Europe's elite suffer sport's most astounding humiliation - and wounds will take a long time to heal

The European Super League plan blew up in an extraordinary day, leaving the sport more divided than ever... but still intact.

Source - Daily Telegraph - 20/04/21

Link

It was on the Spanish chat show El Chiringuito late on Monday evening that the Real Madrid president Florentino Perez declared with some confidence that, along with his 11 European Super League co-conspirators, he was about to “save football” and within 24 hours many would argue that he had done just that.

Some of the most powerful clubs in the European game, and some of its wealthiest owners had suffered the most astounding humiliation in sporting history. The career of their most ambitious leader, Ed Woodward, the Manchester United executive vice-chairman, and chief architect of this, the game’s most divisive breakaway, was hastily curtailed. In Italy, doubt surrounded the future of the equally hawkish Andrea Agnelli, president of Juventus, and erstwhile chairman of the European Club Association whom he had abandoned as recently as Sunday.

In west London, protesting Chelsea fans flocked to an empty Stamford Bridge and sat in Fulham Broadway to block the team bus entering for the fixture against Brighton. The club’s legendary former goalkeeper Petr Cech, now technical director, was compelled to break out of the Covid-secure bubble and negotiate from behind a line of police officers. “Give us time!” he could be heard shouting in response to fans’ demands. But Roman Abramovich did not need time. From an undisclosed location, on an undisclosed phoneline, the Russian owner pulled the plug on Chelsea’s involvement and very soon the European Super League would be no more.

First Chelsea went, then Manchester City and then Atletico Madrid. Then came news of Woodward’s resignation, announced to club staff at Old Trafford – a decision that he had made some time ago, according to sources. Woodward, it was claimed, had planned to leave at the end of 2021 after 16 years at United overseeing the Glazer ownership but decided to make the announcement now. In quick succession, Arsenal, Tottenham Hotspur, Manchester United and Liverpool all withdrew. The public relations experts instructed in five European countries who had so far bullishly stood by the plans were told to stand down. The line went cold. The league was dead.

In Spain, the country’s richest man, Perez, the old dictator of Real Madrid - kings of the European Cup, kings of the Champions League - had indeed made history. Perhaps he had even saved football. This had been a furious three-day reckoning and the once secret plans of this wealthy elite of venture capitalists and fossil fuel billionaires, of career football politicians like the old man in charge at the Bernabeu were over. The limits of their power had been exposed. The people had spoken.

Project Big Picture, the proposal to radically change the voting rights and revenue distribution of the Premier League, lasted five days before it was killed at a Premier League shareholders’ meeting on a Thursday lunchtime in October. The lifespan of its equally disreputable sibling, the Super League, did not even make it past three days. The power-grab reforms of the wealthiest clubs and their owners, emboldened by losses incurred in the pandemic, have been defeated for a generation and maybe even longer. The game is still imperfect, still riven by inequality, still loaded with debt and jacked up on inflated player wages. But the last five months have told us that some lines cannot be crossed.

An extraordinary day. At 11am, the Premier League shareholders met for the first time with six of their number absent, unthinkable in the past for a collective that has prided itself on the tight discipline of its governance and the collegiate nature of its decision-making. While talks went on for more than three hours, Wolverhampton Wanderers’ official account tweeted that maybe it was too late for a bus parade to celebrate their 2019 Premier League title. They had finished seventh that year, behind six clubs who were now breakaway rebels. Southampton’s account offered congratulations and pointed out that under those rules Saints were now the 2015 champions. There was a mood of insurrection.

In the meeting the 14 clubs discussed their next move. Even then they believed that the sheer weight of public feeling – the universal condemnation from politicians, royalty and governing bodies - would be too hard for the six rebel clubs to bear for long. They suspected that City and Chelsea, whose owners regarded their clubs primarily as a public relations exercise, would be the least enthusiastic. There was a quiet confidence that they had won the war already, the question now would be how to win the peace.

It was clear then, as it is now, that the six rebel clubs could not be allowed to come back into the fold without punishment for breaking Rule L9 that prohibits members from entering unsanctioned competitions. But the executives noted that punishment of players and managers would be unfair on individuals who had played no part in the plotting. Any punishment would target specifically those who had knowledge and complicity. How many of them may offer themselves up for sanctions is another question.

What is certain is that the wounds, already raw from Project Big Picture, will take a long time to heal. The most radical among the 14 would like the Premier League to have the kind of regulatory powers conferred on US leagues who can compel an owner to sell a franchise if they are determined to have taken action that contravenes the values and integrity of the competition. That day still seems a long way off, but what is certain is that this was a victory for the Premier League, for its 14-strong super majority, for the likes of Leicester City, Southampton and Crystal Palace.

At the Premier League office there was elation. Getting the 2020-2021 season completed in the teeth of the pandemic had been an exhausting, no-days-off exercise. Then this season, chief executive Richard Masters and his team had been hit by two huge betrayals from the major clubs. This morning, the world’s most popular sport league finds itself battered, divided, and with a whole new level of resentment and mistrust among some of its members. Yet, still intact.