Spanish outlet Don Balon believes that Anas Laghrari has been appointed as the new representative of the European Super League Company. The article then delves into an analysis of the other figures involved in the world of counterculture football. Tottenham, indeed no Premier League sides are mentioned.
What this suggests upon the face of things is that this deal is far from dead and buried. Personally, I’m ambivalent and if this were a device to get Spurs out of the trouble she is so clearly in, then… well I’ve made my thoughts on the football pyramid very clear already. If the supposed guardians of the game that have been squawking so vociferously in the last few weeks really cared, they would have piped up a long time before now. Football has been an increasingly ‘pull the ladder up, I’m alright Jack’ affair, arguably since forever, but certainly, that become more pronounced after 1992.
not sure we qualify for the top 6 now…after reading the other blog I looked up Leicesters new training ground…ohh dear Levy, if I was a player I’d pick that 😋
Those extra Europa games haven’t helped Spurs, add in the International games and a team that’s obviously not fit have just run out of steam. Europes OK if you have a big quality squad.
Indeed. Alllll about the football. Because they’re effin football clubs. Simple innit.??….well, not when you’re Levy.
It’s what’s so cancerous about the whole sport (??!!), nowadays, that clubs can get in so much of a mess financially with all the money swimming around, almost literally growing on trees! The amount of money that has been thrown at football is positively obscene. Was it Wimbledon or Wigan (or someone else) that I remember once reading (a few years back now) had a wage bill 187% of turnover! The funny thing about football, isn’t it? Owners of such clubs have spent most of their lives in other ventures paying their staff as little as they can possibly get away with!
I can understand these foreign teams feeling hard done by as regards the TV money which has done so much to destroy the democracy of the sport and its competitiveness (Just about impossible now for former greats like Ajax and Benfica to ever again be champions of Europe). However, if we dismiss from our minds the romance of Real Madrid’s early forays in Europe when they helped popularise the European Cup through the deeds of Di Stefano, Puskas etc., they are actually a pretty VILE club.
Our top clubs will likely one day leave the domestic set up, the result being a castrated Premiership just as the UEFA Cup was effectively castrated and became as a result – in my view, anyway – fairly meaningless (and next season, there’s the European conference entered for by English teams who fail to finish in their top six! Good God!).
Mind you, the present situation (while better than the likely future scenario) is hardly ideal with, effectively, two separate divisions occurring within the Premiership, with just a handful of clubs so wealthy that they hold most of the aces.
Incidentally, the new European Conference, for me, offers very much a LOSE LOSE situation if we play in it. If we were to win the tournament – with six higher placed English teams playing elsewhere – it’s a case of “So what!” While, if we don’t succeed in winning it: “We can’t even win the Conference!”
The good days might be over, the new Sky/BT deal until 2025 was simply rolled over, the same money as the last deal. So with no increase and inflation that’s a fall in income.
BT have lost hundreds of millions on The Champions League coverage and are pulling out it.
The French TV deal collapsed and the Italian and German TV deals are treading water.
The Premier League lost its TV deal with China. I expect a push for a wage cap and the banning of agents and their fees as the next move. Or simply more useless money spinning friendlies to raise money.
I can understand they feel hard done by when they look at Man City and Chelsea’s oil money and the Sky TV money but they have refused to consider wage caps and an end to agents fees. There also wasn’t a word from Real Madrid during their Galactico era, so I don’t have much sympathy for them.
And saturation coverage, too. Too much in my view.
When the BBC did one of the first football TV deals in 1965 the £5,000 was shared equally between the 92 English Football League clubs.
Hard to pinpoint when the greed was first unleashed but a warning moment came in 1983 when the big clubs pushed to put an end to the sharing of gate receipts and I think that was the signal that it was every man for himself from then on.
The money men come in and ruin every sport. Football certainly isn’t what it was, alas, while cricket, in my opinion, now has too much one day stuff (particularly the T20 stuff for people who don’t really like cricket!) and too many international matches, with the County Championship sadly diminished in stature with contracted test players seldom appearing for their counties. Golf, too, is now involved in the whole tawdry stuff with talk of a premier league,too, where the same 40 or so players compete against each other. Not needed! Rugby League is played in the Summer.
There’s no end to these atrocities and the prospect of more in the future, all affecting the balance and integrity of these sports while making a ton of money for some pretty odious people.
I knew they were in serious trouble (and Juve may well fail to qualify for CL this year) but I didn’t realise the full extent.
They certainly aren’t the teams they used to be. I guess it will be a 2 year ban for them then…which only deepens their problems.
It’s desperation on their part, they are in so much debt. The Super League was their bid to compete financially with City and Chelsea. The alternative was to get their own finances in order, cutting back salaries, cutting back on transfers but that would be too sensible for them. It’s the war of the billionaire owners as someone else said.
Too right HH, where there is money and power one usually finds individuals or corporations that seek to feather their nest. The Premier League, UEFA, FIFA are no different from the clubs, players and agents who all seek to maximise their income and one way or another it is the fans who pay…literally.
I think the PL 6 are relatively hamstrung now by the PL’s new rules aren’t they?
To my mind, there must be some serious confidence that this ESL thing will happen in one iteration or another. There is no way Barca, Juve and Real would risk being banned from UEFA competition for 2 years if they didn’t firmly believe it was going to happen.