The next step in soccer's gentrification is on the neck of supporters
UEFA is problematic, sure, but a European Super League would completely diminish all that fans of the sport hold dear
There is no easy way to explain The European Super League (ESL) and what it represents because everyone’s individual comprehension of it is so dependent on their own specific understanding of the context that surrounds it. The entire enterprise feels more like speculative fiction for soccer fans than anything rooted in reality.
The best I can do to describe it is to say that the biggest soccer clubs in Europe have established their own separate tournament which would take place (beginning in 2023) in addition to their domestic leagues, but as direct competition to the Champions League. Instead qualifying for the Champions League, the 15 “founding members” (their language, not mine) would be guaranteed a spot in the ESL, irrespective of their domestic league performance. The final five spots in the 20-team league (it should be pointed out that there are currently only 12 sides committed to this) would then be filled through some form of qualification, but how that will be handled is anyone’s guess at this point.
For non-soccer fans, that summary is probably as confusing as hell, but to begin to explain the differences between popular North American sports and European football would require 5,000 additional words, unfit similes that sound like stoner talk (it’s like if each country had its own NBA) and a devotion to tedium that I lack. I think the thing to emphasize is that open competition, promotion and relegation and earning spots in international competitions are core principles in soccer. The Super League wouldn’t follow these pillars.
The partially “closed” style of league it’s proposing has drawn comparisons to the competitions with which North Americans are more familiar. To me, though, that’s a bit of a misnomer. The ESL isn’t more like the National Football League (NFL) than the Champions League. It’s more like an NFL spin-off wherein the Dallas Cowboys, Pittsburgh Steelers, New England Patriots and New York Giants competed in the regular season, but then, regardless of their records, then played in their own playoffs and Super Bowl instead of the regularly sanctioned one for which all the other teams tried to qualify.
It’s an exercise in brand leverage, a way for the most internationally recognizable squads to guarantee income after the financial disappointments brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic and to further separate themselves from revenue sharing with the lessers. It’s not a way to make better competition. And it’s almost universally driving soccer fans, players, managers and everyone involved in the game who doesn’t stand to profit wildly from this plan toward intense anger. As it should. Personally, I hate the idea.
But the arguments against the league can be a bit rich at times, imagining the current system of play to be of more purity than it actually is. European soccer is not the meritocracy The Super League detractors suggest. That fact absolutely does not supply enough ammunition to defend this new league, but it must be mentioned that it’s incredibly difficult and rare for a team without pedigree to rise the ranks within each nation’s current set up.
The distribution of wealth and earnings for each league is different, but they all share a similar approach in better rewarding the more-established, richer sides. This has contributed to a stagnation in the standings that would be unfamiliar to most North American sports fans. Still, movement does happen.
It’s just that for every Atalanta or Leicester City, there are dozens of sides shackled to mediocre mid-table finishes or fluctuations between top flight football and a lower division. The anti-Super League response is a bit like imagining the aristocracy we’re in is a full-fledged democracy just to avoid a dictatorship on the horizon.
Further complicating things is that UEFA, the governing body of European football (and adamantly unsupportive of the breakaway league), is far from an altruistic enterprise devoted to club supporters. They’ve been just as guilty as leveraging the teams as brands to build their own competitions (and the television and streaming revenue it generates) as they’re now accusing The Super League.
It’s something akin to an independent fine dining restaurant opening up as the first gentrifiers of an impoverished neighbourhood, then the owners absolutely losing their mind a few years later when a chain restaurant has the audacity to launch a franchise down the street. Sure, it’s gross. And inauthentic. And a blatant money-grab. But you kind of brought this upon yourself.
Still, UEFA and the Premier League and the other leagues all do a good job of at least paying lip service to club supporters through endorsing the idea of open competition and meritocracy and, perhaps most importantly, the tradition of supporters upon which the clubs are built, while The ESL is more brazen in its devotion to clubs as brands.
Having “locked-in” founding members in the league minimizes the importance of domestic results, essentially eliminating the relevance of league position (which has long been at the root of that for which fans cheer). Adding fuel to the fire, is a BBC Sport report that claims “those involved in ESL call traditional supporters of clubs ‘legacy fans’ while they are focused instead on the ‘fans of the future’ who want superstar names.”
“Legacy fans.” That’s enough for me to hate the ESL on its own.
Seriously, though, there is so much tradition locked into the beautiful game that this type of verbiage alone is enough to inspire outrage among fans, in English supporters especially. Of the six English teams committed to the ESL, three are American-owned. These billionaires have often been accused of putting greed ahead of tradition (again, I cannot stress how important this is to soccer fans), and this only cements that. Of the 12 teams in total, only two — Barcelona and Real Madrid — are actually owned by club members. The rest are owned by billionaire families or conglomerates.
The soulless corporate language being used by the ownership groups ventures into Trumpian gaslighting out of the mouth of ESL joint-vice chairman and Juventus chief Andrea Agnelli who claims the league is being founded for the "benefit of the entire European football pyramid."
We have come together at this critical moment, enabling European competition to be transformed, putting the game we love on a sustainable footing for the long-term future, substantially increasing solidarity, and giving fans and amateur players a regular flow of headline fixtures that will feed their passion for the game while providing them with engaging role models.
We’ve got some real heroes in a time of crisis over here. If you’re not already sickened by the allusions to a global pandemic as inspiration for innovation, rather than the “largest transfer of wealth to a small set of teams in modern sports history" (New York Times), just sit tight.
What Agnelli didn’t mention is that his team has been knocked out by Ajax, Lyon and Porto during the last three seasons of Champions League play. None of those teams would be mistaken for “founding members.” Nor does he mention that Juventus currently sit in fourth place in Serie A, only two points away from being knocked out of a Champions League spot.
If the league was truly about increased competition among the best the sport has to offer, at least two of the London clubs — I’m looking at you Arsenal and Tottenham — would be laughed out of consideration. The ESL is a breakaway league in the truest sense: a way for elite clubs (in terms of brand) to tap into lucrative and guaranteed revenue streams that will in turn grant them a foothold as the only teams who can afford to compete at the very top level. The fact that they’d pretend otherwise, that they’d suggest this is out of motivation for what’s best for the game, is probably the most distasteful part.
Fortunately, no one is really buying it. And there is legitimate hope for this not happening at all with one report today suggesting an English side is already meeting to discuss its withdrawal. Whatever happens, though, a covenant of sorts has been broken with supporters.
Throughout Europe, the game of football is woven into communities as a means of knitting people together, of strengthening bonds of civic pride. I’m not sure that even Canadians and our hockey culture or the most ardent Alabama college football fan in Tuscaloosa can fully grasp that. The introduction of the ESL has laid bare and confirmed the very worst suspicions of these dedicated supporters: that ownership, often foreign, views their club as a monetary investment, not one of emotion or community.
I’m not sure there’s an easy recovery from that myth being dispelled. In this sense, do or die, the ESL might have already altered the game forever.
Photo by Alexandre Brondino on Unsplash