Super Leagues and the fall out

 

On Sunday Real Madrid, Barcelona, Atletico Madrid, Juventus, AC Milan, Inter Miland, and the "big six" EPL teams announced their intentions to leave the UEFA run Champions League, in favour of a new "European Super League". The plan was for the founding 12 members to be joined by another 3 permanent clubs and then invite five teams into the tournament each year.

This plan lasted round about 48 hours before it started to crumble under the outrage of the footballing world. Bayern Munich, Borussia Dortmund, PSG & Porto were quick to distance themselves from the plans. UEFA and FIFA called for the clubs to re-think their intentions. Downing Street informed the world they would work on legislation to prevent this going forward.

Thankfully the outrage and disgust from the footballing world, and us "legacy fans" in general, was enough to see teams like Chelsea and Man City make a quick U-turn. From what I understand those two teams were the last of the original 12 to really join on, so it is no surprise they were the first to bail. From there the idea was always set to fail as more and more teams pulled out. 

Although it appears Florentino Perez is yet to give up the goat the question now appears to be what, if any, punishment the 12 teams should face.

Make no mistake about it, this was a money grab. These teams saw a chance to either ensure they would control the flow of money in the game or at the very least, as it would appear with the new UCL format now, their own finances were looked after first and foremost with the rest of the footballing world playing catch up.

Many fans call for the teams to be punished via point deductions, transfer bans, and competition expulsion. While there isn't a right and wrong opinion per see, for me this wouldn't sit right as it punishes the fans, the players, and the managers, many of whom were part of the motion condemning the idea of the ESL.

As Rangers fans, we understand all too well what it is like to be punished for the actions of dishonest businessmen and I wouldn't wish that on the fans of almost any other club in the world. 

This was a purely business-driven decision by the powers that be behind the scenes, and as such if it were up to me I would hit them where it hurts the most, in their pocket. Now I've no idea what would be substantive fine for clubs of this size, many of them like Man City, have enormous wealth while others like Barcelona and Real Madrid are struggling financially (which explains why the push for this move). 

However, there will be members of the respective Football Associations who will understand these figures and will be able to set an appropriate fine. That money should then be put directly into the grassroots system to help nurture the sport in the most vulnerable but also most important area. 

I won't hold my breath though. I expect there won't be any form of sanctions handed out. These clubs are too popular and too powerful.

I will admit though I do want to see these clubs punished. Not only for the possibility they could have ruined football as we know it, taking all the merit out of European qualification but from a purely selfish point of view also. 

We have waited 10 years to see our team make it back into the Champions League (A seat at the big table), to play in the biggest club tournament in the world, and they tried to take that away from us. Yes, it would have still been there, but it would have been in name only. 

Remove another 8 teams from the tournament in the same stature as the founding 12 and you effectively have the Europa League again. That's not to say the Europa League is a poor tournament, but it's not the one you aim to qualify for at the start of the season.

There is of course the potential both ourselves and our rivals across the city could have been invited into this new European Super League, but let's face it, it would have been as last choice replacements for the teams they had wanted to be in.

I might lose staunch points for saying that, but we all know our league isn't given much credit outside of Scotland, and if we're honest we would have been behind the Dutch, Portuguese, French, and other German teams in the invite list.

So what is the fallout of this failed power grab by these 12 teams? Well, the main fallout is that it isn't as much of a failure as it would appear on the surface. The new UCL format includes this same "invite" clause for a number of teams based on historical performance and these clubs will still hold the most power and get the largest slice of the pie come the end of the season.

Call me a romanticist but I would love to see us abolish this current and proposed system and go back to pre-CL days. Have the European Cup for champions only, knockout and ideally unseeded. The Cup Winners Cup, there's just something special about that tournament, for the winners of the domestic FA cups, and all the rest go into the UEFA cup.

But that will never happen. There's not the same money to be made in Juventus knocking out Real Madrid in the 1st round while Linfield progress past Barry Town.

Another fall-out of this has been the recent reports of a potential "British Super League". This one is slightly more interesting to me than other propositions, however not in the format that has been discussed.

The report has been that a new 18 team league would be started, with 16 EPL teams and the Old Firm. This doesn't do it for me. That's not a British League, that's the English League with us added in. It would soon lose the British part of the name and would get referred to as the English league and we would constantly be informed we are lucky they allowed us in like they were doing us some massive favour and not actually bringing us in to generate the extra TV revenue.

If they want to do a British Super League and not just a full British league system, I'd like to see it in some sort of format that has a top-flight starting like the previously mentioned one but with the relegation/promotion system similar to that of the Highland/Lowland play-off system we have in Scotland (apart from when Brechin are bottom of League 2). 

That way it would give the opportunity for teams like Aberdeen, Hearts, and Hibs to gain promotion should one of the Old Firm be in the relegation zone and still provide the path for the English Championship clubs too. 

It's not an ideal plan, it's just some spitballing from initial reports, but for me, if you're going to implement a British League you need to provide a path for all teams, not just pick and choose, otherwise you're just recreating the ESL on a smaller scale... and we saw how well that went down.

Perhaps a better place to start would be with a British Cup replacing the current League Cups? Though that in itself would pose issues. English clubs rarely seem to take the league cup serious these days, would they take this any more seriously? 

One suggestion floated by @HeartandHutts to me on twitter was the idea of a British Super Cup. Quite how that would look would need a wider discussion but it would make an interesting pre-season tournament between the 4 UK champions.

Although this move to form the ESL appears to have fallen flat on its face, it does look like the future landscape of the sport we all love is changing. Us "legacy fans" appear to not be the target audience anymore, and if we're honest haven't been since SKY started pumping money into the EPL.

The target now would seem to be North American and Asian fans, who consume their sport in a different way to ourselves, and the sport looks destined to at least try to compensate for that in some way, even if not as dramatic as the ESL.

The question that remains to be answered though is how much, if at all, we will be a part of it.

The Rambling Ger

Twitter - @GerRambling

IG - TheRamblingGer