The biggest mistake these clubs made was creating the league behind closed doors rather than publicly propose it as a trial balloon. They obviously had no idea how bad the backlash was going to be.
The XFL was a bigger success.
Hell, the Alliance of American Football was a bigger success, and it folded halfway into Season 1.
Oh, I think they knew what would happen if they gave it space for debate, hence the fait accomplis whilst in the midst of a fan-less period. That was the plan. Ride out the backlash whilst pointing to a done-deal and flapping wads of cash around. It was their best chance of success but you are right, the sheer scale of the outcry and the unanimity of it from every corner of the game had them shitting their pants.
The fallout will be hilarious and in the UK at least there is now going to be a fan-led commission to look at the governance of the game. Hopefully this episode will lend weight to those findings and changes will follow.
The FA is the only real authority. The PL authority exists in of it’s by-laws which really require a magic number of teams to agree to sanction, which is why there are that exact number of team that were threatening to leave.
Since it’s the money people that wanted this, and lots of the 12’s players (and at least one manager) have been vocally opposed, I think the PR knock will not be that bad. At least, for the EPL teams I’ve been reading about.
ehh it seems to be DOA for now …
I am talking about promotion into the professional league rather than promotion/relegation between divisions in the League.
The playoff system was also introduced at the same time, but only two clubs are promoted from the National Leagues into the full Football League, and IIRC when this was first brought in, only one club could earn promotion to the Football League.
That promotion into the Football League from the National League is conditional on facilities and financial requirements - such as auditable accounts etc. This actually prevented some clubs from being promoted.
The number of promotion places only expanded to 2 in 2003 - so I was 2 years out - not bad from flakey memory recall.
Can’t say I am sorry, I think the thing was announced due to the forthcoming and long awaited changes to the Champions League which is apparently due to expand to 30 clubs - I don’t know the rest of the format but it won’t be hard to find it online.
If it had not been for that UEFA Champions Leagues announcement I think there is every chance that the Super League proposal would have been delayed until the off season to try keep the temperature down.
The idea of a European Super League has been discussed for at least a decade. I have no doubt the fact that there is no fans allowed in stadiums enabled owners and directors to finally try and go ahead with it.
Try and pull this off in 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019 then fans would protest and boycott the games meaning full stadiums would become empty stadiums as a result of choice. Clubs who sought greed would be hit in their pockets by loss of fan revenue by choice.
The Covid situation making stadiums empty because of public health finally gave clubs an opening. They probably thought fans would have short memories and six months from now when the new season is underway and the ESL is launched that the fans would take whatever they were given because it has been so long since anyone was allowed inside.
I suspect you are right.
The reduction in gate receipts gave a veneer of plausibility and a thin shield of justification (if the ESL was offering a bumper payment who wouldn’t want that, right?) and the fans being somewhat distant from the game gave a perfect opportunity to force the issue.
Wrong! and in reaching for this they may have initiated an erosion of the powers they currently hold. There’ll be a hunger for change that may just translate into meaningful action.
So after the almost total dissolution of the ESL in the night of the long knives, there are only Barca and Real left (at least at the moment I write this post). Maybe they can play their own league with, say, 34 Barca-Real matches per season? I’ve heard this would bring great revenues in the Asian and US markets…
Every day is El Classico day!!!
The irony is that there is now a lot of talk in the UK about ways to loosen the power of these owners. Talk about shooting themselves in the foot.
Sports being sports, it’ll blow over in time. Sports owners are usually greedy assholes and they’ll come up with some other greedy scheme in a few years.
Without doubt.
Report on one of the main architects, Florentino Perez, on the BBC today
Having read what he has said, it seems to me that he sees things largely from a Spanish POV where you have two clubs absolutely dominating - and this of course is because of the money with which they contract the top players.
Unsurprisingly both Real and Barca have bad cashflow issues. His claim that there are ‘a lot of poor quality games’ - but of course when you are playing in la Ligue and you have only one, maybe two other clubs that are able to offer meaningful competition then that is a symptom of wealth inequality.
It then makes little sense to reinforce that particular problem - surely the best way to ensure ‘quality games’ is to ensure that teams are more equal on finance.
Its obvious that Perez has little idea - he goes on to say that due to finance Real are unable to continue with other projects such as signing on other top players - again that is a symptom of the problem.
The elephant in the room is player costs, transfer fees and wages, the monetry rewards to a club are not enough to sustain such costs.
Perez and a few others are making an infuriating argument for entitlement. The complaints are that the big clubs with the big brands are spending too much to achieve this and that the smaller clubs are riding their coattails by living within their means.
What I hear when that’s said is that Barcelona et al are the only clubs who should be allowed to be successful. If Barca has a debt problem from overspending on players, then perhaps fucking Barca should consider cutting back on player costs instead.
I think the difference in English sports is that they are clubs first, and money making entities second. Profitability is actually a newer concept in the football pyramid, which is something that these American have pushed since they became involved. Say what you want about Man City and Chelsea’s owners (which as a Man U supporter kills me), but they at least understand that to a larger extent than the Americans. Owners are seen as temporary Caretakers and not as a Jerry Jones who own a franchise.
English football is built on neighborhood clubs playing other neighborhood clubs, and that is the basis to all the rivalries. The side of town or the road you were born on determines the club you root for and the clubs you root against. Manchester U wants to play Leeds
Liverpool wants to play Everton
Man City want to play against Fair Play Regulations.
It’s been baked into the communities for the last century.
Perez kicked off the current state of spending by building the Galácticos super-team, but now wants to say it’s impossible to continue without giving us more. 