European Super League Is Everything You Hate About Modern Sports
“A wolf should be beaten first, so that the other wolves will smell it’s blood and know what might happen to them and so never come again”- The Heart Gently Weeps by Wu-Tang
On Saturday the 17th of April, a news story broke that the top teams in European football were planning to break away and start their own competition to replace the annually contested UEFA Champion’s League.
They essentially want to eliminate the little guy. They are essentially trying to monopolize the sport and divide the pie amongst only the elite teams in European football.
The teams named as co-conspirators in this treason are AC Milan, Inter Milan, Juventus FC, FC Barcelona, Real Madrid, Atletico Madrid, Manchester United, Manchester City, Liverpool FC, Arsenal FC, Chelsea FC and Tottenham Hotspur.
What do I believe should be done?
First and foremost, there must be punishment. Severe punishment.
I want FIFA, UEFA and all the world’s top football associations to collaborate and crush this act of greed, insolence and rebellion. I want them to do what parents used to do back in the day. Which is just lay in the cut and wait until you watching tv or sleeping, and then proceed to hand out beat downs.
A three year transfer ban for all the teams involved would do the trick. A lot of the teams named have ageing squads so forcing them to sit three seasons with the same players, would teach them a lesson and restore the balance of power in each of the various leagues they play in.
Then you need to limit their exposure by giving them live television broadcast times that are out of left field. Want to watch Real Madrid live in the three next years? Prepare to stay up until 1AM at the earliest.
Another way is to start opening the avenues for players to do business ventures independently of the clubs that they play for. This would change the business landscape but would hurt the big clubs the most, especially at the beginning. You’d also likely have to talk to jersey manufacturers like Nike and Adidas to implement it well but all you’d be doing is creating a revenue stream that the clubs won’t be allowed to share in.
If you think about it, corona virus is a perfect excuse to hit the big teams live game attendance as well. Big teams draw bigger crowds don’t they? Shouldn’t there be heavier restrictions on them because of this? Start limiting how many fans the likes of Liverpool and City can have in their venues. Only you allow the smaller clubs to sell more tickets to the same fans. So the likes of Leicester City, Napoli FC, Valencia can sell more tickets because they don’t have the same capacity but they’re selling to more fans than they would otherwise.
You get the drift. Start hitting them where it hurts. Start taking away the things that allowed them to become the major conglomerates they’ve become.
Heads have got to roll, gentleman. Preferably roll on to the end of a pike that should be placed at the entrance of every football venue, for fans in attendance to throw rotting vegetables at.
I grew up with this sport. The idea that some owners in suits and ties, living in the ivory towers somewhere, think that they have the right to alter and change this game because they can and because their greedy enough to do it, is a low-down, dirty, filthy, shame.
What should be happening is a mob-justice, French Revolution style ting but the veneer of civility, modernity and money, allow people to get away with things.
Let me address Manchester United, before I jet.
I’ve rooted for this team since I was 13 and you know, this team hasn’t given me much to celebrate lately. We were once a symbol of excellence. We were once the standard bearers of the entire sport. We were once the most revered football culture in the world.
Docile. Greedy. Incompetent. Scheming, Backstabbing. Manipulative.
We once stood front and center of the sport. The one team you could always trust to raise the bar in a big game.
Now we’re defined by boardroom meetings where guys with bald spots try to influence and bend an entire sport to their will, and our ownership is right there trying to do the same thing.
The Glazer family are the worst thing that ever happened to Man United. Their influence is the single biggest thing behind Manchester United becoming the annual, season-long comedy show we’ve turned in to. I wasn’t surprised at all that we were involved. Our ownership are not high integrity people and it shows in how they run the football club.
Make no mistake the Glazers are the failsons of football ownership. The team they inherited (they bought the club in the 00′s) was in such a great place as far as on-field results and they have completely wasted it away. One dumb executive decision and coaching hire after another.
See anyone can buy a football club. Believe it or not, there is no shortage of people who would be willing to take on the financial risk of a team like Man United, especially when you look at how commercially viable the team already is and how many revenue streams they have built over the last three decades.
Billionaires have pulled off the trick of making you think they are special. They’re not.
This is what this once-great sporting institution has devolved into. An abomination/golem slowly devouring itself and now clutching at everything else around it, including the league that helped make them the television draw that they are and the money they’ve made along with it.
Football fans feel betrayed by this and we have every right to feel that way.