European Super League - An Alternative Idea

Football War

These have been tensed day for the most beloved game in the world.

Out of the blue, 12 of the most important European football clubs decided to leave all the UEFA competitions to form their own. The reason is very simple: these clubs believe they are not paid enough by the top European football's body. This attempt recalls what happened in English football back at the 90s, when the clubs created their own league, known as Premier League, which replaced the historical First Division as English football's top flight. Unlike that attempt, which history proved very successful, the idea of a European “Premier League” seems to have died even before starting. Misunderstandings, lies, wrong timing and miscommunication, provoked an unprecedented unrest among players, coaches, directors, and of course fans.

Unlike the foreign club owners, all of these people understand that football is more than just a business. Football is the most followed and loved game in the world, the most practised sport and, at least in Europe, the first religion. Researches shown clearly that when your brain supports a club, it works the same way when you follow a cult. After all, if in Medieval Europe you could find at least a church in each town and village, in 21st century Europe you will find a football pitch in every town and village, while there will always be a stadium in every city, the modern day cathedrals. The social importance of football is so deep that even the political class (too often divided on the important issues), marched as one against the European Super League project.

We heard that the club owners tried to implement the NBA model, calling up to its financial success. During Covid times, these owners are in desperate need of money. The crisis exacerbated a trend that was already ongoing before the virus appeared. The top clubs invested hard during the last decade, more than they could afford. This is why UEFA tried to implement the so called Financial Fair Play, but the system didn't hold and soon the clubs found their way to evade this obstacle. Clubs kept on spending and expenses kept rising uncontrollably. City kept on spending 200 million a year just for the transfer market, Liverpool paid 90 million for a defender, Barcelona gave Dortmund 110 million for a 20 years old who acted as if he was 15 and PSG covered Neymar in gold just to win the Ligue 1. And what about salaries? On average, as admitted even by Agnelli and Perez, the two masterminds of the ESL, every top club spends 60-70% of its revenue on salaries. No healthy business can sustain itself with such figures.

Football clubs spending more than they can afford is not something new. During the 1980s, Bayern Munich risked to bankrupt and was forced to sell their star Rumenigge to Inter. Few years later, just Inter was going to deposit its accounting files in tribunal before the Moratti family came to rescue, taking over the club. A similar pattern happened to Chelsea in 2003. Just when the London club was on the brink to be filed for bankruptcy, Roman Abramovich flew over Stamford Bridge, and in love with the stadium decided to buy (and save) the Blues. In the same time, Borussia Dortmund was forced to sell the name of its stadium just to find the funds to run its daily operations.

Now history is repeating, but because of the pandemic, clubs are cracking all at the same time. When you suffer in group, that group gets closer and starts thinking alike. Because of their crazy expenses, these clubs need much more money, immediately. This desperation explains a move that otherwise seems illogical. How can you make a league out of just 12 teams, right from the next season, without provoking a massive retaliation from every corner?

The catholic church is the biggest and most successful business in history. All the donations and hence assets, collected throughout history, could make Jeff Bezos look like a peasant. The secret behind the Catholics' success is that they kept their product (promise of salvation) close to the people. The Super League founders instead tried to take the product away from the people and that was a huge mistake! There is no company without customers!

In reality, what the “dirty dozens” were looking for wasn't to create an alternative league. In the end they are the first ones relieved that their bluff was called. All what they wanted was to scare UEFA and push the body to share a much bigger slice of the Champions League revenue, plus the promise of reforming the highest European competition to make it even more profitable than now. At the moment, the CL generates around 3.5 billion EUR, but the new format might double the revenue.

This might allow the ESL group to breath and alleviate the burden of their immense debts.

Who could ever say that one day Chelsea would have become a healthy business model? Apart from Chelsea, the others clearly come from years of poor management. Maybe the only club which is justifiable is Tottenham. Don't get fooled by the absolute number. Unlike the others, part of the huge debt comes from their new stadium, a plant that costed 1.2 billion pounds! While the other big “invested” on human “assets” who guarantee returns for 5-6 years on average, Tottenham invested in a real estate asset that will generate revenue for 30-40 years. Indeed, Tottenham stayed off the transfer market for 3 years! Something odd in today's football, where everyone, with fans in first line, pushes for more and more expensive (and most of the times illogical) transfers.

We can already begin to see the shape of these responsabilites. We have the top clubs that spent what they could not afford and now are trying to punish smaller or simply better managed clubs for their financial failures, running away from the very problems they created. We have greedy players and agents who ask their clubs for more and more money, acting always as if they are never paid enough. Then we have the very supporters, who live off strident contradictions. They complain how much players earn, but at the end of every season, they ask (sometimes threaten) their clubs to buy and hire the strongest footballers, a kind of operation which requires enormous sums of money.

In all of this, meritocracy, which is the very essence of every sport, is crushed. Meritocracy is even treated like a problem. When Leicester City was running toward its first historical Premier League, Charlie Stillitano, an American businessman who wanted to create a Super League already back then, shouted that the Foxes had to leave their Champions League pass to Manchester United, even if the Red Devils had shown a poor level of quality, despite a lavish transfer market campaign. The same nuisance is nowadays felt by someone about the incredible performance of Atalanta, a club which constantly “steals a Champions League spot from clubs like AC Milan or AS Roma”.

It's clear that top clubs are in denial. They are trying to build a Super League, just to avoid the confrontation with their structural problems. Football simply spends more than it can afford. Even by building a Super League, clubs of course will earn more, but of course they will spend even more than they do right now. If instead of 100 million a season a club will cash in 300 million, then on the transfer market, this team will buy the same player for 3x more. The business model must change, the mentality must change.

Rather than blaming small clubs for their failures, top clubs should learn from them and supporters should stop being hysterical and starting to appreciate more the beauty of football and not being obsessed only with victories. In sport, only one can win and the odds are never on your side, even when you have the strongest team. You must accept that most of the times you will end the season with 0 trophies and that's OK. It won't change your life and even by purchasing a player for 100 million Euros will not grant you a trophy anyway. That transfer will only build up this absolute madness.

Just this last point is enough to uncover the madness behind the Super League project, conceived by who lost touch with reality. Nevertheless, nobody is always 100% right and nobody is always 100% wrong. There are some valid points in the ESL. The main reason why the big 12 made such a reckless move, beside pure greed, is to have a bigger bargaining power with UEFA and finally be able to call the shots on important topics, starting with those very values mentioned so passionately by UEFA and FIFA during these days, despite these bodies failed often to embody such values. One of these values is transparency. While the Financial Fair Play aimed to make football clubs totally transparent (and some of them already are since they are listed on stock exchanges), FIFA and UEFA have always been secretive about their accounting. In this, clubs are right to stand up and demand transparency in order to know exactly how much UEFA keeps from the Champions League and what slice goes to the protagonists that make such an entertainment possible.

Thanks to this parting tactic, which looks like a ridiculous bluff, the Big 12 managed to get a new Champions League format which should secure a better financial deal. After the storm, a good fusing deal can still come out and that's what it seems to take shape in these hours. A hybrid between the current Champions League and the hypothetical European Super League.

United again, for now.... For now, because a Super League might still make sense if the trend we see in the local leagues is the same. In too many leagues nowadays, the same team wins. Bayern Much has been lifting the Meistershale for 8 years in a row. Juventus ruled Italy for 9 years non-stop. In Spain, it's been since 2013 that we don't see La Liga far from the hands of either Barcelona or Real Madrid. Even in the well balanced Premier League, 3 of the last 4 editions ended already in February, thanks to City and Liverpool constantly flying around the 100 points area. The points average increased dramatically in the last seasons, symptom that the big have less and less problems in beating the others. During the 90s, scoring 80 points was enough to lift the national trophy, nowadays Liverpool showed that even 97 points might be not enough to secure the same title...

It's clear that there is a big balance issue in the national leagues and if the local bodies don't something to rebalance the values, a European Super League will be inevitable. Perez is right when he says that the youngsters are interested just in the big teams games. Look at who they choose when playing FIFA. Do they choose Manchester City or Hull City? The citizens are the obvious choice. And given the attention span reducing every year, to keep a Gen Z focused on a 90 minutes long game, you must serve the most exciting show possible. Of course, the best show possible must include also some charming underdog. Don't forget that Leicester got a huge following. In South America, continent traditionally focused on Real and Barcelona, fans shifted their attention on the incredible Foxes during the magical 2015/2016 season. Unfortunately for Sillitano's liver, a future ESL will need also underdogs.

Dream League

I've imagined for a year already how a European Super League might look like. Let me tell you what I've been imagining. First of all it should be called "Dream League"! Super League sounds cold.

The Dream League should be the perfect combination between innovation and tradition. You can't treat football like an iPhone. Football is a game before being a product and who manages it must be aware of this, otherwise this manager will be crushed by society as we've seen these days.

Someone would like to copy the NBA. Copying entirely a model of another nation, that sport-wise is completely different from Europe is not the way. European Parliament President, David Sassoli, rightly said: “They are trying to impose on us a model that is not ours!”

The only match with the NBA would be the Dream League divided into two "conferences": North and South. This is in order to have more clubs, but also to make travels between cities more manageable. You can divide Europe better into West and East, but the two conferences would be dramatically unequal.

Teams for the first edition should be selected based on a mix of their history, fan base and recent results.

Northen Conference

• Ajax
• Arsenal
• Borussia Dortmund
• Celtic
• Chelsea
• Liverpool
• Manchester City
• Manchester United
• PSV
• Rangers
• RB Leizpig
• Shaktar Donesk
• Tottenham Hotspurs
• Zenit Saint Peterburg

Southern Conference

• AC Milan
• Atletico Madrid
• Barcelona
• Bayern Munich
• Benfica
• Internazionale
• Juventus
• Olympiacos Pireus
• Olympique Marseille
• Paris Saint German
• Porto
• Real Madrid
• Red Star Belgrade
• Sevilla

Format

Each conference would work with two legs between all the teams.

The first team of each conference wins the conference title and gets the wild card directly to the round of 8 for the play-off phase.

The first two teams of conference would play also the Super Cup before the knock out phase, maybe on the same pitch where the Dream League final will be hosted. It is a way of awarding the two best teams with a bonus trophy halfway of the season.

The other 7 teams will access the round of 16. We could use a tennis crossing system to pair them, with the 2nd team against the 8th , the 3rd against the 7th and so on.

Once the round of 16 is concluded, the round of 8 will be drafted, as well as the next stages.

Also a Final Four might work out, given the favourable feedback received during the Champions League 2019/2020. Who wins the knock-out phase wins the Dream League and becomes European Champion.

Of course, to make the Dream League meritocratic, relegations must be part of the game, regardless of the prestige. The last 2 teams from the North and the last 2 from the South, will get back to their domestic leagues. Are you Barcelona? We don't care, next year you will play in La Liga!

Promotions will be awarded to the semi-finalists of the Champions League. Note that in this model, the Champions League can remain the same, but simply played by teams not participating in the Dream League.

What would happen to the domestic leagues?

In this model, the domestic leagues would lose their most titled clubs, hence their most profitable brands. It's clear that in the short term, the remaining clubs will lose considerable streams of income. The TV outlets still interested in showing the domestic leagues will offer figures way lower than what currently happens. However, in the long term, those small clubs that fought for nothing during these years, could finally compete for the national title and generate more competitive leagues, which could still draw their specific niche audience. With a proper marketing strategy, national leagues can still play an important role, especially for those really into football, involved into the social aspect of this sport, for those who see football as much more than a usual business.

After all, even now leagues like Serie B, 2 Bundesliga and the English Championship are followed by a wide and loyal audience. Even in the USA, from where everyone seems willing to take the NBA as a model, lower leagues exist and flourish. Some even prefer to watch the NCAA (college basketball) rather the all-star-stuffed NBA.

The hardline opposers of the Super League must understand that the same sport can have multiple forms. A new form doesn't necessarily have to exclude or even destroy another one. I want to even envision something extraordinary. If the Dream League would be “generous” enough to share a small portion of their expected handsome proceedings to the lower national leagues, these competitions could host the most promising young talents, who might play with less pressure for the result and hence, free to play more for fun and less for tactic. We really might have national leagues more spectacular and competitive than they had ever been!

To reach this ideal outcome, it is essential to set up a better climate. UEFA (and traditional fans) must understand that football is also an industry and every industry needs to adapt in order to survive and thrive. Fans often miss this point, but thriving doesn't award only greedy players, directors and agents, but even and mostly all the normal people who work for the clubs. Like every company, clubs need employees to manage their everyday needs. If clubs don't generate revenue, many normal people, with normal families, will lose their jobs. However, if clubs thrive, these people can keep their jobs and many other people can join the crew. Maybe you should consider to apply for these clubs rather than blaming them. Your dream job might be one click away...

On the other hand, the 12 rebels must wonder how they became so big and important. Would they have the bargaining power they think to have, without their history? What would Real Madrid be without those first 5 European Cup editions? What would Barcelona be without their 2 “tripletes”? What would Liverpool be without their legendary dominion in the 1980s?

History makes the difference between a big club and a small club (or an artificial big team like Man City and PSG). Even the British PM, Boris Johnson recalled how football clubs are not just “global brands”, but they are also pieces of history of the cities and the countries where they were born.

Who ignores history and doesn't respect it, is bound to make the same mistakes of the past. With this, I mean that if the Super League will chase only easy profits, while trashing football's history, in a few years its members will find themselves again to deal with the same liquidity problems they are facing today, despite they don't want to admit it. And they have to blame themselves for this. For years, UEFA tried to implement the financial fair-play. The system was not designed just to make competition more balanced, but to avoid that clubs could get smashed down their own debts. The rule was very simple: you can spend only what you generate. That player costs too much? You won't buy him. This player bids up the contract renewal too high? Tell him to find another team! In the end, nobody wanted to do this, but everybody tried to go around the system, and successfully as the appeal by Manchester City against the ban from UEFA competitions showed. Everybody, exept, I must admit, the German clubs. Now I'm not sure if Dortmund and Leipzig said no to the ESL because they must obey the Bavarian mafia, but I want to believe that the Bundesliga is the only top league that is financially sustainable. It is for few main reasons, the most important of which is that clubs are in the hands of their fans. According to the German law, at least 51% of a sports club's shares must be owned by its fans. An external investor, like a Russian oligarch or an Arab sheik, cannot hold more than 49% of a club. That's why in Bundesliga you don't see crazy transfer movements, but a lot of young talents blossoming non-stop. Of course, even in Germany not everyone is happy with this model. Many believe that such a system blocks investments, without which, German clubs struggle to be competitive and are forced to sell their young talents to the big European clubs, or to Bayern when such players threaten the Bavarian supremacy. As restraining this system might seem, it was designed after decades, over which top German clubs risked the financial breakdown, including Bayern in the 1980s and Dortmund in the 2000s. Until then, the German league was avid like the others, but unlike the others, Germans are good at learning from history and so they worked to make football sustainable, in spite of populistic pressures that too often are closely linked to the panem et circenses logic so precious to the Roman emperors: give them bread and games, so they won't bother about important issues...