Why would a European Super League be bad news for fans — and for football?

The proposal to create a European Super League for a small number of elite clubs, including six from the Premier League, matters far beyond the clubs themselves. English football has an impact far outstripping the basics of the sport, in terms of mass participation at every level and every age, playing and spectating. It dominates televised sport. The Premier League is the biggest and richest in the world, and one of the UK’s most successful exports in terms of rights sold elsewhere, revenues derived, and frankly, soft power. It is an everyday item of conversation for millions here and billions abroad. Its history and manner of connection with communities is unique in popular and social culture. 

I have played and watched football all my life. I had brief encounters with the administration of the game at high level as a head-hunter searching for a new CEO for the FA, and as part of the All-Party Football Group in Parliament, which allowed me regular access to the game’s movers and shakers. 

It is a commonplace among fans that, at elite level, football has been steadily moving away from the people who give it life blood, the watching fan. The misery of the pandemic is compounded by soulless games in front of empty stands. All the great managers of the past — men like Busby, Stein and Shankly — and those of today are often and rightly quoted as saying that without the fans the game is nothing. The last Covid year, barren for football as for so much else, is proof of that. 

Fans have swallowed much. Sky sold its news coverage and domination of televised sport on the back of the fans, knowing they would pay to watch more of the game on TV, having grown up with restricted highlights for most of their lives. Fans knew that the minimum wage and brutal playing contracts, in place until the 1960s, were unfair, so were pleased that those who played would be paid what they were worth. But as wages spiralled, and the cost of watching their club increased, the world that player and fan had shared together became a thing of the past. 

The fan accepted that such things happened in a market-dominated world where price and value were becoming separated in many other contexts too. When we stopped being passengers, patients and students, and became customers instead, fans stopped being fans too. When the First Division became the Premier League, because of money and television, and when owners arrived who were not local self-made magnates but tycoons from far away – the fan kept on swallowing. 

And we still kept watching the game because, although it had changed radically at the highest level, it remained honest enough in terms of its competitive nature to attract us, as it had done in the past. Ultimately the skills of players and tactics of teams were still the deciding factors, and Leicester City could somehow beat them all. 

At the centre of this is a clash between what the United States believes is competition, and what we believe. In the US the idea of franchise, of a closed competitive league between a small number of clubs, has by tradition become the norm, is accepted and works for them. When the Yankees play the Red Sox, the fact that they will both be in the same league the next season, win or lose, is immaterial to the excitement engendered. So for US owners the idea of a European Super League of the same clubs, forever, with a handful of worthy also-rans to make up the numbers, does not seem a problem.

This is at the heart of the anger exhibited by fans today. Win or lose in the European Super League, or ESL, you stay in the same competition endlessly. This is fundamentally different to the principle of relegation and promotion which has driven quality, diversity and competition in European football for over a hundred years and governs the leagues of thousands of clubs under FA rules. The amount of money supposedly generated in the ESL would also give the six clubs a further advantage, if they needed it, in a domestic game they already dominate, thus devaluing the competitive nature of that League. And how will the lucky five clubs to join them in the ESL be decided? Presumably, no English club could be allowed to add to the six already there. What would be the prize for winning the domestic League if anyone else ever did? 

 And fans fear something else. In the US franchises move from city to city, when an owner wants to sell, or is bored of his toy. Provided the economic well-being of the club remains strong, which is guaranteed by a non-competitive system, there is ultimately no risk attached to performance, because you an always recoup your investment. Ask JP Morgan.

The outcry today is that finally enough is enough. We have kidded ourselves for too long, but what is now on offer is no longer football. To those of us who have also seen our clubs disappear after 135 years of history, through cack-handed financial mismanagement, and English Football League indifference, the revolt and restructuring of our game cannot come soon enough. 

A Message from TheArticle

We are the only publication that’s committed to covering every angle. We have an important contribution to make, one that’s needed now more than ever, and we need your help to continue publishing throughout the pandemic. So please, make a donation.