According to recently acquired emails from Football Leaks, 16 of Europe’s biggest clubs, including Juventus, Real Madrid, Barcelona, Manchester United and Bayern Munich have been negotiating to form a Super League.
This idea had been floated in the open before, but according to the trans-national investigation resulting from hacked emails obtained by Der Spiegel, there were and above all still are concrete steps taken to make it a reality.
The clubs allegedly involved on the ground floor in this Super League plot starting in January 2016 were Real Madrid, Barcelona, Manchester United, Bayern Munich, Juventus, Chelsea, Arsenal, Paris Saint-Germain, Manchester City, Liverpool and Milan.
It is claimed they “went behind the backs of UEFA and other clubs to work on the option of leaving their national leagues and associations.”
There are even emails in the hacked Football Leaks information dump warning “we need to be very careful moving forward and avoid at all costs the perception of a cartel.”
That was eventually used as part of negotiations with UEFA for the bigger clubs to get a larger cut of revenue from the Champions League.
What is fascinating from this story is that an email was sent only days ago with a draft 13-page ‘binding term sheet’ of 11 European clubs.
Any European Super League would effectively eliminate the Champions League by as soon as 2021.
Along with the 11 founding clubs, who would not be at risk of relegation and guaranteed a place in it for 20 years, another five clubs would be invited for a 16-team league.
The five ‘initial guests’ would be Inter, Roma, Atletico Madrid, Borussia Dortmund and Olympique Marseille.
“The document even lists the ownership stakes held by the individual clubs in the joint European Super League company, with Real Madrid holding 18.77 percent, Barcelona 17.61 percent, Manchester United 12.58 percent and Bayern Munich 8.29 percent.
There is no mention of UEFA in the entire draft contract.”
Those percentages show you the clubs that are the driving force behind this Super League.
Missing from the list of potential clubs in a European Super League are Tottenham Hotspur and Napoli, who would take a huge hit financially if they were left out of this competition.
What do you think of this idea? Is it inevitable that the big clubs go off and produce their own version of the Champions League?
