brought to you by the club that spends like a drunken sailor with a big fat null in the long term bank account. Ironic that few to none of the Bundesliga teams seem to have financial problems. Ever wonder why? : - )
if UEFA is smart .... they would negotiate but basically ask for twice the revenue sharing that was already happening. just beat the crap out of the breakaways. am I biased - hell yeah. my whole axe to grind here is not that this is truly about a super league and the best competition ... it is about a number of clubs that have mismanaged their own finances and want to screw over the mid table clubs everywhere in order to save themselves. As I have already said - "idiots - the whole lot of them". Notice that none of the BL teams have jumped on board - nor has PSG nor Ajax and some others ... because they did not mismanage their own situations amid COVID.
precisely - as soon as the deal is sealed for the Super League - they will start to exert power everywhere else to bend to their will. Would not surprise me if they then proposed that the number of WC entry teams gets chopped in half. They would also then propose that although the Super League stays at 23 games - they would then propose that the number of domestic league games (the basic table of 18-20 teams) then also gets reduced. See how this works when a true monopoly takes over? UEFA and FIFA (and at times I detest FIFA) need to go to the mat on this.
A few of them are headscratchers - although the "the cool guys are going the party so it has to be fun" logic probably applies It has a very "VC and Hollywood agents pushed out of packaging and looking to 'disrupt' something" feel to it. No doubt the American owners had something to do with it all.
Seems to me the most likely effective kabosh on this whole thing would be individual by nation and political. But I haven't dug into what the options would be. I'd suppose if the UK wanted to just shut it straight down they could figure out some way to restrict WPs or something similar, but I can't imagine the clubs haven't considered that somehow. Maybe they all move to Cyprus, Monaco, Lichtenstein, Andorra, San Marino, Luxemborg and Malta.
Don't you understand economics - you can't make a lot of money if you're not in debt up to your terraces.
Yes, move as far away from your loyal fans as possible. Preferably to a micro-state without enough people to fill the stands. Business strategy 101. I see you left Vatican City off of your list. I'm disappointed.
Who would set this unholy mess in the Pope's lap! (Although you would get at least one fan on Saturday games.) (I do think the fear of fans showing up is probably overblown - there will be protests at first, but if this were to happen - and I doubt it ever really does - are folks going to really sit on their hands if Arsenal play Chelsea and tix are 10 lbs or something? Maybe at first, but eventually, it's not like Chelsea or Ars fans will suddenly be getting Fulham tix and streaming to the Championship games and you can't fit all the Spurs, Gunner and Chelski fans in Selhurst along with the 200 Palace fans.. At some point, folks just like to watch games and will shuffle back.)
It's also about globalization. Most fans of these big clubs in the Super League are now overseas and the clubs are not taking advantage of that income potential at all because they are hamstrung by UEFA. They are owned by foreign owners who market overseas and who pay large sums of money to bring in non-English players. The FA welcomed this, and is now seeing the consequences. I think English fans don't like the idea of their biggest brands actually breaking off and going global, while in Spain they've kind of already accepted this. I understand the resentment because they feel they are losing grip on their local traditions, but some of the stuff Gary Neville and co are saying sounds very brexit-y and xenophobic to me. Your premier league hasn't been local or grassroots for a long time. Also, it's not like the football pyramid will cease to exist.
I'll tell yer what occurred to me was similar in US politics... the NRA/religion/culture warriors. That's the closes analogy I can think of. What I mean is that although not everyone cares about that stuff, the ones that do REALLY care about it. That's the situation with football over here. It's part of our culture in the same way some of those things seem to be for some yanks. If someone fecks with them, watch out. It's part of how we see ourselves that maybe doesn't really translate about football, (other sports, I wouldn't know), but it definitely has the same sense of 'culture wars' about that you can't have a competition where teams can't go down. It's a bit like the way the NHS isn't a healthcare system over here... it's often referred to as Britain's only true religion, (on account of a lot of us being either outright atheists or strongly agnostic). Also, I was talking about this elsewhere on the boards and I mentioned there, I have a couple of mates who are footie supporters, One who supports Villa and one who supports Wolves. When wolves beat us he gave me some stick and when we only managed a draw against villa the other one said we were lucky, (we weren't!). The thing is I was born about 4.5 miles away Stamford Bridge. That's why I support them, (plus I had trials with them when I was a kid and they weren't bloody Milwall mad. Also, Aston Lozells is only about 25 miles away from me now whilst Wolverhampton is less than 20 miles away. If we play Milan... I don't know anybody from Milan... or Madrid... so who gives a shit! This will mean pretty much ALL of the games we're involved in will become largely meaningless. The only ones that will mean anything will be ones against English sides but the thing, we're already playing them anyway, so...
The clubs will still compete in the premier league. I understand it's not ideal to have effectively two different divisions with different income streams in the same pyramid though, and I could see the end game being some clubs breaking off completely if they aren't kicked out.
In the context of the British budget, the extra tax revenue would barely be a rounding error. I think I read that a large Tesco (or whatever the big supermarket chain in England is) has the same annual revenue as a typical Prem club.
But the thing is, by these clubs math, you aren't the audience anymore. If they are getting 300 million a season from China, 300 million a season from the US, etc. etc. whether you or the kid up the road they seduce with some loss-leader tix for a season or two shows up, the clubs don't care. It's not good, but it's probably true. There's a lot of ways to put butts in seats in the short-term if you don't care about the $. Will fans from both big clubs in Manchester really go to... Bolton? Or will they use excuses like free tix to anyone who brings a kid to slink back? I dunno, but it's hard to imagine the 70k who fill OT suddenly streaming into Spotland...
This has become so reliably laughable that I find myself waiting with bated breath for the next development (“ready for dialogue”!). Having the Pope mediate would be AWESOME.
The English clubs are pretty good at it. I remember working in Kuala Lumpur one August years ago when ManU showed up for a week of preseason training and exhibitions. The EPL clubs got suckered by June and the Spanish clubs and are probably regretting it.
There is zero chance that the Premier League and super league can co-exist. The day the super league starts the premier league would lose more than half its value and become a glorified Carbaro Cup. A third of the teams would have nothing to play for. The premier league would be much better of money wise and sporting wise to kick out the 6 teams and try to re-organize. This probably goes for Italy and Spain as well. This is why this is all just the start of a cynical negotiation. Also why there was no announcements or fanfare for the ESL - it is meant as a donald trump style hard sell.
I bet the ranch that the German clubs and PSG were on board until all the shit hit the fan. Now they are taking the principled stand against.
https://www.theguardian.com/footbal...e-backlash-builds-against-breakaway-plan-live Technically if you’re going to expunge the breakaway teams from the record books you also have to expunge the games they played in. . . . I’ve attached a revised list of Premier League winners if that sort of thing interests you (it does me!)” Congratulations to Tim Howard, Brad Friedel, and Clint Dempsey for their retroactive Premier League winners' medals. (Maybe also Brian McBride, Brad Guzan, and Eddie Johnson, and others I may be forgetting, depending on whether had enough Premier League appearances in 2002-03, 2009-10, and 2010-11, respectively, to qualify).