Yahoo – AFP, Antoine MAIGNAN, April 20, 2021
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A plane flies above Elland Road in Leeds before the Premier League game
against Liverpool protesting against the planned Super League |
As the clubs who want to form a Super League focus on
their economic futures, they find themselves attacked on all sides for being at
odds with football's past.
"Created by the poor, stolen by the rich,"
read one banner held up by fans outside Manchester United's Old Trafford
stadium on Monday. It summed up the frustration that has been gripping most
football followers since the plans were announced.
UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin said the proposed
closed breakaway league was "a spit in the face" of "football
lovers".
"Everyone is united against this disgraceful,
self-serving proposal, fuelled by greed above all else," he said.
Despite the opposition of their own fans, national
governments and the football authorities the 12 clubs are pressing ahead.
They represent just seven cities in three countries.
Six are from England and three each from Spain and Italy.
The suspicion of fans that the clubs are losing touch
with their roots is amplified by the foreign ownership of the majority of the
rebel clubs, in several cases through faceless holding companies.
Manchester City are owned by Sheikh Mansour, a member
of the Abu Dhabi royal family. Inter Milan are controlled by Chinese holding
company Suning. Chelsea are owned by Russian billionaire Roman Abramovic.
'Americanisation of the world'
But the greatest suspicion is that the proposed league
is part of what French football historian Paul Dietschy called "the
Americanisation of the world".
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An Arsenal fan hangs a banner aimed at the club's America
owner on their Emirates Stadium |
Four, Liverpool, Manchester United, Arsenal and AC
Milan, are owned by Americans or companies based in the United States.
Of those, three own franchises in major US sports.
The Fenway Sports Group at Liverpool also owns
baseball's Boston Red Sox. The Glazer family at Manchester United own Super
Bowl champions the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Stan Kroenke, who controls Arsenal,
also owns the Los Angeles Rams of the National Football League and the Denver
Nuggets of the National Basketball Association.
There is also an American influence at Juventus. The
club has a long association with Fiat, now part of American-Italian group
Stellantis. That company's American president John Elkann, a grandson of former
Juventus owner Gianni Agnelli, appointed his cousin Andrea Agnelli to run the
club.
The proposed league is being underwritten by American
money, in the form of a four billion dollar (3.32bn euro) loan from Wall Street
bank JPMorgan Chase.
As long ago as the 1950s and 1960s, research by
American economists showed their clubs were "profit maximisers",
while British economist Peter Sloane found that football clubs in the English
league were "utility maximisers", motivated by non-financial
considerations.
"American sport has historically been very
focused on profit," said Chris Winn, a researcher at the University Campus
of Football Business, which has links with Manchester City as well as Premier
League Burnley.
"It's no coincidence that there is a core
American group at the heart of these Super League proposals. The European
football elite are looking for a guaranteed piece of the pie every year."
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Chelsea fans protested
outside Stamford Bridge on Tuesday |
Dietschy told AFP that the clubs no longer wanted to
be anchored in their local landscape.
"These clubs are becoming brands and as they
target other markets," he said. "It's counter-intuitive when you
think of football, but it can work like the American franchises."
'The rich stealing what the people created'
But, Dietschy cautioned, "we must be wary of
romanticism applied to football. The richest have always dominated. What has
changed, however, is that today money is no longer used to win but to make a
profit."
Yet some elite players, who stand to share that
profit, are outraged.
"I believe in an improved Champions League, but
not in the rich stealing what the people created," said Paris
Saint-Germain's Spain midfielder Ander Herrera
"The rich have stolen what the people have
created," Manchester United's Portuguese player Bruno Fernandes posted on
social media. "Dreams cannot be bought."
So far the Super League has not attracted any clubs in
the key market of Germany.
Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund have both taken a
public stand against the plan.
"I would like to make it explicitly clear that FC
Bayern will not be taking part in the Super League," said club chairman
Karl-Heinz Rummenigge in a statement on Tuesday.
Like Barcelona and Real Madrid, the two Bundesliga
giants are fan owned, but German supporters have long been vocal defenders of
football traditions.
Bayern is run by German former players in contrast to
the Super League clubs.
"The directors of these clubs are people trained
in top management schools, and their logic is that of business and
profit," said Dietschy.
