On 11 December, 1934, in the French, weekly newspaper, Le Miroir des sports, Gabriel Hanot, a journalist and former footballer who had represented France on a dozen occasions on the field of play, suggested that each year there should be “international exchanges” in which two clubs from each of the great, European nations would participate in the championship of a different nation. In response to this suggestion, Jean-Bernard Lévy, the President of the Racing Club de Paris, proposed instead that there should be simply a “Championship of Europe” for clubs, which would be composed of two divisions, and a “Cup of Europe” for clubs, the competition for which would take place as a prelude to the competition for the continental championship. The advent of travel by aeroplane and the consequently shorter duration of journeys between the cities of Europe, Lévy argued, would facilitate the holding of such multinational competitions. However, he conceded, there would be a problem, albeit one which would not be insurmountable: “The great difficulty would be, of course, the participation of the English teams”.
IT WAS within the pages of the French sports weekly Le Miroir des sports in 1934 that Gabriel Hanot suggested football’s future lay within the concept of a cross-border European club competition. Not a cup competition, but a league. Hanot had put plenty of thought into his idea. Under his plan, the top two teams in each national league would advance to a pan-European league for the following season before returning to domestic duties 12 months later, replaced in Hanot’s league by two more teams per nation from the previous various domestic campaigns. Some 87 years later, football threatened to tear itself apart all in the name of a cross-border Super League. Nothing in the sport is as new as you might think it to be.
https://apnews.com/article/soccer-s...occer-europe-dcddb3546ca75f8877f4e79902fe17fd Many European states support UEFA in Super League legal case By GRAHAM DUNBAROctober 20, 2021 GENEVA (AP) — More than half of the European Union member states have formally opposed soccer’s Super League project at the European Court of Justice, UEFA said Wednesday. Of the 27 EU members, 16 filed written submissions against the league to the court in Luxembourg by Monday’s deadline. The court has been asked by a judge in Madrid to examine if UEFA and FIFA have a monopoly control of the sport. UEFA said the 16 nations include Spain and Italy — home countries of Real Madrid, Barcelona and Juventus, the teams leading the 12-club Super League company’s legal fight. Germany is also expected to oppose the Super League. The European court is expected to hold a public hearing in the first half of next year. A ruling could take several more months. EU member states want to protect the “European Sports Model,” which gives soccer its exemptions from competition laws. The model defends the role elite and grassroots sports play in European life when they are part of the same pyramid of competitions and funding open to everyone through promotion and relegation. The Super League project, which was announced in April but quickly collapsed, was to break away from the Champions League and run its own 20-team competition. Fifteen invited clubs from Europe’s five wealthiest soccer markets would have had protected status while the other five places would have been open to other clubs.