceferin held a news conference in which he took direct aim at the rival league.Having digested the letter’s content, Ceferin said, he was in no mood to acquiesce to demands for an urgent meeting. Instead, he issued pointed rebukes to several of the men leading the effort, and singled out Andrea Agnelli, the chairman of the Italian champion Juventus.Agnelli, who resigned from his role on UEFA’s executive committee after the announcement of the breakaway, had spoken to Ceferin as recently as Saturday. At the time, Ceferin said, Agnelli had told the UEFA president he fully supported changes to the Champions League and dismissed talk of a breakaway as “just rumors.”“Agnelli is the biggest disappointment of all,” said Ceferin, who worked as a criminal lawyer before moving into soccer. “I’ve never seen a person who would lie so many times and so persistently as he did.”Ed Woodward, the vice chairman of Manchester United, gave his support for UEFA’s Champions League restructuring as recently as Thursday, Ceferin added. He said UEFA was considering seeking damages from the 12 clubs that formed the breakaway group, and even from some of their top officials.Still, he enters the next stage of the fight for control of European soccer with the support of some top club executives. Nasser al-Khelaifi, the chairman of the French champion Paris St.-Germain, was among the officials who voted to approve the changes to the Champions League, and he has resisted efforts to lure P.S.G., a club stocked with some of the world’s best players, to the new league.Teams in Germany, including last season’s Champions League winner, Bayern Munich, and its biggest domestic rival, Borussia Dortmund, also have declined to join the new venture. In another boost for UEFA, Bayern’s chairman, Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, was chosen to replace Agnelli on UEFA’s board.The substantial changes to the Champions League may now be consigned to irrelevance, though, if the breakaway clubs manage to get their way and take to the field in a competition that they said they hoped to begin as soon as this summer. Their urgency stems from their financing; the investment bank JPMorgan Chase has provided four billion euros in debt financing to start the league, but it is contingent on the group’s securing a broadcast contract.Manchester City and Liverpool are among the six Premier League clubs that have signed on to the new Super League.Pool photo by Jon SuperIn the letter, the group said that its urgency stemmed from the huge losses piling up as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. The sight of games played in cavernous but empty stadiums has become the norm, and restrictions on public gatherings mean that hundreds of millions of dollars are being lost in gate receipts in every league in Europe, while broadcasters have also clawed back vast sums from leagues and competition organizers.The biggest European clubs have long been frustrated with sharing the wealth created by tournaments in which they are the biggest draw, and talks about a new league began well before the pandemic. Documents that leaked in 2019 showed that the president of Real Madrid, Florentino Pérez, an architect of the current plan, had sought to create an earlier iteration of a competition involving the biggest teams.The role FIFA will play in the fight over the Super League is intriguing, too. Its president, Gianni Infantino, has talked in recent years of creating new competitions to increase interest in soccer around the globe. As part of that push, he has given his backing to a 20-team superleague in Africa.FIFA issued a statement late Sunday in which it reiterated that it would not support a closed breakaway competition. The Super League’s founders, though, insisted that their event is not completely closed, since they plan to provide access every season to five teams outside the 15 founding members.Ceferin said he expected Infantino to dispel any doubts about his position on Tuesday when he addresses UEFA’s annual meeting.For now, UEFA and other groups opposed to the new competition are huddling to discuss their legal options, and engaging in talks with governments across Europe as well as with the European Union. Ceferin praised some of the politicians who have publicly condemned the Super League plan, including Britain’s prime minister, Boris Johnson, and France’s president, Emmanuel Macron.Yet he also offered an olive branch to the rebel clubs.He told them it was not too late to come back from the brink. While relationships have been damaged, he said, he vowed to act professionally for the benefit of European soccer. While he felt betrayed by the “greediness, selfishness and narcissism” of some of those involved, he would not — with the possible exception of Agnelli — make things personal. Ceferin is the godfather to Agnelli’s youngest child. More

    • 88 Shares149 Views

      in Soccer

      Reaction to the Super League: Super Anger

      by

      Reaction to the Super League: Super AngerWhen 12 of the world’s richest soccer teams announced plans on Sunday for a breakaway league that would remake European soccer for their benefit, it threw the sport into crisis.Billions of dollars are at stake. So is the future of the Premier League, the Champions League and the World Cup.The reaction has been scathing → More

    • 63 Shares189 Views

      in Soccer

      El anuncio de la ‘Superliga’

      by

      THE SUPER LEAGUE

      PRESS RELEASE IMMEDIATE SUNDAY 18TH APRIL

      LEADING EUROPEAN FOOTBALL CLUBS ANNOUNCE

      NEW SUPER LEAGUE COMPETITION

      Twelve of Europe’s leading football clubs have today come together to announce they have agreed to establish a new mid-week competition, the Super League, governed by its Founding Clubs.

      AC Milan, Arsenal FC, Atlético de Madrid, Chelsea FC, FC Barcelona, FC Internazionale Milano, Juventus FC, Liverpool FC, Manchester City, Manchester United, Real Madrid CF and Tottenham Hotspur have all joined as Founding Clubs. It is anticipated that a further three clubs will join ahead of the inaugural season, which is intended to commence as soon as practicable.

      Going forward, the Founding Clubs look forward to holding discussions with UEFA and FIFA to work together in partnership to deliver the best outcomes for the new League and for football as a whole.

      The formation of the Super League comes at a time when the global pandemic has accelerated the instability in the existing European football economic model. Further, for a number of years, the Founding Clubs have had the objective of improving the quality and intensity of existing European competitions throughout each season, and of creating a format for top clubs and players to compete on a regular basis.

      The pandemic has shown that a strategic vision and a sustainable commercial approach are required to enhance value and support for the benefit of the entire European football pyramid. In recent months extensive dialogue has taken place with football stakeholders regarding the future format of European competitions. The Founding Clubs believe the solutions proposed following these talks do not solve fundamental issues, including the need to provide higherquality matches and additional financial resources for the overall football pyramid. More