NWR The European Super League?

The seeds were sown with the invention of the Premier league in 1992. If you've put up with that for best part of 10 years, no good complaining now when the clubs take it to its logical conclusion. The only sensible path is to stop watching, which I did years ago.

My dad tells stories of getting the same bus home to Urmston as Duncan Edwards got on.
 
johnny Shek said:
Having no representative teams could be seen as even more humiliating.
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Typical "French" arrogance!!!... ;)... Try and imagine there would be 5 German clubs (5 World Cup wins) 3 or 4 Italians (3 or 4WC wins?) and 2 French clubs (2 WC wins) and the super league would propose to include a British club (1 WC win)... Would it be better for UK to take 1 rather than "risk the humiliation" of having none? ... This would be fair... would it not??
 
First full transparency; I have been a Chelsea fan for 56 years and I am appalled by everything about the proposed ESL and ashamed and embarrassed that Chelsea has any part in it.
Due to a personal connection with a very senior football 'insider', I have been hearing about and following this plan for the last year and a half. The initial progenitor was Andrea Agnelli (owner/Chairman of Juventus) but he has been overtaken in zeal by the controlling interests at Real Madrid, Manchester United and Liverpool. As is clear this is all about money. The unfortunate fact today is that for the 'top' clubs paid attendance at football grounds is vastly less important than the money generated by TV rights, merchandising and brand monetization. The bulk of this revenue comes from non-European markets (predominantly Asian but with a growing US element) . As a consequence of this the clubs participating in the ESL are willing to give up gate income and domestic fan loyalty to gain greater income from new markets. These new markets are simply not interested in watching Burnley vs Southampton or Bilboa vs Valencia and the idea that the tension and hope derived from watching say Sheffield vs Liverpool is what fuels the attraction of the EPL is simply irrelevant. As my connection told me 'these markets are only interested in watching top clubs with star players and will pay a lot of money to do that'.
Of course I am beyond thrilled when Chelsea win major trophies, particularly as I also watched them in the old second division twice, but for a long time I have looked at my friends who support clubs like QPR and Ipswich and thought that this is what real support looks like.
 
Surely the factor of players being banned from being on the national team will be a major factor. Can't see top clubs in the Premier league hanging onto top players in those circs
 
I think people should not underestimate JP Morgan. My guess is that a number of the elected clubs are in dire financial circumstances with huge debts. JP Morgan will decide to finance them with the right loans and will be in pole position to implement whatever strategy they have in mind when some of the SL members have a problem. It would be interesting to know who may also be behind JP Morgan...
Of course FIFA and UEFA won't play easily...
How long did it take for Rod Laver and Ken Rosewall to come back to Wimbledon?
 
Good Spectator article giving a different side. I agree totally with Preston when he says, "Because the idea that professional football is some kind of social enterprise owned and run by fans and communities might have been true 100 years ago, but in recent decades it has been a rapacious, commercial enterprise motivated mostly by money."

There is a different side to the game at grass roots but let's not kid ourselves that the professional leagues are not mainly all about commercial enterprise and any owner would snap your hands off to be in the position of the Liverpool's of this world. Sad but true.
 
Joel Hopwood said:
Surely the factor of players being banned from being on the national team will be a major factor. Can't see top clubs in the Premier league hanging onto top players in those circs
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This will be relevant to some players and less so for others. Once again the factor is money. Football players have a finite number of years in which to maximize their income and even this can come to a sudden end through injury. Research suggests that If players are banned from national teams as a consequence of playing in the ESL most will elect to be on contracts of 200-600K per week and not play for their country.
 
Doesn’t bother me, I’ll continue to watch the SELKENT u8’s and u10s league matches every Sunday morning this season before moving onto u9’s and u11’s next year, and so on...

But if it does happen, football will just adjust. In the US, the college football league (SEC) has a higher average attendance than the NFL. The new super league will just be a corporate entertainment facility played out at quiet, soulless grounds like the Emirates, while the real fans continue to attend games with a good atmosphere at Selhurst Park and other such grounds as they do now. It might even mean teams start playing a strong team in the FA Cup again...
 
One can say what they want but the current PM feels the mood...
Super League means Super League, UEFA and FIFA need us more than we need them, this will be the easiest deal in history and we will stay in the single Premier League...
Hoops wrong thread... My apologies Tom...
 
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Joel Hopwood said:
My dad tells stories of getting the same bus home to Urmston as Duncan Edwards got on.
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At QPR in the old days some of the players would have a pie and pint in the pub before the game alongside supporters doing the same thing. I daresay modern sports nutrition is down on that sort of thing. To me the game has been despoiled by its entirely unnecessary obsession with grotesque levels of physical fitness, a focus which has destroyed the elegance and seemliness that once characterised it.
 
Thom Blach said:
Listening to some of the media coverage it does sound as though JP Morgan are proposing to privatise the Boy Scouts and the Mother's Union, contradicting my impression that mammon and professional football are already very comfortable bedfellows.
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Thom Blach said:
At QPR in the old days some of the players would have a pie and pint in the pub before the game alongside supporters doing the same thing. I daresay modern sports nutrition is down on that sort of thing. To me the game has been despoiled by its entirely unnecessary obsession with grotesque levels of physical fitness, a focus which has destroyed the elegance and seemliness that once characterised it.
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Some evidence of rose coloured nostalgia there Thom. I remember many, many games at Loftus Road and elsewhere that singularly lacked both elegance and seemliness.
 
Thom Blach said:
I am all in favour of non-competitive sports.
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There's no such thing.

Obviously being a supporter of a Scottish football team, albeit one that is often accused of money-grabbing due to annual rumours of moving to the EPL or the formation of a "North Atlantic League", this will probably impact me less tha supporters of the "super 12".
It will be interesting to see how this progresses though and if the banishment of players from the UEFA and FIFA competitions actually happens, it may make some of the elite of the elite players think twice about joining a super league club if it means they will no longer be selected to represent their country. They may even realise that the £100k+ a week they are earning is more than enough to enjoy a very comfortable life and retirement (if they break all connections with football when they retire as a player) and trebling that or more that is not as desirable as representing their country. Who knows but a large part of football may suddenly develop a social awareness and realisation how privileged a life they lead compared to a huge percentage of their team's fans.
I stopped watching EPL football very soon after the EPL came into being and certainly since the turn of the century because of the huge amounts of money involved, and, actually, many of the players on stratospheric salaries, were often fairly average and the matches were pretty dull. I'm starting to go that way with the CL too and certainly wouldn't change my diary to watch even the latter stages.
Its a shame that football is going this way and one wonders when matches will start to be rigged to prevent any single team running away with the super league title (e.g. Man City are currently 21 points ahead of Liverpool and nearly 30 points ahead of Arsenal, so anything is possible), as surely something like that would make people turn off their TV sets?
 
“We do this to save football”

Words spoken by Florentino Perez (Real Madrid) this evening. Well, I call bullshit on that Mr Perez. It’s a very simple way to ensure that a few “elite” and by “elite” they mean very rich clubs are guaranteed a larger share of football revenue in the future. It’s about protection of their interests and that alone. To dress it up as anything else is frankly more insulting than the concept itself.
 
Jonathan Kalman said:
As a consequence of this the clubs participating in the ESL are willing to give up gate income and domestic fan loyalty to gain greater income from new markets. These new markets are simply not interested in watching Burnley vs Southampton or Bilboa vs Valencia and the idea that the tension and hope derived from watching say Sheffield vs Liverpool is what fuels the attraction of the EPL is simply irrelevant. As my connection told me 'these markets are only interested in watching top clubs with star players and will pay a lot of money to do that'.
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Am I the only one who sees a parallel with wine here -- producers deserted their longtime loyal and passionate followers to seek out those who paid the highest sums and weren't really interested in the enjoyment of the wine, but rather in being seen as drinking "only the best"?

Edited for grammar.
 
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Rob Lockwood said:
And...

Daniel Yates
@danielyates_
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12h


AC Milan: No league title since 2011.
Inter: No league title since 2010.
Juventus: 4th in Serie A.
Atletico: No league title since 2014.
Arsenal: No league title since 2004.
Chelsea: 5th in the PL.
Man Utd: No league title since 2013.
Spurs: :D

Super League? Embarrassing.

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Again the parallel with wine -- branding, not quality (although the two do sometimes meet).
 
It has prompted a lot of overripe commentary in the Guardian and elsewhere, and inevitable comparisons with the formation of the EPL. I think the apter one is with the great schism in the world of darts, also in 1992, between the established BDO and the upstart PDC, which brought such benefits as live darts from Ally Pally 12 hours a day and collateral televisual entertainment such as a camera in the board and the exciting programme Darts Players' Wives
 
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