As UEFA’s Financial Fair Play rules continue to hit home, there has been increasing speculation on how it will affect club football. Having myself argued in the past that the need for increased revenue to break even will inevitably end up costing the fans, Martin Samuel this week predicted bad news for the lower league clubs, speculating that Premier League clubs may reduce the money they allow to trickle down the football ladder, looking instead to retain as much of their own revenue as possible.
But is another fall-out from the new restrictions the possibility of a European Super League?
Thoughts (or you could argue “threats”) of European Super Leagues are nothing new. The established “Big Four” and other giants of European football used the threat of one to get more financial rewards via the Champions League many years ago. In 1998, Italian company Media Partners seriously investigated the idea. The plan died after UEFA moved to expand the Champions League competition and do away with the Cup Winners’ Cup in order to better accommodate these clubs. In August 2009, Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger predicted a super league would become reality within 10 years time due to revenue pressure on the continent’s elite teams. And revenue pressure is precisely what Financial Fair Play brings to the table.
In July, 2009, Real Madrid’s president Florentino Pérez criticized the current Champions League, saying “we have to agree a new European Super League which guarantees that the best always play the best – something that does not happen in the Champions League.” Perez stated that he would push for a break-away competition featuring Europe’s traditional powerhouses if UEFA didn’t do more to ensure these teams played each other annually.
Under Perez’s plan, the continent’s best teams would remain part of their respective national systems, but would be guaranteed the opportunity to play each other at the conclusion of the regular league season.
The European Club Association (ECA), which represents 137 leading teams has broached the subject at meetings in recent years, according to newspaper reports.
Matt Scott of the Guardian wrote in April 2007 of secret talks between Europe’s leading football clubs and Brussels politicians that could lead to a breakaway super league. Sources involved in the discussions, held at the PSV Eindhoven-Arsenal Champions League match in February, state that a breakaway is the “ultimate threat” that could be exercised if Uefa and Fifa “run wild” in their governance of the game.
But still, the realisation of such plans seems far, far away. But a number of factors could at any time help reignite the push for a separate league. For example, clubs have fallen out with UEFA and FIFA due to the issue of compensation for players injured on international duty.
And then there is the issue of TV deals. Although in England the Premiership rights are sold collectively already, in many countries where clubs sell TV rights individually there is strong opposition to the deals, but moves to collectivise earnings could have serious consequences. Milan earn more than £85m a year from their television deal while Real Madrid’s seven-year deal with Mediapro, is worth about £110m each year. Moves to force them to share that cash could precipitate the exercise of their “ultimate threat” of a breakaway. The clubs in Spain have just finished thrashing out a new deal, after Seville started a revolt at the injustice of how TV money is earnt in La Liga, with Madrid and Barcelona not surprisingly hoovering up most of the money. They argue rightly so, as they are the reason for most of the interest in the league.