‘Dirty dozen’ face European ban
▶ Uefa could throw clubs out by Friday ▶ Government slams Super League plan ▶ United’s Woodward branded ‘a snake’
Manchester United, Arsenal, Chelsea and Manchester City were in danger of being thrown out of European semi-finals last night as football authorities, fans and the Government declared war on the Super League.
The four remaining English clubs in the Champions League and Europa League were warned they could be expelled from their respective competitions as soon as Friday, while the likes of Harry Kane, Raheem Sterling and Marcus Rash- ford were facing a ban from playing in this summer’s European Championship. Liverpool and Tottenham were also rendered footballing outcasts, along with Real Madrid, Barcelona and the rest of the “dirty dozen” clubs behind a plot that has sparked arguably the biggest outcry in the history of the game.
The backlash against the largely closed competition intensified last night as: ▶ The Government pledged to do “whatever it takes” to stop the Super League, which was also denounced by the Duke of Cambridge.
▶ The Premier League called a meeting of its remaining 14 clubs that could see action taken against the so-called “Big Six”.
▶ Bruno Fernandes became the first player from a Super League club to cast doubt on it, while Mesut Ozil and Ander Herrera hit out against it.
▶ United executive vice-chairman Ed Woodward was branded a “snake” by Aleksander Ceferin, the president of Uefa, who called the rebel tournament “a spit in the face of all football lovers”.
▶ Bayern Munich, Borussia Dortmund, Paris St-germain and Porto refused to sign up as Uefa passed Champions League reforms.
▶ Yougov poll found 79 per cent of football fans opposed a Super League; 14 per cent supported it.
▶ The Super League began legal action to prevent the competition being killed off before it began.
That action failed to stop unprecedented steps being taken to do just that, including to ban what Ceferin dubbed the “dirty dozen” from the Champions League and Europa League – potentially even from the rest of this season’s competitions. “My opinion is that as soon as possible they have to be banned from all our competitions and the players from all our competitions,” he said.
Jesper Moller, a member of Uefa’s ruling executive committee, told
Danish television: “The clubs must go, and I expect that to happen on Friday. Then we have to find out how to finish [this season’s] Champions League tournament.”
However, sources at the governing body downplayed the chances of such speedy action, which the Super League clubs themselves were confident would be legally unenforceable.
Those same clubs were equally dismissive about Ceferin’s pledge to ban their players from European Championships – perhaps even this summer’s tournament – and his claim Fifa would follow suit with the World Cup.
“We are all united against this nonsense of a project,” Ceferin said. “I cannot stress more strongly how everyone is united against these disgraceful, self-serving proposals, fuelled by greed above all else.”
Ceferin was scathing about “liars” Woodward and Andrea Agnelli, the chairman of Juventus, to whose daughted he is godfather, after being led to believe they backed the Champions League reforms.
“We might be naive in not knowing we have snakes close to us. Now we do,” said the president of Uefa.
Ceferin held crisis talks yesterday with Oliver Dowden, the Culture Secretary, who pledged the full power of the State would be deployed to stop the Super League.
He told the House of Commons: “We will put everything on the table to prevent this from happening.” Dowden said the Super League launch had left him “no choice” but to bring forward his long-promised fan-led review of football governance.
Just two days after the funeral of the Duke of Edinburgh, the Duke of Cambridge – who is the president of the Football Association – also spoke out against the Super League.
He said: “Now, more than ever, we must protect the entire football community. I share the concerns of fans about the proposed Super League and the damage it risks causing to the game we love.”