The three remaining European Super League (ESL) rebels will relaunch their doomed project this week with the promise to scrap the original proposal to make certain clubs permanent members, in what is shaping up to another direct attack on Uefa’s pre-eminence in European football.
The Juventus president Andrea Agnelli is due to speak on Thursday at a sports industry summit in which he is expected to outline new Super League proposals from his club – and Real Madrid and Barcelona – that will remove the deeply unpopular idea of permanent members, and replace it with traditional domestic league qualification.
While Uefa considers the ESL dead, and the six original English club members have apologised and accepted fines from the Premier League for their brief and disastrous participation in April last year, it lives on in the minds of the three from Spain and Italy.
In a document that was authored in September, the ESL backers also claim that their new model will allow the creation of competitive clubs in European cities that do not currently have them – citing Luxembourg and Dublin as examples.
The move to try to relaunch the ESL prefaces a hearing in the European Court of Justice later this year in which the three rebels will challenge what it calls Uefa’s “monopolistic” position on European football. While the three clubs have been dismissed by Uefa president Aleksander Ceferin as “charlatans”, the Super League still exists as a corporate entity, known as A22, and has instructed legal counsel and a Brussels lobby group.
In part of a push to change public perceptions of the ESL, which was abandoned by the six Premier League backers within days of its botched launch, A22 and Agnelli will say this week that it is ditching the permanent member status “to maximise the game’s impact on social well-being for constituents in Europe.” They claim that their project is “a recognition of a system that is broken”. A22 is advised by the financiers Anas Laghrari and John Hahn.
There will be criticism of the quality of football in the current Uefa competitions including its premium Champions League; what the ESL and A22 say is the failure of Uefa’s financial fair play regulations; and the unfair advantage of state-owned clubs. The ESL will also take aim at Paris Saint-Germain president Nasser Al-Khelaifi, the chairman of Qatari Sports Investments who has seen his standing in the game surge in the post-Super League purge of club executives from major organisations.
Al-Khelaifi, whose PSG did not participate in last April’s failed coup, is now also the chairman of the influential European Club Association, which lobbies Uefa on behalf of the club and co-owns the commercial entity at the heart of Uefa competitions, UCCSA. He is also chairman of beIN Media which owns Uefa broadcast rights in the Middle East.
In its document the ESL rebel three say: “Uefa has close ties to certain club owners from non-member states who are commercial sponsors of certain competitions and clubs, are the main buyers of media rights for competitions operated by Uefa and who sit on Uefa’s executive committee, while chairing the ECA without any transparent election process.
“Since within the EU a club cannot benefit from state aids [sic] from its own member state … why should it be allowed that the football market be disrupted, to the exclusive benefit of a few state-owned clubs, because of state aids coming from non-member states?”
The ESL three claim that they will promote growth in EU countries that are not home to traditional club powerhouses, “for example, Dublin or Luxembourg – and their inhabitants - will finally be entitled to have access to premium club football”. It does not acknowledge that many football fans from Dublin and Ireland in general support English clubs and regularly travel to watch them in person.
The Premier League believes in private that the Super League episode is in the past and that its six member clubs have accepted their error of judgement. New regulations will make it impossible in the future for rebels to join an unsanctioned competition.