The super league is being talked about again but it’s hard to see anything happening with Liverpool, Man United, and the other English clubs not involved.
Last year, a group of European clubs including Liverpool and led by most accounts by Real Madrid president Florentino Perez and Juventus’ Andrea Agnelli tried to launch a breakaway European super league.
The project was a bungled mess, an inherently unpopular undertaking with no real attempt made to convince the public on any merits it might have beyond that it would be good for the finances of the involved clubs.
The timing, in the midst of a global pandemic with more pressing concerns on the minds of most, further added to resentment—a feeling some of the game’s richest were trying to push through changes for their own benefit at a time when everyone was struggling.
A year later, while Russia undertakes an unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, at least some of those behind last year’s failed super league have decided the time is right to try again.
However, despite early suggestion that Perez and Agnelli may have managed to get the proverbial band back together, subsequent reports out of England suggest the six English clubs remain uninterested in reopening any super league discussion.
This shouldn’t be particularly surprising, such was the backlash from fans, pundits, and politicians the last time around and given the fact that last autumn Liverpool reaffirmed their “involvement in the proposed ESL plans has been discontinued.”
As part of the walk-back from the last super league debacle, the Premier League instituted firmer rules intended to block a future breakaway league—including financial penalties and a potential 30-point deduction.
Clearly, though, Real Madrid, Juventus, and fellow reported super league stalwarts Barcelona are unwilling to—or, perhaps, feel they are financially compelled not to—let their dream slip quietly into the night.
Yet without any English or, presumably given their resistance to it last year, German support it’s difficult to see how this latest round of super league talk could amount to anything more than the last.
