And there were there eleven/ten/eight/????? (European Super League)

[nineveh_uk]

I've been following the news story of the proposed European Super League with a lot of interest over the past 48 hours. I'm not a football fan - I watch the odd international semi-/final every few years while doing something else - but this isn't just a football story. It's a sports, cultural, and political story, and above all its a story about international capitalism, and it's absolutely fascinating. As well as deeply dispiriting. Gary Neville's excoriation of the proposals has been widely shared and for obvious reasons, because it is so very obvious that this is nothing about football as a sport and all about football as a commodity, about greed.

As of this evening, it looks things are starting to fall apart. Fan backlash is high, FIFA and UEFA seem serious about their threats. It looks like Chelsea and Manchester City are withdrawing, Barcelona saying that members would have to approve, rumours of phone calls abound. We'll see what happens. But even if these plans are thwarted, the issue won't end here, because without reform of the financial structures, the vulnerability remains, the overwhelming desire of the astronomically rich to get even richer.

*Zero surprise that the big German clubs took one look at this and backed away rapidly.

Comments

[legionseagle]

Knew it would be City who were the first crack in the wall.

[nineveh_uk]

It's really interesting seeing who's trying to tough it out, and for how long.

[legionseagle]

My boss's theory (and he was outside Hillsborough with his dad selling hot dogs when it all went wahoonie-shaped, so he knows football pretty much from the ground up) is that it began with the US-owned clubs, which makes sense, given how they loaded the clubs with debt the moment they got their claws in them.

[nineveh_uk]

It's a theory with a lot going for it. It would also make sense from the cultural perspective of "totally unable to grasp why a closed league would be considered a problem in football".

[antisoppist]

I've seen it explained as wanting to make football like the NHL, so it makes a lot of sense if it came from US owners turning up and trying to turn it into a totally different system that they understood based on owners gaining much more money, i.e. viewing the current system as making no sense financially and being in need of modernisation while ignoring its entire history.

[nineveh_uk]

It's all perfectly logical from their POV. If you are in it fundamentally as a money-pit*, obviously you want (a) as much profit as possible, and (b) to eliminate the risk of your profit being reduced. They don't care about the football itself, any more than a factory-owner cares about his machines. The football isn't actually the end product, the brand is.

*And it's interesting that the two clubs that pulled out first had other strong motivations, namely ego/reputation-laundering.

[antisoppist]

By now even the owners in it for the money seem to have grasped that there won't be any money if they have massively alienated all the fans and also the players! But so much detachment in deal-making boardrooms not to have realised that rather earlier.

[legionseagle]

Wow. Gary Neville spouting Red revolution.

[nineveh_uk]

To the barricades!