The news in April 2021 that 12 of Europe’s biggest football clubs, including six from the Premier League, had agreed to a breakaway competition, left the rest of the sporting world aghast. The founding clubs would be permanent members and therefore immune to the vicissitudes of on-pitch performance.
Kicking Off: The Rise and Fall of the Super Leaguerecalled how the dreams of greedy billionaire owners were scuppered by outraged fan power. This was especially true in England, where fan protests even led Boris Johnson to threaten a “legislative bomb” upon the proposed league.
The reaction was more muted in Italy and Spain, where top clubs have become heavily indebted thanks to the wage inflation created by the state-owned likes of Paris Saint-Germain and Manchester City.
Unfortunately, Jason Bernard’s documentary was almost unwatchable at times thanks to its hyperactive, migraine-inducing editing. It was as if an evil mastermind was trying to brainwash you with subliminal but very literal-minded images. So the phrase “time for a change” was illustrated by a clock face and a butterfly spreading its wings, “plans” with a chessboard. And so on.
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This was no doubt to distract from the fact that the programme was otherwise made up of talking heads, which brings me to a second bugbear. Is it time to call a moratorium on shots of interviewees being miked up before they start talking? Once a break from convention, it’s now a cliché.
Inevitably, perhaps, these contributors didn’t include anybody from the shame-faced so-called “dirty dozen” clubs. But then Uefa votes next week on whether to allow some teams an automatic qualification based on their historic record in Europe. The Super League by the back door, it seems.
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