Warning. This is not a defence of the European Super League, nor of speculators behind the naked cash grab that it represents. The very idea of a closed-shop league is self-evidently foul and cuts across the sporting principles we hold dear.
Plus, the owners of Real Madrid, Juventus, Manchester United et al were double dealing with the Uefa authorities by simultaneously partaking in discussions to reshape the Champions League while planning their own coup de grace. What a caper, eh?
However, these vipers at the top of the game did not emerge from outer space. And the process in which they are involved is not unprecedented. The offending element of the proposed European Super League is the exclusivity that bars entry to all but the chosen few who then share the game’s riches among themselves.
This is not so very different from the prevailing conditions, just more brazen. The current structures are no more open to the likes of Rochdale or Forest Green than the ESL. The vast riches enjoyed by the top Premier League clubs skews the competition sufficiently to make it all-but impossible for the likes of the “Big Six” to be relegated and for lesser beasts to join the party. Yes, the possibility exists, but the material reality is somewhat different.
Competitive inequality is inherent in the Premier League, which came into being in exactly the same way as the ESL, to maximise the commercial potential of football’s universal popularity. Thus in 1992 the 22 founder members resigned from the Football League without so much as a bye or a leave to form the FA Premier League Ltd, a body financially independent from the 70 clubs they cut adrift.
Working out of a back office at FA’s Soho headquarters the 22 renegades promptly signed a television deal with BSkyB and BBC worth £304m to be shared largely among each other. If the outrage eloquently and forcibly expressed by Gary Neville and supported by a prime minister ever alert to a populist cause is just today, then why not the same moral indignation at the financial inequalities that separate the Premier League from the divisions below?
The ESL keeps five places open for prospective aspirants, that’s two more than the Premier League. The ESL legacy element proposes a leg up to any historic clubs fallen on hard times. The Premier League offers parachute payments. Not so different in material terms since it confers a huge advantage on the recipients. Witness the return of Norwich, relegated last season, to the top flight, likely to be joined by Watford and possibly Bournemouth, the very teams that dropped out in 2020. Is that not a closed shop by other means?
The Premier League and the ESL are part of the same commodification of sport that can be traced to 1858 when admission to a football match was first charged. Twelve years later the idea of image rights for players took shape with the appearance of the first football cards. The publishers discovered that cards featuring footballers flew out of the shops.
Fast forward to 1934 when the “Breakfast of Champions” became a thing with the appearance of New York Yankees baseball star Lou Gehrig on a box of Wheaties cereals. The real juice flowed with the arrival of television and something called sports rights. As soon as broadcasters saw the audience figures for sport the landscape changed dramatically.
After a failed stab in 1960, live televised matches began in Britain in 1983 when ITV signed a two-year deal worth £5.2m. Five years later the new four-year contract was worth £44m. There would not be a third deal. Well, not with the Football League.
Those clubs with the economic muscle – the big five as it was then – Arsenal, Spurs, Liverpool, Everton and Manchester United, drove through the changes that led to the formation of the Premier League. It was business then, just as it is now, football drunk on rampant capitalism and just as distasteful to the majority.
Ah but Leicester were champions in 2016 and West Ham are pushing for Champions League qualification. Anomalies are part of the deal, infrequent incursions into elite space permitted for the illusion of meritocracy they furnish.
Check out the four teams in the Champions League semi-finals, PSG, City, Chelsea, two enriched by state wealth, the other via riches gained through government connections, and 13-time winners Real Madrid. Sadly, the ESL is already here.
More on European Super League
- Explained: Everything you need to know about the European Super League
- The full list of teams joining the ESL, including Premier League ‘big six’
- Man Utd to New York? Arsenal relocated? It’s all on the table now
- Boris Johnson slams ESL plans and vows to work with football authorities
- Fifa president Infantino warns clubs will have to ‘live with the consequences of their choice’
- Supporters backlash: Tottenham fans group could push for sale of club
from Football – inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/3sunzlS
Post a Comment