THE ESL Seb Baden-Thomas

THE EUROPEAN SUPER LEAGUE

The breakaway European Super League was set to bring together 15 of the biggest European football clubs for a new midweek competition in place of the existing UEFA Champions and UEFA Europa League.The super league plan had support from investment bank JP Morgan. However, plans quickly collapsed under intense scrutiny and pressure from fans, players, governments and other key stakeholders.

Although the response to the new super league was mainly negative and many people were talking about the bad impacts that the league would have on the football community, for the clubs involved in this new league the financial benefits were set to be massive. Each of the founding teams would receive an expected €3.5 billion to join, plus €10 billion for an ‘initial commitment period’. For some of these clubs, this sum of money is worth more than the clubs themselves, for example, Arsenal is worth around an estimated 8.2 billion dollars. If the league was to go ahead this sum of money would help transform teams like Arsenal back into the European superpower they used to be. As well as the money these clubs would receive from the league, being part of Europe’s elite competition would mean they are entitled to the best possible broadcasting and commercial opportunities.

However, on the other hand, this super league may benefit the teams involved but the effects on the rest of football would have been detrimental. The proposed european super league was met with large amounts of opposition, the likes of these include UEFA, FIFA, and many governments. Boris Johnson even said this “How can it be right when you have a situation where you create a kind of cartel that stops clubs competing against each other?”. Throughout its history football has always been divided into leagues that any team could be in if their squad was strong enough, whereas this new super league is just taking Europe's elite into a league with no relegation and promotion, therefore removing a massive competitive aspect to the sport. UEFA and FIFA were also set to impose bans for players taking part in the super league; they were prepared to ban these players from playing international football for their countries. This would decrease the quality of international football and could potentially lead to a decline in viewership, which could have a negative impact on events like the football world cup which is arguably one of the biggest sporting events in the world.

In conclusion, if the super league was to go ahead i think the effects on football would be massive and these effects would impact football at every level. Also the backlash that the founding clubs received means that I don't think this competition would have ever been able to go ahead. football is meant to be a competitive sport where any team is able to compete with one another, but with the super league this would have been ruined with only the elite and wealthy teams being able to win the biggest prizes available, taking away any underdog stories.