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Competition European Super League OFF; Spurs face withdrawal fee

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Do you support the European Super League


  • Total voters
    396
What prestige? It's got zero history, the clubs will lose their link to their community. It will be a sanitised, americanised franchise form of football and will be all the more ephemeral for it. When attendances for Woolwich dwindle to the point it makes economic sense to up sticks to China, what's to stop them? If nobody is relegated, where's the peril? It just becomes a fight for the title, and a fight that, with all due respect, the true behemoths will win 99 times out of 100.

Re: the money. The money is only there while the audience is, and that audience will sharp get bored because those once special nights where the best of England face the best of Italy are now so commonplace they're tedious. The people who 'support' an elite Spanish team but don't watch them play against Cadiz, are the same people who'd 'support' an ESL team but not watch them play against Woolwich.

If 6 owners are so greedy that all the wealth from the PL, and CL aren't enough for them, then they're missing the point of football completely. there has to be a link to the fans, or it's nothing. Winning the ESL would be no different to winning the Emirates cup. It means nothing, regardless of which teams take part. Fans don't want it, players don't want it, managers don't want it, even some broadcasters are against it.
IPL turned out okay to be fair. Exactly the same stuff with banning of players being threatened.
 
I'm sure the socialist people workers club or Spirit of Shankly or whatever the fuck they call themselves will be all over this.
The Socialists can fuck off too!

Yeah this is the worst kind of Capitalism and I condemn it roundly but Capitalism is still the way, you just need to control it and reign in the greedy yanks who worship the green.
 
I've seen quite a lot of people, here and elsewhere, consoling themselves with either the idea that the ESL will never actually happen due to the backlash or that it'll fail for similar reasons. That's just not happening:

Those involved wouldn't have gone full steam ahead with this if they weren't entirely confident of success. If the risk of failure were perceived to be high, it wouldn't be worth tanking goodwill. To have reached the point of formally announcing it, they must be damn sure it's going to work.

The vast majority of fans lack the conviction and discipline to actually follow through on their boycott threats, and corporate knows this. It doesn't even matter what native fans do anyway: we're a tiny percentage of their target market. The business side will have been set up to counter-resist the resistance of European fans. For every British person who successfully boycotts the competition, there are a dozen Chinese gloryhunters who'll take their place and dutifully support whoever is winning at the time. That's the price you pay for a globalised game: fans who live next door to the stadia are less important than those in some lucrative emerging market thousands of miles away.

I wish none of this were true. Obviously, since I advocate grassroots football and a return to localism. But I see it as an unstoppable step along the path that football has been on for decades. It's the logical conclusion, really.
I find fault with your logic. Plenty of things are announced and then fail. This government has a long track record of such a thing.

If it goes ahead, it will fail. Not because of protests, or whatever, but because of the fickle nature of the markets they're relying on. If the special becomes mundane, those fickle fans will fick off to watch something else.
 
Would be funny if the players were able to use breaks in their contract (forced to accept a new contract to cover the super league games) so all the best talent remains in the national systems.
Leaving the super league to overpay for academy castoffs and near retirees.
An international version of MLS/CSL that nobody wants to pay for because it's crap to watch.
 
I agree but some of these clubs (Barca) are desperate because they are losing money. Some are just American and like the business model.
Yeah, ENIC/FSG/Kroenke/Glazers have been coveting this since they all came in. Covid hurt the other "big clubs" enough that they went along this time. Both Milan clubs are having their best season in ages, and are just absolutely reeling financially. Barca's big debt balloon was probably the tipping point, it might be their only way out. And with the audience they bring, finding backers wouldn't have been difficult.
 
A lot of things about this are true...

1. The new ESL is absolutely worse than the current setup in terms of sport and the spirit of competition

2. It's a bit rich of UEFA/the EPL/etc. to be clamoring on about how pious they have been when they've been continually trying to milk the competitions for even more and more money

3. The sport is already, de-facto, in a super league. Just about all of the clubs invited (bar the likes of us and the scum) already use the immense wealth to dominate their domestic leagues and the Champions League. It's a bit funny to me the likes of Man United talking about how pure and fair the competition has been UNTIL NOW. This is even more so the case with the likes of Barca and Real Madrid where their league split of TV revenue is heavily skewed to them.

4. If it is happening, it is surely better for us to be in it than out.

All that said, it absolutely fucking sucks. It's not the first step to the game being gone, but it's kind of like the 7th step and the last big one that brings it over the line. It's certainly good for "Spurs" to be in it but I'm not really sure what "Spurs" even means anymore and if it's something I want to support.

This is what happens when you let capital dictate everything about your society.
your 3rd point is a very good one. I stopped watching La Liga altogether because it's so top heavy
 
Would be funny if the players were able to use breaks in their contract (forced to accept a new contract to cover the super league games) so all the best talent remains in the national systems.
Leaving the super league to overpay for academy castoffs and near retirees.
An international version of MLS/CSL that nobody wants to pay for because it's crap to watch.


I can really seeing the players being against joining the new multi billion pound football Super League
 
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