LOL when the FIGC is more sensible than any other governing body out there. Let's see if they stick to their guns on this: https://www.football-italia.net/169503/gravina-juventus-milan-and-inter-cannot-be-sanctioned
UEFA wants to play more Euro games at Wembley to reward England's resistance against the Super League. lolololololololololololololololololol
yes. 6 of the 12 clubs were English, but they will reward their "resistance". And people wonder why these clubs wanted to get out from under UEFA's thumb. Now Rumminegge wants top be the "mediator". And Ceferin clearly blames it all on Agnelli. https://www.football-italia.net/169554/rummenigge-dialogue-we-will-come-out-together
For now the Super League is dead but we need to turn our attention to the Champions League because the ECA is trying to ram down our throats the two historical performance spots. Those need to go. In my opinion, a lot of things need to change in Europe, including the Champions League. I think that if this 36-team proposal (with or without the performance spots) goes through it will undoubtedly expand in the future to 40 and eventually 48. With that being said, here are the changes I support: 1. Eliminate all league cups and super cups (they are pointless and cause undue fixture congestion). 2. Reduce all five big leagues to 18 clubs. It will result in better play as players play fewer domestic games and the talent is better concentrated. 3. Expand the Champions League to 48 using the same 10-game Swiss system. It will allow for more berths for the big nations (thus reducing the need for the historical performance spots) and for the medium size nations. 4. Eliminate the Europa League, Super Cup, and Europa Conference League. All are pointless and only the super cup makes a profit on its own. My access list for my proposed 48-team Champions League: Title holder (spot would go to champion of league 15 if former already qualified) Leagues 1-2: top 6 Leagues 3-4: top 5 League 5: top 4 League 6: top 3 Leagues 7-10: top 2 Leagues 11-14: champion only 6 qualifiers from remaining domestic champions There would be three qualifying rounds to pair the 40 remaining champions down to six. Top 32 qualify for knockout rounds with 1-16 being seeded and 17-32 being unseeded in Round of 32 draw.
Now ESPiN is shilling for a college sports "Super League": https://www.espn.com/college-footba.../what-college-football-super-league-look-like This idea is not going away folks.
Maybe what they should do is play for a relegation promotion type thing. Like the NFL playoffs for example whomever whomever does well across the competition gets promoted and stays from year to year and whomever does poorly gets relegated back to their domestic leagues so other clubs can strive for something? Not exactly sure but I'm thinking we are only seeing the first of this.
Lots of supporters enjoy the cup matches and it also provides an opportunity for lower division teams to play against top clubs. These teams also get money from the attendance. EPL would not agree but it's a good proposal I'm agnostic about this and think that the current CL is already bloated but that's just my opinion. I would like more knock out matches before the group stages to force big clubs to 'play for their life.' This won't happen as smaller countries only have the Europa League to look forward to. This rewards mediocrity as it rewards a league whose points are generated by 1-2 teams to have more in the CL. Other than Bayern and Dortmund, other German clubs have been dismal in the CL. Same thing about France and PSG. When was the last time Milan was a force? I don't think any league should have more than four teams in the CL period. As I noted above I want more playoffs to see who actually gets into the CL. This should be merit based and decided on the field.
Teams have always been able to do this on their own but for the most part they don't want to schedule tough games. ACC and Big 10 have had matches against one another for a lot of years now in basketball. Football teams pad their schedule with patsies as they don't want to lose a game against a top team.
Barca speaks: Super League is a necessity: https://www.football-italia.net/169560/laporta-super-league-necessity
What do you expect from a club whose management is totally inept and by any GAAP Accounting would be declared insolvent today?
This is why the CL needs to be restricted to first and second-place finishers only. When they expanded it to 3rd and 4th place finishers for the sake of television revenue, they gutted the UEFA Cup which in turn placed a severe handicap on the smaller European leagues. Not only were they denied regular competition against some of the top clubs from the biggest leagues, they were excluded from the money earned by the CL because they either couldn't get beyond the qualifiers or were eliminated too early in the group stage to reap any kind of significant financial benefit.
New "leagues" are popping up all over: https://westvirginia.forums.rivals.com/threads/siap-new-ncaa-basketball-competitor.252219/
I don't think cups should be disbanded, just league cups (EFL Cup for example). I agree that only 4 teams per country should be in but if it is a choice between 6 clubs from one country in and historical places, I'll take 6 clubs.
1) Assuming your defining League Cups not as the primary domestic cup but the secondary cups (i.e. Carabao Cup in England and Coupe de Ligue in France), then yes agreed on the elimination of League Cups (there should only be a Domestic Cup). The Super Cup should be like the Charity Shield, during the weekend before the domestic league starts, not midseason. Honestly if it is meant to be money spinner, then I honestly don't care if they want to have this in some other country - I am not sure any fan base truly values a Supercup. 2) I am still a fan of 20 teams but always here this idea and understand the potential merit. 3) & 4) I will be in the minority, but I do enjoy both the UCL and Europa as currently structured. If I could make a change, I'd set it up where you a UCL week - Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and the next week is the Europa League week - in theory Europa will get better viewership, which is something I think is seldom considered as to why it doesn't make more money - you have the same number of games as UCL, but squeezed into one day instead of two. It will never be as lucrative as the UCL, but given a fair chance can be a breakeven tournament.
LeMonde claims to have read a 10 page document dating back to January in which a competition between 12 clubs agreed with FIFA is hypothesized. Tebas (La Liga) is now asking FIFA's President Infantino to clarify his role in it.
According to Der Spiegel clubs dropping out of the SuperLeague have to pay €150 million to clubs remaining in the SL. That's why no club has officially left the SuperLeague yet.
They are bigger fools than I thought. To totally misread the public and sign a binding contract such as that indicates that management are fools. By all accounting principles Madrid and Barcelona are insolvent and Spurs are not far behind as long as supporters are not allowed in.
I have to say. This all has been handled very poorly by all sides. Clearly there are good points on all sides of the argument, but no one has really addressed the issues raised by the other side. The big club side has handled its communication particularly poorly. Here is part of what they should be saying. Every big club NOT in the Prem starts every season off at a huge financial disadvantage. The worst Prem side makes very close to what the top Italian sides make and esp. with COVID taking out all game related revenues, this has to be addressed at some point or we will have 2-4 Prem teams ruling Europe every year. The only teams that can compete with them annually are the 2 Spanish giants that have governments bailing them out; PSG which is owned by a country; Bayern which uses the rest of the Bundesliga as a farm team; and until this year Juventus which is run by one of the giants of Italian industry. Even the Chinese at Milan and Inter can't keep up with that. It its only going to get worse, esp. if lockdowns continue into next year. What they called the Super League was an attempt to address these inequities. IMHO it was clearly pre-mature as they had not adequately prepared the euro soccer world for what they were proposing. This was probably due to UEFA ramming down the throats of the clubs and players an even more watered down CL with more games added to an already over subscribed season for players well being moving forward from 2024. This proposal was the clubs desperate response to try to head that off. Note the timing of the announcement. Accordingly, it was ham handed and half cocked. Plus the use of the word "League" served to permit foes to demagogue the proposal, because it was never a true "league" only an alternative to UEFA's revised CL proposal. Anyway, if UEFA and FIFA don't address the legitimate economic issues these major clubs identified, I think we very well may end up with an ACTUAL Pan-Euro league with more than one division in the future. After all, that is what the original Champions' "League" was designed to hold off in the late 90's. IF the big clubs and UEFA can't agree on a mutually acceptable formula going forward, I think this will be the play, because unlike a replacement CL, this would offer spots to a lot more clubs. In fact it would offer spots and $$$$$ to most of the important clubs in Europe and would generate a lot more tv $$$ than the current patch work of national league tv rights. One thing interesting to me that has been largely overlooked is that 6 Prem teams were willing to sign on even though it would amount to a bit of unilateral disarmament by them vis a vis the rest of the 14 teams in the proposed competition. That says even the "winners" under the current set up see it as unsustainable. That OUGHT to tell UEFA and FIFA something. Doubt that it will.
@juveeer - your analysis breaks down in one important way. The EPL television money won't transfer over to the ESL. One of the reasons that they have such a rich contract is that people want to watch EPL games; this is the case in England and in the US and likely other regions as well. I pretty much only watch Leeds every weekend as I like the way they play football and a few Liverpool games as well. I don't watch much else. I watch Juve and Atalanta but find the rest of the Italian teams quite boring. Atalanta because they have a good up tempo strategy and Juve because they have a group of head cases who cannot synch up. I like it when teams have to battle for their lives which is why I propose only limited access to the group stage of the CL and a larger knockout phase before the group stage. This is meritocracy and not entitlement. That's what it should be about as is the quote from Guardiola in my sig line. I
If those teams pull out of the Prem, those tv $$$$ WILL follow into the new league if it is formed, and leave the Prem. Worldwide, a true Pan-Euro Super League with 2 or more divisions will be worth far more than what individual leagues, even the Prem, get now. What UEFA did here, if they do not address these issues, makes the formation of an actual league down the road more likely. And it that happens the teams will leave their national leagues behind, unlike what the CL replacement/alternative proposed here did. As I posted, if 6 Prem teams were willing to join this given their inherent monetary advantages now, that means there are issues that UEFA and FIFA ignore at their peril,.
Interesting. Now there is some backlash against Ceferin at least in Italy and Spain: https://www.football-italia.net/169638/ceferinout-trends-italy-and-spain ".....It included messages mocking the UEFA slogan of ‘respect’ with the suggestion: “Those who want respect, give respect.” This also followed reports that during the COVID-19 pandemic, Ceferin raised his own wages as UEFA President. A statement from the Milan ultras group Curva Sud when the Super League was announced seemed to sum up the general approach of many Italian fans. They protest that the Super League is merely a continuation of the Champions League in moving away from the original European Cup model, providing more and more fixtures to generate more money....." “Football did belong to the people until the 1990s, when the Champions League was born, destroying the old European Cup. From that moment, an unbreachable chasm has been created between the big and small clubs....”
Perez not backing down. Some new interesting info in here: https://www.football-italia.net/169639/perez-clubs-cant-leave-super-league SNIP: ".....“The entity exists and the members who make up the Super League are there too,” Real Madrid chief Perez told Spanish newspaper Diario AS. “What we’ve done is given ourselves a few weeks to reflect on the hostility with which certain people who don’t want to lose their privileges have manipulated the project. “Back in January the president of UEFA sent out severe warning shots about the Super League. We wanted to talk through the details with UEFA, but they didn’t even give us time. An orchestrated, manipulated operation was organised, the like of which I’ve never seen. I’ve never seen anything like it. “We were forced to turn to the courts, who issued an injunction, enough said. It orders UEFA and FIFA, and also the leagues and national football associations to abstain from taking any measure or action, or issuing any statement or communication, that prevents the preparation of the Super League. In my opinion, this judgement ends UEFA’s monopoly. But despite it being issued on Tuesday, the president of UEFA continued with his threats on Wednesday. These are actions that go against free competition in the European Union, and that is very serious.” Meanwhile, Perez also insisted the clubs who declared their exit from the project – Manchester City, Chelsea, Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal, Tottenham, Inter and Atletico Madrid – haven’t really done so. “I’m not going to take my time to explain what a binding contract is here. But the fact is, the clubs can’t leave. “Some, because of the pressure, have had to say they’ll leave. But this project, or something very similar, will happen, and I hope it’s in the near future.” Even investment bank JP Morgan released a rare statement apologising for their involvement in the project, but again Perez assures that is all for show. “That’s not true, they haven’t left either. They’ve taken time to reflect, like the 12 clubs. If something needs to be changed, it’ll be changed, but the Super League is the best project we’ve thought can be carried out. What we need to do is get the fans back, the youngsters. And to do that, changes have to be made. If UEFA want to do it with the project they announced the other day, well the truth is I didn’t understand it nor do I think it would be a good solution. What’s more, they want to start in 2024, and we’ll see which teams push back.” The format for the new Champions League would be almost identical to the one proposed by the Super League, two groups of 10 playing home and away in a mini-division to then reach knockout rounds. “Either we fix this before 2024 or all the clubs go bankrupt. There will be a mutiny of the teams as they go bankrupt, because the only ones who will survive will be state financed clubs or who have multimillionaire owners, who are willing, for their own entertainment, to lose hundreds of millions [of euros] each season.”