ESL statement: “Twelve of Europe’s leading football clubs have today come together to announce they have agreed to establish a new mid-week competition, the Super League, governed by its Founding Clubs. AC Milan, Arsenal, Atlético Madrid, Chelsea, Barcelona, Inter Milan, Juventus, Liverpool, Man City, Man Utd, Real Madrid +Tottenham Hotspur have all joined as founding clubs. Anticipated further 3 clubs will join ahead of the inaugural season, intended to commence as soon as possible.”
There was a point when players were agreeing to wage deferrals, clubs were doing community work and discussing parachute payments where I hoped we might emerge out of lockdown with a more egalitarian version of the game. But rampant hyper capitalism it is.
Exploiting a global pandemic to make a little footballing fiefdom for yourself. And for what? More money? To do what? Moral and creative cowardice.
Arsenal Football Club made 55 redundancies while simultaneously discussing a £350m payment to join this creepy elitist commercial cult.All that while drawing 1-1 at home against 18th placed Fulham and celebrating the 97th minute Eddie Nketiah equaliser like a title winner. Embarrassing.
Is this what Liverpool Football Club have come to? The people’s club? With absolutely no consideration for the ‘people’ themselves?
Manchester United Football Club. Built by railway yard workers and propelled by tragedy and ecstacy hand-in-hand. Whoever rallied behind this, you piss on our history. You piss on Matt Bubsy, Jimmy Murphy, Munich, Sir Alex and the very values that’ve been intrinsically linked with this football club over the years. The values of fair competition and sporting merit. This club has suffered relegation! You won’t ever enjoy the highs if you do away with the lows. And all this in a time where society more than ever, needs solidarity. When clubs in the lower reaches of the third and fourth division are having to furlough working class men. Men whose bread and butter, sweat and tears have everything to do with this sport.
I don’t support Manchester United for money, glory or because it’s a nauseating global brand. I support Manchester United because I fell in love with football we played, attitude and character we brought to a pitch. All I’ve ever wanted is escapism in my football, not greed. I support Manchester United because I was romanticised by the escapism of football where for 90 minutes you could watch the most beautiful stories unfold with breathtaking counterattacks and Fergie time heart-stopping goals, where any team (no matter how small) could beat you.
I’m not naive enough to not understand football is a business and money is part of the game & I support a club that’s drowned in riches. But it’s a club that picked itself back up from remnants of a horrific tragedy and it’s always been this resilience that I admired the most.
In fact, football in England took a step away from it’s roots way back in 1992. This multi-million brand, known as the Premier League has everything to do with money being pumped into the English game in an attempt to globalise the sport, commercialize the sport and fetch more money. The old first division, the joy of seeing Nottingham forest come up and win the title within two years, the joy of Wimbeldon making it’s way up the football pyramid, the beauty of Howard Wilkinson’s Leeds was done away with in a heartbeat. They’ve been asking for something like this to happen by enticing multi-billion takeovers of club. Chelsea and Manchester City shouldn’t even be at the table.
At the heart of all this is the fact that we’re buying into a league based off what these clubs used to be like. Why are Arsenal, City, Tottenham and Chelsea even in this? Villa and Forest have more European trophies than these lot combined. Surely that qualifies as pedigree?
Clubs at the bottom of League one and two, starting a new journey under some unknown football wizard can no longer aim for the stars because apparently, them spots are bought, not achieved.
Football is romanticism and we’re all hopeless romantics. Believe it or believe it not. We live for the underdog stories. The stories of Jose winning the Champions League with Porto, the sight of a young, fearless Ajax side running riot at the home of the Champions of Europe, the story of a small footballing city with nothing but grit and hope with title odds of 5000/1, appeal to us. Keeps us going. Makes us believe.
At the heart of this move, then, is a distaste for the basic point of sport itself: a battle of nations and cultures, towns and regions, ideas and systems, an ecosystem with a top and a middle and a bottom, something you go out and play as well as sit down and pay for. Perhaps this had long been an unfashionable idea at the sharp end of the game.
But in stating their intention to establish a closed competition – or a largely closed competition, which in effect would be largely the same thing – the biggest clubs have laid out their vision for the future of football: a 12-month reality television show whose sole purpose is to generate a ceaseless stream of content, animus and talking points.
Unchecked and unquestioned, capital has never merely contented itself with a seat at the table, but will invariably demand the power to make its own rules. This, in large part, is what appears to have happened here.
Just a reminder that Celtic, Rangers and Ajax are bigger clubs than some of the teams in that Super League. They just don’t play in big money leagues that have world renowned sponsors plastered across pitches. That’s why you don’t watch them and that’s why they aren’t sold.
The Celtic and Rangers CEOs have previously considered the idea of joining the Premier League because that’s where the money is. Their fans won’t like it because it erodes their identities. Their political identities and social identities. That’s purity.
If clubs get fooled about by the money these corporates pump, they’ll lose their identities. They’ll lose their souls. Fans will see those clubs as toys, they’ll see their managers as usable material. They don’t like the fans, they like their money. It’s all they care for.
Don’t worry, the European Super League won’t happen this way. We’ll just get a bunch of gradual reforms, then one day we’ll all wake up and realise football as we knew it is long dead.
I’ve never felt this detached with the sport. I am sure you feel the same.
Into Added Time 