Momentum builds behind second Super League plot

Paris Saint-Germain have offered Kylian Mbappe a contract that amounts to €100m (£83.2m) a year, in what would be the biggest individual player deal football has ever seen. Real Madrid are naturally aware of this, as well as the fact they can’t currently get anywhere close to such an offer. The Spanish club have consequently attempted to play on other motivations. Mbappe’s camp have been told he may be giving up the chance to ever turn out for Europe’s “greatest football institution”, as Madrid have pointed to their history, as well as their potential future.

That future may well bring offers of that magnitude if Florentino Perez has his way. The Madrid president is newly bullish about his European Super League, and its potential rewards. Given how entrenched Paris Saint-Germain have become in the European establishment, with club president Nasser Al-Khelaifi having used the last Super League debacle to strengthen his own position, the situation adds even greater edge to Wednesday’s Champions League last-16 second leg. It is possible that the shame of elimination to PSG could further fire Perez. Uefa’s perceived failure in tackling the state-owned clubs is already a significant motivation behind the project. A new momentum has built.

There was even some expectation Juventus chairman Andrea Agnelli would launch it again at last Thursday’s Financial Times Business of Football summit. Uefa president Aleksander Ceferin deftly headed that prospect off through his radar for the public mood, just as he did back in April 2021.

“Look, first they launched this nonsense of an idea in the middle of a pandemic,” Ceferin said. “Now we are reading articles every day they are planning to launch another idea in the middle of war.”

Shortly after that salvo in Mayfair’s Biltmore Hotel, Agnelli and his team could be seen scurrying off to come up with a line in response to this, but it seems unlikely they were ever going to launch ESL 2.0 there and then. That is because of where the project is right now. Its fate, and that of global football, depends on the outcome of a case taken to the European Court of Justice by A22 – a Spanish company which represents the Super League.

Some time in the next year, a judge will essentially decide whether it is only Uefa that can organise competitions, or whether clubs should be free to set up their own. The former should seem fair enough given Uefa are the governing body, but a significant complication is the argument that they profit from tournaments like the Champions League, making them “competitors”. The case is currently seen by legal sources as “50-50”.

It could similarly see the entire game go down wildly divergent paths. If Uefa were to lose, the outcome would herald a totally different sport.

There is actually merit to the idea that European football could do with some sort of overhaul, even if that is obviously not a Super League.

The Champions League has helped create a situation where the game is so financially stratified its inherent unpredictability has been diminished. So many leagues are close to foregone conclusions, with the Premier League almost a Super League of its own. It looms over everything, now hollowing out western European football in the way western Europe has long hollowed out the South American game.

If the game on the continent still represents a pyramid, it is a troublingly steep one, with everything propping up a narrow peak where only a few clubs reside.

The post-2024 Champions League changes, also announced last week, do nothing to change any of that. It’s one reason they are so unpopular, to go with the asymmetrical “Swiss” structure. The problem has never been the competition’s format, after all. It is that financial disparity has made the group stage predictable.

The new structure only sidesteps this problem. It does not exactly improve the potential for those outside the super elite. Worse, Ceferin has not removed the problematic coefficient qualifications, despite previously saying he would. So much for reforms. A few clubs will still qualify in seasons where they have not finished in qualification positions.

Too many of the other leagues are too restricted, with institutions like Ajax or Celtic or Benfica unable to grow because the “markets” they are in – ie, their domestic competitions – are too small. This is why some sources are finding a new Super League increasingly appealing, especially if England is not involved. Many feel they now need something different just to compete with the Premier League.

The organisers of the project insist they are currently in an exploration phase, partly because of what they describe as Uefa’s “thought control”. They insist they cannot contact clubs. The Independent has been told of one club which was pursuing the project, only for that to get back to Uefa, and the club to get a call.

That is something else that will change if the Super League win the ECJ case. In the meantime, the organisers say they are just canvassing ideas, and compelling those involved to imagine something else. There are tentative plans for a much broader, tiered structure than that proposed in 2021, that would take in a lot more clubs.

“There’s no innovation in football,” one connected source said. “Imagine if you could start European football from a blank slate. You would obviously have big clubs in all the major cities, from Copenhagen to Dublin to Prague. You can’t currently have that with just domestic leagues, which Ceferin is wedded to.”

Another added: “It’s wrong that an Ajax can’t be what they should be because of the historical and geographical fluke that they are in a smaller country.” For all these figures mention Ajax, it should be stressed they are not currently involved. They are just obvious future targets in the event the case is won.

When it is put to people within the Super League that any such project would just widen economic gaps in domestic leagues, the argument is that is already the case and it’s better to accept that reality and build something new.

It is why an increasing number of people feel a new project might this time work. The very dominance of the Premier League may even strengthen their hand, ironically.

On one side, so much of football now sees the English competition as too big, and realises the need for something else to counter-balance it. A continental Super League may be the only solution.

On the other side, the absence of English clubs also removes English supporter opposition. Their protests were absolutely integral to the failure of the first plan. Uefa realised this early on back in April, and made a point of stoking key stakeholders in order to energise English opposition for when it launched.

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It is also why this court case is so crucial to the future of the sport. The Super League project is after all about much more than just a new competition. What the clubs really want is a new federation, a more direct challenge to Uefa. They want a Premier League-style members club, where they are the shareholders, and have all the power.

It is not difficult to see where that would go, given what has already happened in English and European football. It would just see further growth of the super clubs at the expense of everyone else, and perhaps the evolution of the sport into an NFL-style elite at the top, with a more parochial game below.

Missing from all this is a thorough discussion about what football actually needs. “The Super League just aren’t concerned with the reality of what sport actually is,” one source argues. For all the posturing about improving the game, it remains fanciful to think figures like Perez and Agnelli are motivated by anything other than short-term self-interest.

One well-placed source offered a revealing insight into how the Madrid president thinks. It was stated that Perez gets particularly aggravated about dealing with Ceferin because he is “just a lawyer on £2m a year”. The Madrid president, by contrast, can make that in one deal.

If that sort of view is genuine, is this really the sort of mentality that should be running the game? Then again, the entire issue cuts to a number of existential questions about the sport itself.

What is a governing body supposed to be for? What is a club supposed to be? Is it merely a representative institution that should have eternal opportunity to go from bottom to top, or do we now need different definitions? How deep should the pyramid actually be?

Depending on what the answers are, this story also poses an existential threat to the game itself. Football is so far one of the few sports that hasn’t had any major split. A Uefa defeat at the ECJ would end that. It would fracture the game, potentially creating multiple competitions and federations, in the way we’ve seen in boxing and cricket. The very essence of football would be altered.

As of now, the Super League feel they have the legal case on their side. There is a quiet confidence that a compelling technical business argument can be made that Uefa and Fifa do have a monopoly. The governing body believe they have a strong case of their own, but also the advantage of politics.

The argument that will be made is that there is a valuable political and cultural component to this, and that the ECJ shouldn’t be in a position where the European sports model is destroyed.

That is what this is really about, after all. But, then, perhaps contracts like that offered to Mbappe are already having that effect.