UEFA doubles ban ban for The Super League clubs

The negative reaction to Sunday’s ‘The Super League’ announcement was unexpectedly strong, outspoken and widespread, but it remains to be seen if any of the emotions turn into tangible action – and I do not mean protests by fans who contribute at the end of the day the least amount of power in this situation.

UEFA, who will lose the most in this proposal, came out strong from the start and threatened the widespread ban for the teams and players involved. (Although it is not the fault of the players or the coaches, it is certainly a useful strategy for UEFA to fend off playing for these teams.) However, even UEFA President Alexander Ceferin has acknowledged that UEFA do not really know how much power they have. to carry out any of the threats.

“We are still judging our legal team, but we will take all sanctions we can, and we will notify you as soon as possible. My opinion is that they should be banned from all our competitions and the players of all our competitions as soon as possible. ”

-Alexander Ceferin; source: AS

It should be noted that according to several reports, including The Athletic and the PA, the Super League has already filed preliminary motions with unnamed European courts against such legal action that UEFA may take, banning players or teams from competitions (such as the World Cup) that do not apply them. The Super League says they want to resolve the differences with UEFA and FIFA through open dialogue, but we are clearly not there yet.

UEFA apparently has the support of all the domestic leagues and governments, but one has the feeling that this kind of support is quite malleable, and whoever wins in the end will have the same support. It does not benefit any domestic league to ban any Super League clubs from their own domestic competitions.

UEFA’s biggest threat to the power of these clubs is to ban them from the Champions League, which is a bit ironic because they want to stop leaving the Champions League anyway. But the ban on the three semi-finalists from this year’s edition – PSG the only one currently not in the breakaway group – will indeed react strongly, if they accept that they have the right to do so. (As far as we know, the teams did not violate any actual competition rules.)

Quotes from a member of the UEFA executive committee named Jesper Møller have done the rounds, but it is not at all clear whether he is talking about something he wants to see happen, hopes to see happen or actually knows it is going to happen.

‘There should be one extraordinary meeting of the executive committee on Friday. I have an expectation that the 12 clubs will be thrown out. [Real Madrid, Manchester City, Chelsea] go out, and I expect that to happen on Friday, and then you have to see how to finish the Champions League. ”

-Jesper Møller; source: DR via Google Translate

Guess we’ll find out Friday?

This would give us time to start looking at this situation more rationally as well. It did not just arise from a vacuum, and the current situation is clearly seen as unsustainable for many teams, most of which are all the power brokers of the world club game.

The solution may not be The Super League. At least not yet and not in this form. But the cork has been pulled and the genius is now really out of the bottle.