Why? Because I don't have my finger on the pulse of what fans 5000 miles away think? Again, why? Since when has professional sport anywhere but North America been run for the benefit of club owners? There's a tendency in North America to regard professional sports as just another part of the entertainment industry, and those that "put on the show" are entitled to do whatever they want to protect their investment, including moving the club to a different city if need be. Typically, chairman outside North America don't buy clubs as an investment, and any chairman who takes out more than he puts in is regarded as a poor chairman. I'm also talking about merchandising and tv revenue. Contrary to popular opinion, the premiership isn't rich because of its worldwide tv sales. The domestic tv contract is still far bigger than the rights from the rest of the world put together. Logically, yes, but that doesn't necessarily mean it'd happen. I think it's certain revenue from outside europe would mainly flow towards this superleague, but there's less of a guarantee that revenue from within the main european nations would. Assuming that SKY's £1 billion or so that they give to the premier league would just switch to this euroleague instead is simplistic thinking when only a handful of teams are taking part from England. They do, but not in the numbers you might imagine. The champions league final isn't "the superbowl of europe". The group stage viewing figures are pretty poor. Even free to air channel ITV's coverage drew less than 5 million viewers for each round of the group stage, with some games (all involving English clubs) only pulling 3 million viewers. We have a system where UEFA currently pays the clubs from the bigger nations large additional payments, not because of success of the field, but because their countries bring in the biggest share of the tv revenue. Everything is geared towards giving the top clubs, that are already rich and benefitting financially from spin-offs from being successful, more cash. They want more cash because it keeps them at the top. Whereas North American sports, wisely in my opinion, takes steps to try an ensure competitiveness, the people who run sport here have gone the other way, and have taken measures to make sure the "marquee clubs" are permanently at the top. The problem is that while you say you sympathise, your solution does nothing to help, and makes things worse for those clubs. I always find it odd that the solution proposed to the problem of someone like Fulham not being able to compete is to create a league where Fulham doesn't exist.
No. I don't give a xxxx when the greedy so called "big teams" play each other even when one of them happens to be from my country. I'm not a fan of a club simply because they share my nationality. As a matter of fact there are a few I really hate. That's called rivalry. A superleague like the one you proposed would mean that my team probably wouldn't get the chance to ever play internationally again, am I right? If that's the case many more teams with large fanbases would probably be excluded too. So I'm guessing a large number of european football fans would be pissed off and that's why luckily your superleague will never happen.
Survive - yes, as second rate competition few would care about. but stripped of top clubs they would matter little. Because that creates an unnecessarily American-like minor-league system (or college ball system) where clubs are free from developing their own talent and just buying from a supermarket. Europe doesn't equal EU. That's all I got to add to that silly point.
What does EU have to do with sports? About half European countries are not members of EU. CL is not called an EU CL, it is called UEFA CL. This superleague would have a limited appeal. Especially for those countries you seek to exclude. Why would UEFA WILLINGLY wish to exclude the 250 million viewers from the non-EU countries? You bet your bottom dollar they won't tune in if their leagues are not represented.
I doubt that. In Germany, Bayern is certainly the top club with most fans. But there were 10 other clubs that had a 40k-plus-attendance last season, and clubs like Kaiserslautern or 1860 München attract 30k and more in the second division. And that is despite the Bundesliga being a second rate competition compared to the EPL or La Liga anyway, we have less big stars in the whole league than ManU or Barcelona have in a single team. The Bundesliga would survive just fine - with 2 or 3 Superleague clubs absent, there would still be a dozen big traditional clubs with huge fanbases left, in fact I'm not too sure that a European Superleague with just a handfull of our clubs would get more interest than the Bundesliga. Which is why I doubt any German club would want to do this, too much risk of a failure.
But then if you strip Dynamo Kyiv from Ukrainian Premier League and what do you get? Bundesliga is a fine product, a far better one than UPL. UPL without Shakhtar and Dynamo, the only champions the league had seen since 1992, is not even a second-tier competition.
For me, the idea of stripping the top clubs from leagues and putting them in a competition that denies access to all others is ludicrous. The European Cup was started because Wolves beat the legendary Honved team and were declared by somebody somewhere as the "best team in the world". It's supposed to be the best in Europe, there on merit. If Real Madrid tank in such a league and Aston Villa happen to produce a sudden surge of seven or eight incredible young players, not only do this potentially legendary team not get to prove themselves competitively against the current "best", they face losing every last one of those players to this other more 'prestigious' league. That to me cannot and should not be allowed to happen.
@barroldinho: In theory, I agree with you, unfortunately in reality, the prestigous and rich Barca, ManU & Co will buy most of Aston Villas youngsters before they are strong enough to compete for the CL title as it is - and not only will we never see Villa winning the CL, we will also be forced to watch loads of one-sided and predictable matches in the domestic leagues and Villa never winning the EPL. Unless we change the system, and I'm not sure we can do that and make it work without seperating the richest clubs from the rest.
I can see the merit in maybe creating a new division for such teams. What I refuse to accept is a league or competition that includes a set collection of teams to the exclusion of all others. Such a division should have a mechanism for promotion and relegation, so if in ten years time, Barcelona have grossly mismanaged the replacement of the current 'golden team' and Hull City's ownership and management somehow come up with a revolutionary approach to running a football club and are crushing the opposition in the Prem, then the team in the ascendancy gets it's place in the sun.
There are ways, such as a universal rule of a number of foreigners or a number of the club's own academy products in the line-up. That installs a ceiling on the star-purchasing ambitions. For example, should there be a rule suggesting that you have to field no more than 5 foreigners and/or have to carry 5 of your own youngsters on the active roster, then you can not afford to shell out tens of million dollars for the foreign stars who can't play. Aside from that, there is always a good number of second tier teams who can beat, on a good day, any of the widely recognized giants. Like Shakhtar, like Galatasaray, like CSKA, etc, etc, etc... Let's not make it sound like Barcelona will always beat Shakhtar or that Liverpool will always kill Celtic. The second tier teams' trouble is competing consistently at that level. On a good night, any one of these second tier teams' can compete.
For years there was a 3-foreigners rule in Europe and was still domination in the leagues and Europe, because the best domestic talent went to the top teams as did the very best foreigners. Now the academy products rule might achieve something, but in anticipation of such rules, we're already seeing clubs casting their scouting nets far and wide - and who are best placed to find and attract the best youngsters? You guessed it: the big teams! All the way down the line, the great divider is money. Things like salary caps, transfer fee limits and enforced budgets are the only way to counter that. Then you'll probably just get Florentino Perez getting all upset because he thinks "great clubs" like Real Madrid should be granted access to the top tier of everything and if they don't get it, he'll just take his team and go play somewhere else.
How often does that still happen in a meaningfull match, and not when Barcelona has already won the group? The last time I can think of would be Arsenal losing to PSV in the CL 2nd round 06/07. But yes, I'd like to try other things first. If it's possible to get everyone to agree and if there are no legal obstacles.
The following were all meaningful results: 2007-08: Besiktas vs Liverpool (2-1), Rosenborg vs Valencia (2-0), Celtic vs AC Milan (2-1), Lyon vs Rangers (0-3), Fenerbahce - Inter (1-0), Fenerbahce vs Sevilla (5-5 agg, Fenerbahce progressed on Penalties), Fenerbahce vs Chelsea (2-0, but Chelsea overturned it in 2nd leg) 2008-09: Roma vs Cluj (1-2), Porto vs Dinamo Kyiv (0-1), Anorthosis group performance in general (Bremen 0-0 + 2-2, Inter 3-3, Panathinaikos 3-0)
I don't deny that we are not yet at a point where we can exactly predict the final standings of every group. But, well, of the teams you mentioned, I'd only call Liverpool, Milan, Chelsea and arguably Inter (though they have not been great in the CL for years) a title contender. And even when they've lost a match, in the end, they always reached the next round, so the lost match wasn't that important after all. What I'd like to see is something like Monaco kicking Real and Chelsea out, ManU or Bayern finishing bottom of a group, Leverkusen kicking Liverpool and ManU out... things like that did happen not too long ago, but seem less likely every year, and in the last 2 seasons, they didn't really happen at all. But maybe (hopefully) I'm wrong, Fener losing to Chelsea in the end and Liverpool turning their luck around in that group was just chance, maybe one or the other big team will fail surprisingly this season, mabye something like Porto and Monaco 2004 or Leverkusen 2002 is still possible. I'm not yet completely convinced of my pessimism.
Why go far, Shakhtar was beating Barcelona in a meaningful match until the 88th minute, 1-0, until Barcelona pulled off an amazing (and disgraceful) escape. Same with Arsenal against Dynamo Kyiv in both matches. You can find a plentitude of magnificent, entertaining, and EVEN matches involving a grand and a second tier team
Did that match really matter though? It was one of Barca's least important matches all season. That's why Messi started on the bench. Wake me up when that sort of stuff happens in the knockout round.
This was Cl group stage Game Day 2. How could this have been Barca's least important match. You're going to need to enlighten me on this one. And, if I recall correctly, Messi started.
Because it was an very easy group for Barca, plus they had won their first game against Sporting. So they could easily have afforded to lose a match in the Ukraine knowing their next 2 CL matches were against lowly Basel. He started on the bench. They also subbed-out Eto'o when they were a goal behind. Does that sound like a team that desperately needed a result?
Had Shakhtar won, they would have been tops on 6 points, 3 points ahead of both Sporting and Barca. If I were Barca, I would have cared. When Barca truly did not care, in the last game of the group stage at home against Shakhtar, they put out reserves and had their butts handed to them, 0-2. I guess there are different levels of not caring.
Very true. The matches against Basel and the second Shakhtar game were even less important. But each of Barca's first 34 league games mattered more than the game in the Ukraine. One could argue that most of their Copa del Rey matches also mattered more because one slip-up in that tournament and the treble probably never happens.
However, if not for the disgraceful equalizer, Shakhtar could have won. And then - Barca could not guarantee they're getting out of that group. Everybody was expected to beat basel twice. You just can't suggest that barca did not care in only the 2 day of the competition that they did care about winning. In fact, they lose that match and they're in a dogfight to qualify. Doesn't sound logical, now, does it?
I can't see that. They're playing in possibly a very tight group with three almost equally capable clubs and they would care less about the game. it just does not compute.