Premier League says new breakaway plot poses no threat
ESL plans are dismissed as ‘reverse Brexit’ for football European Zombie League marches on, says fans group
The Premier League believes a fresh declaration of war by European Super League rebels will pose no threat to their financial supremacy in the game after a proposal for a new breakaway competition was launched yesterday.
The plans announced by the ESL’S Madrid-based sister company A22, featuring “60 to 80” teams across more than one division, commit to few details other than claiming there will be no permanent members and stating a minimum of 14 games per club per season.
There was no clarity on whether there would be promotion and relegation between the divisions or whether the most established teams would ever find themselves falling out of the competition.
Those behind a project that is still being driven by rebels Real Madrid, Barcelona and Juventus, claim it will not be the original format that crashed in such spectacular fashion in April 2021, having proposed 14 permanent founder members and five open places every year.
The basis for the new project is claimed by A22 to have come as a result of detailed conversations with clubs around Europe on the financial problems they face. A key factor in A22’s pitch is that the Premier League’s financial power has made it impossible for other European clubs to compete.
Executives from the 20 Premier League clubs, who were together for a shareholders’ meeting in London yesterday, were dismissive of the plans, saying that it was an attempt to pit Europe against the English game. “It’s a reverse Brexit for football,” said one source.
John Hahn, the American investor who is a co-founder of A22 said that, with the exception of the English game, “European football is in a pretty bad situation and getting worse”. Hahn has worked closely in the past with Florentino Perez, the Real Madrid president and chief driving force behind the ESL, who was named as its chairman in the original proposals.
Hahn said that the gap between the Premier League and Europe was financial but would lead to a competitive imbalance. “Among the clubs we speak to there is a pretty clear recognition of what the issues are and how severe they are,” he said. “There is reasonably broad agreement on the steps we should take to fix [them] and what has been happening in recent years is not effective.”
A22 has campaigned against the Premier League’s financial dominance of the transfer market in recent months as a means to galvanising grass-roots support for its plans. “The Premier League has become the Super League,” A22 claims. It says that annual revenue across all 20 clubs stands at €7.1billion (£6.29billion), 1.9 times more than their nearest competitor, Spain’s La Liga on €3.7billion.
The original ESL included six clubs from the Premier League – the two Manchester clubs, Liverpool, Chelsea, Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur – all of whom could face a 30-point penalty, under rules agreed since then, were they to join a breakaway league outside the auspices of Uefa.
There have been suggestions that the ESL and A22 could push ahead without the English clubs, in an attempt to force them to join. Yet industry experts agree that broadcast income from a European competition without English clubs would get nowhere near the levels projected for the ESL.
The president of Spain’s Liga, Javier Tebas, who is at odds with Perez and his Barcelona counterpart Joan Laporta, launched the most outspoken attack on the ESL. He said four divisions of European football would guarantee permanent membership for a select few. “The Super League is the wolf, who today disguises himself as a grandmother to try to fool European football,” Tebas tweeted, “but his nose and teeth are very big.”
The Football Supporters’ Association, representing fans in England and Wales and a co-founder of Europe’s equivalent fan body, said the plan was not backed by fans on the Continent. “The walking corpse that is the ESL twitches again with all the self-awareness one associates with a zombie,” said chief executive Kevin Miles in a statement.
“Their newest idea is to have an ‘open competition’ rather than the closed shop they originally proposed that led to huge fan protests. Of course an open competition for Europe’s top clubs already exists – it’s called the Champions League.
“They say ‘dialogue with fans and independent fan groups is essential’ yet the European Zombie League marches on, wilfully ignorant to the contempt supporters across the Continent have for it.”
European Leagues, which represents 40 domestic leagues in 34 countries, said it had not been consulted by A22 or the ESL.
There were broad claims from A22 that its new ESL project would support the women’s game and domestic competitions, as well as protecting the health of players, enforcing financial sustainability rules and improving the fan experience. But there were no firm details on how this would be achieved or details of any financial backer.
In the previous ESL proposal, American investment bank JP Morgan agreed to lend £3.25 billion to launch the project. Hahn would not discuss any new loan agreements that might be in place.
The ESL and A22 were dealt a major blow before Christmas in their long-running legal case with Uefa in the European Court of Justice. The advocate-general’s advice to the court was heavily in favour of Uefa’s monopoly position.
A22 and the ESL have since successfully had reinstated, in the Spanish appeal court, an injunction that protected against Uefa action.
Since the original ESL collapse a key ally, former Juventus chairman Andrea Agnelli, has resigned over an investigation by the Italian football federation into allegations of financial mismanagement.