The news came out on Sunday
It doesn’t matter where in the world you live in, if you love sports, you have heard about the new European Superleague. It was announced on Monday and it’s supposed to be a competition between 12 of the biggest European soccer clubs. It comes as a replacement for the already existing Champions League and to say it hasn’t been accepted well would be a huge underestimation.
When the news of the idea for this new competition broke out on Sunday it was heavily criticized by pundits Gary Neville and Jamie Carragher. Their anger was followed up with the disappointment of millions of fans all over the world, who started petitions to end this league before it had ever started.
The news reached the States, through James Corden’s monologue, who tried to explain the heartbreak of soccer fans all over the world to his American audience. And in case, he hasn’t succeeded, I will try to do it in this article.
Why is the new league such a bad decision ?
Soccer (football) is a game of the everyday people in Europe and across the world. Most clubs were started by workers in their communities and they are meant to represent the town that they originated from. Of course, as the game evolved and became bigger and bigger, some of the most popular and winning clubs got bought out by foreign investors and that began slowly but surely turning them into a money-making machine, more so than football clubs.
Let me explain, European football is structured in a way that every team virtually has the chance to become the best. And every year is a fight for those four spots for a couple of reasons: Winning the league and getting into European competitions. There’s also a battle for relegation and the weakest sides in the topflight must fight to stay in the first division. This dynamic, that exists in all of Europe’s major leagues is what makes soccer competitive and interesting, it’s what keeps people watching 6-8 months a year.
If we have a Super League, where the teams who participate are pre-determined and cannot be relegated, this just renders the league useless. It becomes only a competition between the first two teams that can win it. So, you get two competitions that will be extremely boring, since they are similar in format and the only thing that matters is the side who wins it.
Created by the poor, stolen by rich
Now that’s only one side of the problem. The other side is money and it’s the actual reason for all this Super League talk.
For the last few years, the major clubs (especially in England) haven’t been able to win the title or qualify for the Champions League. This means they have had a massive loss of revenue as it is. Now combine that with the pandemic and the lack of fans in the stadium and front of the TV and you get gigantic losses for each of these “big” clubs.These same teams – Manchester United, Manchester City, Real Madrid, and Barcelona also pay the largest salaries and have had the most amount of spending on players. This means that they need the money coming in from sponsors and the Champions League, otherwise they’d get into financial trouble and that has already begun happening for both Barca and Madrid.
Now, because in the domestic competitions they have to share profit with smaller teams, the only way to make the big money is through International (European) competitions. However, the Champions League is a big format that includes more than 70 teams participating from the beginning, which means a large part of the profit is shared with smaller clubs and if you don’t manage to qualify for the tournament you get nothing, which is the case for Manchester United and Arsenal this year.
The Superleague format solves those issues for all these big clubs – they get to play in it and get the profit, without having to qualify and without fearing relegation, which in turn destroys what soccer is all about – fair competition.
Football fans all over unite
Naturally, when the final format of the Super League was announced on Monday it caused an uproar amongst fans of the games. People that support the six biggest clubs in England went out and protested this change. They burned jerseys and help up signs that said, “Created by the poor, stolen by the rich”. Managers of these top clubs gave vague but clear statements that they are against this sort of format and would like to keep playing in the Champions League.
After the crazy uproar, all six of these big clubs pulled out. Manchester City started first and then everyone else followed suit. After this stunt, it seems like this Super League idea is off at least for now. But the fact that almost all of soccer’s greatest teams were willing to join it, means that it’s a matter of time before it happens. This idea also posed a lot of questions – should the teams that joined it be punished by losing points in the domestic championship? Should they be banned from European football?
There are many different takes on this developing story and we, at Gossipwhiz.com will follow all of them. Stay tuned and follow us on TikTok.
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