Plans for a European football super league appear on the brink of collapse on Tuesday, a dazzling explosion for a multi-million dollar proposal that has caused outrage from almost every corner of the sport since it was announced on Sunday.
According to a person familiar with the club, Chelsea, one of six English teams that have signed up as founding members of the new league, have prepared documents to officially withdraw from the project. A club spokesman declined to comment.
According to people with knowledge of the situation, Manchester City, who lead the Premier League, were also close to his agreement. City’s approximate face came shortly after celebrated Spanish coach Pep Guardiola had it the plans thwarted for a closed competition and said, ‘It’s not a sport if it does not matter whether you lose.’ A Manchester City spokesman, citing legal reasons, declined to comment on the club’s plans.
And Manchester United chief executive Ed Woodward, one of the key drivers behind the Super League plan, will leave the club at the end of the year, the team announced. Neither he nor the club’s co – chairman, Joel Glazer, made any reference to the Super League when they crowned him.
The loss of two huge Premier League clubs – and one of the major architects of the Super League – would probably be the death knell for the league, depriving it of both leadership and the competitive legitimacy that would make it attractive to sponsors and broadcasters. . It could also force the other clubs – especially the four other Premier League teams that have signed – to reconsider their participation.
Other top clubs in Europe have already rejected the project. French champions Paris St.-Germain, a deep-seated Super League official, announced on Tuesday that he would not be taking part. Its decision comes a day after German power stations Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund became known for their opposition. The multi-year Dutch champion, Ajax, a four-time winner of the Champions League, also soon came out against the plan.
The Super League, an alliance of a dozen of the world’s best, richest and most popular teams, would have redesigned football structures and economies and brought about one of the biggest redistributions of wealth in sports history by billions of dollars to a handful of clubs who would be permanent members of the new elite competition. Some of the biggest brands in football – including Real Madrid, Manchester United, Liverpool and Juventus – would be part of the league.
Instead, it seemed to be falling apart amid a growing wave of internal insurgency, political threats, anger, public ridicule and, very ominously, humble U-turns by several of the founding teams.
European football officials erupted in rage over the weekend, seeing them as a direct challenge to the domestic leagues and continental competitions that have been the backbone of European football for a century.
That outrage soon spread. Players from the prospective Super League clubs spoke out against the plan in public. Coaches did little to disguise their opposition. And politicians in England and France have pledged to oppose the plan with official action.
In Britain, which provides half of the members of the breakaway group, Prime Minister Boris Johnson met with supporters and leaders of the Premier League on Tuesday. Later, his office promised to do whatever was necessary to prevent the billion-dollar competition from continuing, promising that nothing was off the table.
“We are examining a range of options, including legislative options,” said Max Blain, Johnson’s spokesman.
Later that day, hundreds of Super League fans marched to Chelsea Stadium before the game against Brighton, a day after Liverpool fans surrounded the team’s bus for a Premier League match at Leeds United.
After the game, Liverpool’s coach and his players revealed that they had not been consulted about the plans, and at least one said he did not want any part of it. ‘I do not like it, and hopefully it does not happen, ”said club veteran James Milner.
On Tuesday, several of his teammates tweeted that sentiment at the same time, which made it clear that the players were collectively opposed to Liverpool’s decision to sign. Their German manager, Jürgen Klopp, a longtime and outspoken opponent of the super league concept, said he intends to discuss the matter with the owners of the team.
Chelsea, like some of the other founding clubs, were surprised by the strong opposition to the proposals of its supporters and the wider British public. According to the person who is aware of the club’s plans, the feeling of strong feeling led to the change of the team.
The Guardian newspaper reports that the team was forced to pull out after an uprising by players involved that they would not be able to participate for their national teams in global events such as the World Cup or local tournaments such as the European Championships of the summer and the Copa America in South America. .
The threats come from UEFA, which oversees football in Europe, including the Champions League, and FIFA, the world’s global governing body.
FIFA warned clubs in January that it would prevent them and their players from international competitions if they proceed with plans for a new league, and the organization’s president, Gianni Infantino, seems to be renewing the threat – without repeating it – in an address at a European football congress on Tuesday in Switzerland.
“If some choose to go their own way, they have to live with the consequences of their choice, they are responsible for their choice,” Infantino said in a speech to European football leaders in Montreux, Switzerland. ‘It means concrete, whether you are inside or you are not. You can not be half inside and half outside. It must be absolutely clear. ”
The threat, if FIFA were to go through, carried weight. The 12 Super League clubs employ many of the world’s leading players, including the core of the national teams of Brazil, Argentina, England, Italy, Spain, France and even the United States.
Some of the clubs involved in the project have expressed particular frustration over how it has been launched since Sunday. A statement announcing a league that, according to its supporters, would open a new chapter for European football came late Sunday when much of Europe was asleep.
But after the teams involved made almost no public comments, Real Madrid president Florentino Pérez, the only manager involved in the plan to defend it in public, was left to defend it alone in a chat show. which aired in Spain on Monday at midnight.
Pérez, the chairman of the new league and for years one of its leading proponents, insisted that the project would benefit the whole of football, which he said was in danger of collapsing due to the global pandemic. He did not say why so many of the clubs that joined the new league were so badly mismanaged before the pandemic took place, or made a convincing case about how the billions of dollars’ worth of television and sponsorship income goes to a handful of top clubs not be donated. will break down to the leagues and teams that will be left out.
“Every time there is a change, there are always people who are against it,” Pérez said. “We are doing this to save football at this critical moment.”