Isn't it time? The gulf between the haves and the have-nots is growing wider by the day to the point that a lot of the domestic league competitions are turning into jokes. Right now, if you want to win $100 on PSG winning Ligue 1, you have to bet $650. If you want to win $100 on Bayern winning the Bundesliga, you have to bet $800. For those top clubs, winning the league is so expected, that there's not even really much joy to be gained by the supporters or the players for achieving it. So as play goes on through these dull league competitions, the top sides are getting their entire season judged by a couple knockout matches in the Champions' League. But aside from the competition for trophies, the simple fact is that playing an entire domestic league schedule against vastly inferior competition leads to a lot of dull football. Does anyone really want to watch Juventus beat Parma 7-0? Or Carpi this year now that Parma's relegated? Or look at La Liga. Sure, you might have 2.5 great teams competing to win the title, but isn't it anticlimactic when you can look at the schedule Week 1 and know that it's not going to come down to the final week since Barca's always beating Deportivo and Real's always beating Getafe if the trophy's on the line? Why should we as fans keep watching these all-star behemoths of football play half their schedule against teams who can only budget as much for their entire team as the big squads do for one player. And why should the teams keep lighting money on fire playing dull matches against nothing clubs in 25K seat stadiums when they could have exciting fixtures against real competition instead? I think it's time for the top clubs to break away. Before I go too in-depth into the details, I want to deal more with the central question first of whether it's a good idea since when I search the internet for discussions, fans tend to be largely negative on the idea which I don't understand at all. A European Super League is a fan's dream. You could watch big clubs play high-quality matches every week instead of circling the date 3 weeks in advance where Real finally faces a real test in Sevilla. You'd just be consistently getting better quality football, and the fans of the smaller clubs that got left out would get to compete in a league they actually had a chance to win instead of languishing in mid-table where their only real goal is escaping relegation. But just to whet your appetite a little bit, I'd just say that I'd ideally like to see a two-league solution with promotion and relegation. A 20-team elite league for the top clubs, and then a 24-team second division for the teams that are still too good for their domestic leagues who are trying to break into the top. Try this on for size: European Elite League: Real Madrid, Barcelona, Atletico Madrid, Chelsea, Manchester City, Arsenal, Manchester United, Bayern Munich, Borussia Dortmund, Wolfsburg, Bayer Leverkeusen, Juventus, AS Roma, Napoli, Porto, Benfica, Paris Saint Germain, AS Monaco, Zenit St. Petersburg, Galatasaray European Super League: Valencia, Villareal, Sevilla, Liverpool, Tottenham Hotspur, Everton, Schalke 04, Borussia Monchengladbach, Lazio, AC Milan, Inter Milan, Sporting, Lyon, Marseille, Fenerbache, Besiktas, CSKA Moscow, Dinamo Moscow, PSV Eindhoven, Ajax, Shakhtar Donetsk, Dinamo Kyiv, Anderlecht, Olympiacos Now there will be plenty of time to discuss the details later. Should there be promotion and relegation from the second division to the other European leagues? Should teams get in on league position or on how big the club is financially? Should the leagues be split into Eastern and Western Europe to aid travel and allow for a grand final? Should there be some sort of American-style playoffs for the top 3-6 teams? All of these are questions that I'd love to discuss with you in detail. But first, I just want to deal with the general question of "is this a good idea and will it happen in the near future"? It seems to me like the answer should be yes on both counts, but I think I might be in the minority and I'd like to engage with other fans to see if we can understand each other a little better.
I don't like the Super League idea. The EPL, which is the league I watch the most, has had two out of the last four titles come down to the last matchday. Even last season, when Chelsea clinched the title early, their goal differential of +41 was less than half of Barcelona's +89, showing that average English clubs have more of chance against top English clubs than average Spanish clubs have against Barcelona and Real Madrid. Barcelona and Real Madrid are good enough that they would have some easy wins against clubs you put in the Elite League. Everton (11th), Inter Milan (8th), and AC Milan (10th) had disappointing domestic seasons last season and none of them qualified for the 2015-2016 Champions League or Europa League. You have them in the Super League category, and as you said a decision would have to be made based on how much a club's history, payroll, and domestic performance determine who gets to join the Super League and Elite League. The Super League would have to have promotion and relegation from domestic leagues otherwise Manchester City wouldn't have been able to join when they started spending a lot of money. What would you do if there was an Elite League and a Super League and this happened? Clubs A and B are win their domestic league, with Club A winning it by 10 points and Club B by 1 point. Both of them play in a country with at least 1 club in the Super League. A club from the same country as Club B finishes in the bottom three in the Super League, but no clubs from the same country as Club A struggle in the Super League. If promotion and relegation between the Super League and domestic leagues is done by relegating the bottom clubs from the Super League and promoting clubs to keep the Super League with the same amount of clubs from each country, Club B gets to join the Super League despite doing worse than Club A who doesn't get promoted. There's also the issue about if Elite League and Super League clubs would remain in their domestic cup tournament(s). Imagine if some Elite League and Super League games in January had to be moved because they involved English clubs on FA Cup weekends.
I don't like the super league idea either. 1) It destroys national unity by putting clubs before national associations. 2) Clubs wouldn't be able to compete in domestic cups so they would only be fighting on one front (the super league). I like the current model where clubs compete for three different trophies a year. 3) Clubs left in the cold would die as their attendances would become paltry. I suggest something different but along the same lines: cross-border leagues. The largest countries would retain their leagues and league structure (Spain, Germany, England, Italy, France, Russia, Ukraine, and Portugal). Every one else would become part of regional leagues. But first, some smaller countries would have to meld into the lower leagues of countries near them (San Marino>Italy, Andorra>Spain, Gibraltar>Spain, Malta>Italy, Faroe Islands>Denmark, Luxembourg>France, Liechtenstein>Switzerland). That leaves us with 39 countries to form regional leagues. Here are the leagues I would come up with (I realize political situations make many of these leagues currently impossible, but it works in other sports, so I don't see why not): Adriatic League: Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia, Bosnia, Albania, Montenegro, Macedonia Mediterranean League: Greece, Turkey, Israel, Cyprus Central European League: Netherlands, Switzerland, Belgium, Austria Baltic League: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, Moldova Caucausas League: Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia, Kazakhstan Royal League: Finland, Norway, Iceland, Sweden, Denmark Home Nations League: Scotland, Wales, Ireland, N. Ireland Balkan League: Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland This would make 8 regional leagues and 8 national leagues. Some ground rules for European qualification: The cup winner of every country (yes, each country would still have a cup) would qualify for a cup winners cup CL qualifying tournament. If the cup winner would have already qualified for the CL, the next highest ranked club from that country in the regional league (or national league) would take the place of the cup winner. Each league (regional or not) gets three EL berths. Champions League access list: Leagues ranked 1-3: 5 berths (1-4 + cup winner), Leagues ranked 4-6 (1-3 + cup winner), Leagues ranked 7-16 (1-2 + cup winner). Format: same as the current one from group stage onward, changes in qualifying. Non-champions path (16 teams for 5 spots): Representative from 4 best leagues gets bye to Playoff Round, other 12 fight for 6 spots in Playoff Round Cup Winners path (54 teams for 5 spots): Representatives from 5 best countries get bye to 3rd Qualifying Round, representatives from countries ranked 6-16 get bye to 2nd Qualifying Round, rest begin in 1st Qualifying Round (there would be two coefficients, one for each country and one for each league: big leagues have one coefficient, they are the same).
FWIW, I don't see any reason whatsoever that teams in a Super League wouldn't compete in their home country's cup competitions. Right now, many top teams are playing a full 38 game league schedule plus 10-15 games for Champions League/Europa League plus their domestic cup competitions. With super leagues, they'd just be playing 38 to 46 games for league schedule plus domestic cup competitions. Their schedules would actually be lighter and the cup fixtures would be easier to accommodate. I think it would actually bring a lot of shine back to the cup competitions and make them much more meaningful if said cups were the only times the mid-level teams got to take on the best from their own nations. Promotion/relegation within the system would be tricky but not impossible, and the same with purely merit-based qualification. Sure, Everton was 10th in the Premier League last year, but this obviously wouldn't happen overnight, and if you look at the bookie's odds, or their player values on Transfermarkt, they're expected to finish 7th in the upcoming year. Same situation with Inter Milan and AC Milan. But yes, you could easily just say 1-4 ranked EPL teams in the upcoming year qualify for European Elite League and 5-7 ranked EPL teams in the upcoming year qualify for European Super League. It just comes down to whether UEFA's willing to become a part of the process or whether they're gonna force the top clubs to make a move on their own. I think if you're going to incorporate the whole thing into a top-down structure, it probably makes sense to only have the top league be for all of Europe, and then the next level down the pyramid, you could have a Western European Elite League and an Eastern European Elite league (Germany and Italy would provide the main strength of the Eastern side to counterbalance Spain and England in the West). Then maybe have some pan-national confederations like mentioned in the next post on the next level down. Maybe, there are separate Europa League type competitions for Western and Eastern Europe on the 3rd level of the pyramid that determine promotion and relegation to the 2nd division. It wouldn't be easy to figure it all out, but it's very workable. If an Eastern European team in the 2nd division that finishes 18th in the table stays up while a Western European team that finishes 16th gets relegated, is it the end of the world? Not really. It's definitely nowhere near as big of a deal as balancing the scales of competition to make for entertaining football week in and week out.
So let's redo the Super League for the second division being split into East and West: (winner = winner of 2-leg home and away tie) European Elite League: England 1-3, Germany 1-3, Italy 1-3, Spain 1-3, England #4 vs. Spain #4 winner, Germany #4 vs. Italy #4 winner, Portugal #1, France #1, Portugal #2 vs. France #2 winner, Russia #1, Turkey #1, Ukraine #1 Western Europe Elite League: England #4 vs. Spain #4 loser, #2 Portugal vs. #2 France loser, England 5-9, Spain 5-8, France 3-4, Portugal 3-4, Netherlands 1-2, Belgium 1-2, Scotland #1 Eastern Europe Elite League: Germany #4 vs. Italy #4 loser, Germany 5-8, Italy 5-8, Russia 2-4, Turkey 2-4, Ukraine 2-3, Switzerland #1, Greece #1, Austria #1 Winners of Western European Elite League and Eastern European Elite League automatically promote to European Elite League. Last place Western and Eastern team in European Elite League relegate. 2nd-place teams in Western European Elite League and Eastern European Elite league play home and away promotion/relegation tie with second to last place Western and Eastern teams in European Elite League. How does everyone feel about this? There would be promotion/relegation with the Western/Eastern European Elite Leagues and the leagues below too which could be accomplished in a number of ways. Simplest way would be to do it all based off Europa League type competitions spreading across half the continent, but you could also guarantee the winners of the top leagues the right to at least have a home and away tie for promotion with the bottom team from their country in the higher league.
I like seeing how the champions of the lesser leagues do in the Champions League qualifying rounds. I like seeing surprises like F91 Dudelange of Luxembourg eliminating Red Bull Salzburg of Austria in the 2012-2013 Champions League Qualifying Round 2 and APOEL Nicosia of Cyprus reaching the 2011-2012 Quarterfinals. These wouldn't be possible if there was a "super" or "elite" league only including clubs from the top countries. I like that unlike in Asia, the champion of any top level league in Europe gets to play in the Champions League or its qualifying rounds.
To the original premise: Not just no but "Hell no!" Even with a semblance of pro/rel this would simply exacerbate existing conditions. To wit, the idea that a select group of teams gets to entrench themselves as the biggest and the best forever is disconcerting at the least, downright heinous at the worst. That the current forces and trends are helping these teams separate themselves from the pack, reinforcing a caste structure among clubs, means that the system needs to be undone to foster greater parity rather than rewarding these clubs for being the wealthiest at this particular time and place. Take Man City. Less than a decade ago their pedigree was meager and most folks would've named Villa or Everton as brands ranking above the sky blues. Now they're to be granted a seat at the European Elite table? If I'm a fan of some club not listed among either of your leagues why the heck would I support this idea? Why should the teams you've named now become the defacto clubs to represent the whole nation at this stage, freezing out the chances of another club making the climb? Where do you draw the line regarding which teams from minnow nations are involved? What appeal is left for fans of nations not represented at all? And if any clubs did try this I would wholeheartedly support their domestic leagues banishing them from local competitions. If the likes of Man U and real think they're above the rest of England and Spanish clubs then let them leave all together and see how appealing it is to have fewer trophies on the table and fewer local rivalries. Absolutely no reason those clubs should be allowed to have their Super-league fantasy and still be allowed to mingle among the national leagues and cups that they're considering insufficient. I understand that the Champions League brand power stems from having big name clubs involved frequently, but those big teams gained their brand pedigree by virtue of competing in and winning domestic competitions. And the premise of the structure is that other teams at least have equal opportunity to achieve the same goal. So that the likes of Fiorentina, Bilbao and Southampton have the possibility to make themselves a bigger club, and likewise so that the big clubs like Arsenal and Bayern have the opportunity to fail. Yes, the gulf between the haves and have nots is growing wider by the day, which means something should be done to shrink that gulf instead of building a wall to make the chasm deeper.
The European Super League is the one big issue of today's football, the elephant in the room. Everybody knows is inevitable in the long term, and the only question is who and when is going to take the initiative. In the meantime, follow my facebook page devoted to the subject: facebook.com/EuroSuperLeague
Madrid's presidents have been among the most outspoken to date so I would imagine they'd be first to make a move. I wouldn't be surprised to see them brash enough to ask for a larger cut of the revenues compared to all the other teams because, you now, they're Madrid.
GriffinGunner, you're living in the past if you think the likes of Aston Villa is capable of having another run to the top like Manchester City did a decade ago. As soon as players got their full bargaining rights and max salaries were eliminated, this drift became inevitable and when financial fair play was enacted as a de facto salary cap only for the teams at the bottom half of the table, the competitors were locked into place. Since 2003/2004, Everton's made the Champions League once as has Tottenham Hotspur. The other 47 spots over 12 years have gone to the same big 5 clubs. No one's even close to breaking through. The days where an Aston Villa or Newcastle or even a Southampton can rise from mid-table to compete with the big boys are over. Every year, we start this whole home and away competition pretending that it's a question whether Chelsea and Arsenal will do better than Crystal Palace and West Ham when really we know the answer not a year in advance but a decade in advance. And that kind of dominance is present in the most competitive league in the world where the bottom clubs spend as much on wages as mid-table clubs do in other leagues. If Southampton's locked out of ever making the top 4 in the EPL can you imagine how much worse someone like Celta Vigo's chances are of breaking the hold at the top of La Liga with a fraction of the budget? You saw you want to reduce the disparity instead of increasing it. Well, tell us practically how this could possibly happen. With PSG having already turned La Liga into a joke, but feeling the need to drastically improve the team to compete in Europe, and with Real and Barca grossing astronomical sums worldwide. As long as you have teams in different nations under different FAs competing with each other for the top prizes, there's just no way that the teams ranked 60-100 in the world are going to start competing with the big boys again. The problem is that in the transfer market, you already have the Top 20 teams in Europe competing solely amongst themeselves, with the next tier down competing amongst themselves, etc., and salary cap restrictions even in place to reinforce these differences with FFP, but on the field we're still pretending that the competition is within familiar domestic boundaries.
Since the past also had it's issues I think the more correct accusation is "hopeless idealist," which I've been called on numerous occasions. a) FFP is now losing much, if not all, of its legal standing, with more challenges waiting in the wings. Even then, the relaxed punishments given the Man City and PSG suggest a repeat of their rise to perennial power is not exactly closed. It may take a Villa or Valencia more time and even more shrewd accounting, but it's inherently possible. Man City's pedigree prior to the Sheikh's investment was hardly worth global notoriety, it's not too difficult to imagine West Ham in their new Olympic stadium or someone like Lyon becoming another viable sugar daddy enterprise. More importantly... b) To the extent that your facts are true then how on earth is that not painted as a bad thing? Surely the bulk of football fans aren't subscribing to the game out of the idea of gravitating all their focus to a mere 2 dozen teams across the globe? I'd wager the overwhelming majority of fans currently attending games and watching teams not named Bayern or Barca are supporting their teams in part with the hope of someday achieving something better. Their odds may be long now, but long odds are better than no odds at all. In lieu of a true salary cap FFP's weakness is that the current league and UEFA payout structures reward the wealthier clubs, reinforcing the division between the haves and have nots. So we undo those measures: - All league media revenues are to be distributed evenly within each league, save for perhaps a small performance bonus as the Premier Leagus has now. No more bonuses for TV appearances. - UEFA payouts are stipends to cover the direct cost of involvement in the competition, such as $1M per game, with only marginal difference between CL payouts and Europa League payouts. Win the whole thing and you get about $15m or less. The rest of the pot is paid to the various leagues/FAs to be shared among members as they seem fit, preferably with more money flowing to smaller leagues/nations than currently applied. The cry against this is that those teams "earned" the money or about applying an incentive to succeed. That incentive still exists in the term of merchandising deals, sponsorships, and gameday receipts. The globalization of brand appeal means top clubs can make hundreds of millions of dollars/Euros through these avenues, so the incentive is to win trophies so as to gain more revenue from shirt sponsors, to lure more fans to games at higher ticket prices, and so on. Further, those monies generated by the league and UEFA media deals are for competitions, not simply to watch Man U or Juve. As I've said, the allure of the big brands is built upon winning competitions, not simply for being who they are. Thus, the virtue of the competition is what garners the revenues. UEFA payouts are scripted for the top teams from La Liga, not for specific brands. True enough, it is those brands that highlight the TV appeal of the competitions, but that is again based on the notion that those teams earned the right to be there. Man City has done well as a TV draw despite lacking historic appeal because they're strong now, so the same could equally apply to Napoli, Schalke, Sevilla... And the CL seemed to survive a season without Man U, a couple seasons without Milan... The other changes I'd pursue would again curtail the ability of wealthier clubs to exploit their status. - Fixed limit of 25 players on the first team, with all other players housed within the academy. Dovetail this with... - An end to the loan system. This has become nothing but a way for big clubs to hoard talent and then house the players elsewhere to see if the financial gamble takes off. Clubs with excess wealth can do this to extremes, treating players like commodities even if there is no actual future at the main club, all while providing extra revenue to the parent club. Buy only what you need. - No more developmental agreements across clubs and no owning more than one club. In some cases these deals can help the smaller team, especially in developing nations, but lately it's becoming a mechanism to promote a particular team or brand. City Football Group is building a global network of satellite franchises to incorporate their brand, which dilutes the idea that these teams are true domestic clubs and fosters the idea that their leagues are forever to be inferior. - Appearances in foreign nations for friendlies is restricted to 2 times within the same nation in a 3 year period. No going back to the US or China over and over again. Give the local leagues a chance to grow outside of your shadow. None of these proposals are unduly restrictive, nor would they remove the current top clubs from their perch, but they would lessen the financial gap between the haves and have nots and, most importantly, they would remove some of the resources that are currently only benefiting the wealthier teams. For instance, I think in the Premiership alone it would be taking about $70M from the top 4 teams and spreading that across the rest of the league. That alone won't turn the tide but it would certainly stem it, and all without a mandated salary cap that I know the big clubs fear. I'd also look for another mechanism to help smaller nations combine top flights so that their domestic leagues could grow, but that's another thread.
I agree with some of what @GriffinGunner said and I think TV revenue should be distributed more equally. I think if you took half of Barcelona's prize money from the 2014-2015 Champions League away and distributed it equally to the rest of La Liga, Barcelona would still be happy they won the Champions League. Even if I knew Aston Villa would never qualify for the Champions League again I still wouldn't want a Super League. As for "no more developmental agreements across clubs and no owning more than one club," this is the UEFA and Europe forum, but would you apply it to the whole world? How do you feel about the New York Red Bulls having a USL affiliate and common ownership with clubs in other countries. Barcelona is an elite club with a B club in a lower league. I don't like the foreign friendly location restriction you proposed.
My main concern with this is two-fold: - I don't approve of the approach whereby clubs have franchises around the globe and we fans are faced with the prospect of mega-clubs operating more like international businesses and less like a soccer team. In one extreme it means the far-flung teams are simply a means for the parent club to gain an advantage in marketing, shuffling money around, and in developing talent. This isn't something that every team can do and it dilutes the sense that those other teams are in fact local. NYCFC, for instance, isn't a New York team in my eyes. Merely a a subsidiary of CFG, looking to peddle the Man City brand and find ways to bolster THAT team. How long until other mega-clubs do the same thing and MLS becomes a developmental league for Europe? Booo! A similar thing can be said for formal agreements between teams of different national leagues, like my own Arsenal has such with a Belgian team. I get the idea behind it but again it forces allegiances that begin to interfere with fanhood, I say, and more importantly not everyone can take advantage of this. But this angle is less concerning compared to outright ownership. - I don't want a system that allows the big clubs to own the rights to 40+ players (outside of their own development academy), picking and choosing each season which ones to call up, loan out, or sell. It basically is a way for them to have an expanded pool beyond anything the smaller teams can afford, and it exacerbates their ability to pluck young talent from poorer sides. The likes of Chelsea and Madrid can buy the youth simply to keep them from going to a competitor, even if that player never puts on a Chelsea of Madrid uniform. That's not right. If you can find a system of developmental agreements that accomplishes these things then I can work with it. This is a smaller affair compared to the cash issues mentioned above. Here in the States we've been steadily inundated with European clubs visiting for friendlies, and the tours have grown longer and more frequent as these clubs seek to stake a claim to the market. In some instances that has meant 5 games in one trip, or coming back 2-3 years in a row. Since this is almost exclusive to the big clubs like Man U and Chelsea it is again something with a multiplier effect - A way for the wealthy to grow more wealth. The likes of Stoke and Boavista couldn't do this because even if they tried their games wouldn't earn near as much money. So it's something of an advantage for the big clubs. Meanwhile it's somewhat disconcerting to us fans in the States to see our domestic schedule interrupted for these things (now on a large scale with the bogus International Champions "Cup"), while simultaneously reinforcing the notion that we should automatically send our allegiances to the big foreign clubs as opposed to domestic teams or other, smaller clubs. These are sales calls, pure and simple, but again only the already wealthy can afford them. What's more, my idea wouldn't even truly stop the practice. Barcelona's trips to the States fall within my 3 year pattern, they simply played more games here than I'd prefer. Nothing stopping them from going to Toronto and Mexico on the same swing, though, then hitting Asia the next year. All I want to do is thin the volume down so that fans outside Europe get the chance to breathe in between plastic chants for the likes of Juve or Madrid. There is one ulterior motive to this, as well - I think we're pushing the athletes too hard. Even if Messi and other stars aren't playing as much on these trips they are traveling and playing at least a little. The concept of an off season is seeming less and less realistic, and I think that will damage many a player or at least the quality of play when it counts. Let em rest, I say.
Which Belgian club is that? ... Arsenal had a co-operation agreement with Beveren but that ended roughly 10 years ago.
You may think it's inevitable, but very few of the top clubs would want to join a league where they could be perpetual also-rans. Clubs know that a lot of their appeal comes from being perennial title challengers. Join a 20 club elite, and most of that elite would realise they'd be bottom half most years. Far from growing, euro-league speculation has actually quietened down over the years, not increased.
Perfect example of why we need a Super League today. Bayern's playing their 2nd toughest fixture of the league season, and it's a joke of a game. 5-1. Before you write that off as a fluke, let me tell you that the prematch odds had Bayern favored by more than 1.5 goals and had Wolfsburg at 12:1 to win. If Wolfsburg (est. value 205MM EUR according to transfermarkt) can't compete with Bayern, then how is someone like Darmstadt (est. value 19 MM EUR by transfermarkt) supposed to compete later in the season? The Bundesliga is the highest attended football league in the world, and the competition is an absolute joke for the 2 big money teams (11 wins, no losses, no draws, 25 goals for, 3 goals against). These teams just can't be expected to compete with each other when Bayern has 15 individual players that are EACH worth more than the entire team of one of their league opponents. Why force the top teams to play meaningless, dull, fixture, after meaningless dull fixture against teams miles below their level while the only games that matter are a couple knockout stage games agianst the teams on their level late in the year. PSG in France is playing even weaker competition, and while they've drawn a couple games out of boredom, the league is similarly non-competitive as they play the teams they're actually competing with in the transfer market a couple times a year. If we did have a super league, it would actually create more parity at the top, as the Romas and Atleticos and Benficas of the world would find it much easier to compete with the Reals and Barcas and Bayerns if they were getting an equal share of the HUGE television money that a super league would bring in. It would absolutely dwarf the current Premier League deal that's allowing anyone that can stave off relegation to outspend the mid-table teams in the other top leagues. If something doesn't change soon, football's gonna get real dull in a hurry when Bayern wins 9 of the next 10 Bundesliga titles while PSG hoists their 13th straight Ligue 1 crown. The level of dominance for the top clubs is only going to get stronger if the current league structure persists.
Why would English clubs ever want to join a super league? They already struggle as it is (with much larger payrolls than the top clubs of other leagues, bar Bayern, Barca, RM) in Europe so if Roma all of a sudden has the same amount of money as Man U, Roma would better spend their money and the English clubs would be the most likely to get relegated.
Good question Shizzle. I'm guessing the English clubs wouldn't want to join since they're already out-earning the other continental leagues, but if Germany, Spain, and Italy threatened to form a Continental Super League without them if they didn't join, I'm sure they'd fall in line quickly due to the fear of being in a second-tier league.
Of course all of these super-club's and their fans, so used to winning all the time, might have something of a shock if there ever was a European Super League. While the fixtures may look appetising on paper as we speculate about them now, just how interesting will Manchester United v. Juventus be when they are fighting over 14th place in the league? The clubs can't all win - most of the teams will suddenly become mediocre mid-table teams, and some will - shock, horror - be at the bottom, losing regularly. Where will the interest be then? Would those teams regularly at the bottom then beg to be allowed back into their domestic leagues so that they can recapture that old winning feeling again? As a fan of a team who hasn't been involved in the Champions League for a long time, and even then it was only fleeting, and is staggeringly unlikely to be involved again any time soon, if such a European Super League ever came to pass my interest in it would be zero. I do have n interest in the Champions League however - at least once the knock out rounds start. It's quality competition with the best teams all fighting for a trophy. A European League would mean only a few of them would be fighting for a trophy, and I just wouldn't care less.
Stumbled upon this thread and - bump! - I just had to bump it. Clumsy me... Well, after some hesitant thoughts it started to occur to me, if a European Super League means the Bundesliga could finally get rid of the Bayern, hey, it wouldn't be that bad at all!! But how could it look like? Let's assume it would be a 18 team league on top of the 1st divisions of European Club football. To get fresh blood each year there would be some relegation playoff to replace the bottom 3 teams. The playoff to promotion could be a nice competition in itself for the national leagues, kind of replacing the current UCL which would anyway be redundant if there is an ESL. Would the national leagues suffer revenue losses when sponsors jump ship? Sure. But then again, I reckon maybe it'd be a good cure to trim off some greasy fat off modern football. Also, per each league, it would not be that many teams being able to play in the ESL, so there would still be enough attractive teams to watch in the national leagues. For example, if we pick some 18 teams from this year's CL... Arsenal Atlético Madrid Barcelona Bayern Munich Benfica Borussia Mönchengladbach Chelsea Galatasaray Juventus Lyon Manchester City Olympiacos Paris Saint-Germain Porto PSV Eindhoven Real Madrid Roma Sevilla ...we see that each individual national league would still have enough great teams to play with, excluding the above teams. EPL, La Liga, Bundesliga, Serie A and Ligue 1 could surely still draw without those few teams. There could also be a cap, e.g. not more than 3, 4 or 5 teams per country to ensure no country gets too dominant and/or their national league too weak. Anyway, the more I think about it - and the prospect of getting rid of Bayern - the more I can warm up to it.
Zenit St. Petersburg deserves to be included. Ranking the clubs by points and then goal differential, they were the third best club in the 2015-2016 Group Stage. They're 15th in the club coefficients for the last five complete seasons and 12th in the club coefficients for the last four complete seasons and 2015-2016 so far. They have a much better club coefficient than Galatasaray, Olympiacos, and PSV Eindhoven.
http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/european-giants-plotting-revamped-champions-7260605 Apparently, all the big European clubs want to be guaranteed a spot in the CL every year, regardless of league position. There will be qualifying for the remaining teams. This is an incredibly bad idea, but if it happened it could be formatted like this (32-team group stage). Guaranteed Group Stage participation: Title holders Manchester City Manchester United Liverpool Chelsea Arsenal Barcelona Real Madrid Atletico Madrid Bayern Munich Borussia Dortmund Bayer Leverkusen Juventus Milan Inter PSG Qualifying Tournament Best-non automatic team (leagues 1-54, excluding Liechtenstein)-champions in most cases 2nd best-non automatic team (leagues 1-10) 3rd best-non automatic team (leagues 1-6) Those 70 clubs would fight (over likely three rounds) for 16 spots in group stage. Playoff Round: best team (1-10) 2nd best team (1-6) 3rd best team (1-3) 13 winners from 3rd qualifying round 3rd Qualifying Round: best team (11-15) 2nd best team (7-10) 3rd best team (4-6) 14 winners from 2nd qualifying round 2nd Qualifying Round: best team (16-33) 10 winners from 1st qualifying round 1st Qualifying Round: best team (34-54, excluding Liechtenstein)
So your solution to a situation that is from time to time broken by a team like Leicester or Everton or whatever club in the EPL and other teams in other leagues is to perpetuate it in a dejure situation with a numbre of clubs to be selected by what criterium? If the system is broken fix the system, not make it eternal. I looked at your profile, but cannot see what your history and background as a football fan is. But you obviously have no clue about what drives fans in Europe and how leagues and competitions in Europe work. I qualified the endorsement of the German FA ceo for a superleague structure in place of the CL as a conspiracy of thieves. It steals the rights of those who have proven the merit of competing in the CL like Leicester does now and want to give it to a low flyer socalled topteam Chelsea. And thieves bring no good, but destruction to football. So my suggestion to you is shut the .uck up.