European Super League: How the wealthy owners of the match achieved their own goal

Soon, all six of the Super League’s English contestants followed suit and bowed out of the competition. Barely 48 hours after it was announced, the project unraveled.

Arsenal were the furthest in acknowledging the crucial role that fans played in pushing the club to withdraw.

“The last few days we have once again shown the depth of the feeling our fans around the world have for this amazing club and the game we love,” began an open letter from the Arsenal board. “We did not need any reminder of this, but the reaction of fans in recent days has given us time for closer reflection and deep reflection.”

In the quest to make European football more profitable at the expense of competitive drama – 15 clubs would be immune to relegation in the Super League – the concept has taken football to a place the wider community did not want.
Fans protest against the European Super League outside Stamford Bridge.

From fans, players, experts and politicians – not to mention competing clubs and the governing bodies of the match – the reaction to the Super League was emphatic.

While fans with banners tackled the stadiums outside the stadiums, players presented their own demonstrations through T-shirts and post-match interviews.

On Tuesday, players from Liverpool, one of the twelve clubs that initially entered the exclusive competition, said on social media: ‘We do not like it and do not want it to happen’, was the collective message, even if they do not the Super League did not explicitly mention.

Their manager, Jurgen Klopp, shared his own reservations the day before, while Pep Guardiola, Klopp’s counterpart at Manchester City, played at the top of the game in the way “everyone thinks for themselves”.

Broadcasters, including Amazon and BT, have distanced themselves from the Super League, as have some of the leading TV figures in the game: “If it really happens, I will never work on this European Super League,” the BBC and the BT presenter Gary Lineker tweeted.

With the fact that the football community was virtually unanimous in its disapproval, politicians weighed in.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said the sports authorities will have the “full support” of his government to take action against the Super League plans, while opposition leader Keir Starmer called the withdrawal of clubs a “watershed moment” for the match call.

The Super League fiasco has not only shown how much power is being used by the wealthy owners of the top clubs in Europe, but also how football fans and stakeholders can fend off some of the power.

There was also resistance from some club owners. The president and CEO of Paris Saint-Germain, Nasser Al-Khelaifi, encouraged football not to forget his fans, as he pledged allegiance to UEFA’s European competitions, and Bayern Munich, who beat PSG in last year’s final. of the Champions League, also rejected the Super League.

Bayern and other German clubs operate under a 50 + 1 ownership rule, which means that members and fans own the majority of the ownership interests, rather than commercial partners.

But what is more sharply focused is how the game balances the intentions of club owners against the desires of the fans – a constant and existential demand for football.

On Monday, the British government announced a review event of the sport following the launch of the Super League, which it calls a ‘ground-and-branch investigation of football in this country’.

“Football needs to take its fans incredibly seriously and act against their own danger. I think it’s probably a learned lesson that will actually help with the situation ahead,” British Sports Minister Nigel Huddleston told CNN Sport’s Christina Macfarlane said.

Huddleston added that the review “will come up with a whole host of recommendations on football management and also the flow of money into football. We will see what the recommendations are and hopefully it will also help put us on a firmer footing. “

Among the possible outcomes of the review could be the introduction of an independent regulator of professional football in the UK.

“It’s been talked about for a few years, we don’t discount it,” Huddleston added.

“There are definitely problems with that in terms of the scope of responsibilities. I suspect that the idea of ​​a regulator will not go down well with some football authorities who believe they should probably do it themselves.

“But we’ve seen too many failures and too many problems with English football in the last few years.”

The Super League and the demand for ownership at the top of the game have united and mobilized the football community in a unique way, unlike other issues affecting the game.

At the request of his opinion on the Super League earlier this week, Leeds forward Patrick Bamford asked why the decision-makers of the match are prepared to take drastic action if the finances of football are at stake, but not against racism.

West Ham, one of the clubs that could miss the chance to top Europe’s tops with the launch of the Super League, tweeted on Tuesday that it’s time to return to focus on what’s important and stand together to to show that there is no room for racism. ‘

The announcement of the Super League also led to racial abuse against club owners on social media, according to Campaign Against Antisemitism, which identified tweets calling for classic tropical Jewish greed, parasitism and control, as well as references to the Holocaust. “

“No controversy, no matter how great the passions it may cause, can justify the horrific anti-Semitic abuse that some Twitter users have reported to football clubs and their owners,” a Campaign Against Antisemitism spokesman said.

Speaking on CNN’s anti-Semitic reports, a Twitter spokesman said: “Keeping people safe on Twitter is a priority for us. We have a clear policy in place – applicable to everyone, everywhere – that threats of violence, abuse and harassment and hate speech and we take action when we identify accounts that violate these rules. ‘

Twitter also said it had taken action against tweets referred to in the report because it violated the policy of the company’s hateful behavior.

The balance of power between Europe’s ‘big clubs’ and the sports bodies is an issue that will not soon disappear, but it is by no means the only issue that harms the sport.

There are plenty of others that go on for years, not least the investment in the women’s game and the way it is decided to host leading tournaments such as the World Cup.
Last month, for example, international teams took the opportunity to highlight the treatment of migrant workers in Qatar during the qualifiers for the 2022 World Cup.

At the end of 2019, Nasser Al-Khater, CEO of the organizing committee for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, told CNN that the country was “judged by perception very early on”.

“Has Qatar been treated unfairly? Yes, in my opinion, very much so,” Al Khater said.

But with the tournament now just over a year away, last month’s qualifiers will probably not be the last time Qatar’s human rights record comes under scrutiny. If the events surrounding the Super League have taught us anything, they are the biggest catalysts for change in football can be found within the game itself.

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