European Superleague

What do City fans think of the proposed "European Superleague" ?

I will give you my 4 pennyworth now. I have never heard of anything so ridiculous in my life ! What would be the point ? The whole point of football is the striving to get to the top and be the best. Every football club from the top to the bottom is striving to do well. Every year we go into the season hoping that this will be the year that Bath City  get promotion. The teams in the Championship are hoping to get into the Premier League and the teams at the top of the Premier League are doing their best to stay there. The reward for their efforts is getting to play in Europe.

What is the point of a league that doesn't change . . . . .  No promotion or relegation ? How can fans get to matches in Europe on a midweek night ? I think that the answer to that is that it would not be for the fans, but for someone somewhere along the line to make a huge amount of money.

If it was April Fools Day I would just laugh it off. As it is I just hope that sense and reason prevail and it never comes to fruition.

Agree with all you say there, Chris. Unfortunately at the highest level those paying to watch games in person don’t seem to appear on their clubs’ radar. It’s all about lucrative tv contracts and the growing market in SE Asia. These 12 clubs have found they can cope quite nicely without fans during lockdown.

Will be interesting to see what sanctions are given out against them. You’d hope that the threat of being kicked out of their domestic leagues and players being banned from national teams would lead them to think again. I’m inclined to think it’s more likely that the PL, Eufa etc will do deals meaning that they end up with yet more of the spoils than before. Job done!

I suspect that with JP Morgan involvement then a great deal of legal activity has taken place to check that the  clubs would be  on fairly safe ground to defend any  proposed sanctions. Perhaps one way would be for the FA to disband the Premier League and introduce say a Super League and prevent the ESL joining.

Martin is correct regarding the  huge fanbase of teams like Man Utd have in SE Asia.  I have visited that area on a number of occasions over recent  years and the number   of youngsters wearing replica shirts of the big European clubs has increased dramatically.

It's not been  one-way traffic though. In  October 2019 it seemed that everyone on the Singapore metro had a replica shirt and a  face mask. I did say to my wife that I would get one of those masks and wear it around Bath. Her reaction was if I did so I would be on my own. -  Seems she was wrong!

One positive is the present focus on fan majority ownership of clubs. The German model is admired by many and a number of clubs here, including our own, are going down this path. But it’s not going to happen at the highest levels unless there’s government intervention.

Good to see other clubs condemning the dirty dozen but haven’t seen anything as yet from the FA, the so called guardians of the game.

Report of the end of ESL - https://talksport.com/football/868866/european-super-league-off-founding-clubs-disband-chelsea-man-city - meeting later tonight.

That is absolutely brilliant news. That headstone in the link above should be printed out in sufficient quantity so as to pin it onto every street corner in the world.

There will still be a bitter taste in my mouth for a long time though, whenever I think of the six Premier Clubs that were prepared to go through with the evil plan initially. Shame on their owners - kick em out, or buy them out, if possible - let the real fans of football take the helm. Community Clubs rule!