European Super League

Do you want the ESL to happen?


  • Total voters
    1,921
  • Poll closed .

rojo81

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Madrid and juventus will be the last. Perez and Agnelli will wait for Barcelona and AC to drop out then say nothing of it. No apologies or anything

Still hope UEFA kick Madrid out of CL.
Before inter and atlético dropped out, Agnelli already said that the super league is not happening.
 

red4ever 79

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Juventus is bleeding money. We were fairly aggressive with costs to stay competitive in Europe (although that did not work out too well) as our league is holding us back financially. There was little margin for error. With Covid-19 significantly affecting revenue, the club is not sustainable anymore.
Good and feck off Juve
 

Giggsyking

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We are now happy and everything goes back to normal. But in fact, we are stuck with the Glazers and their debt for life, and even worse we are stuck with the corrupted football organisations that allow city and PSG buy their way to titles every year.
 

Robertd0803

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and if Talksport told me April was the month after March, I'd check my calendar!
Talksport weirdly were the ones to break the news about Woodward leaving so thats a feather in their cap at least. So weird as I dont ever remember them having any scoops before.
What a disaster, who can you even root for in the CL now?

PSG? :nervous:
Oh still anyone besides City, lets be honest here.
 

red4ever 79

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We are now happy and everything goes back to normal. But in fact, we are stuck with the Glazers and their debt for life, and even worse we are stuck with the corrupted football organisations that allow city and PSG buy their way to titles every year.
I dont think that has to be true. It's only true if we accept that. They have for me completely ruined their relationship with the fans, and we need every utd fan to unite to get these parasites out of our club. We must do whatever it takes, prtoests, dont buy merchandise, stop the team buses at the stadium, everything we can to cut the cancer out of our club. Ed has gone, that one, now we go for the head of the snake. They will never be forgiven
 

Oldyella

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Juventus is bleeding money. We were fairly aggressive with costs to stay competitive in Europe (although that did not work out too well) as our league is holding us back financially. There was little margin for error. With Covid-19 significantly affecting revenue, the club is not sustainable anymore.
Thanks, makes sense then. Covid has been awful for the very obvious reasons, but long term maybe it forces clubs to be more careful in their budgets.

Does anyone know if Athletic suggests Ed was sacked because of ESL failure or if his departure was really and truly on the cards anyway?

Seems odd that he'd strongarm these sorts of changes and then leave as designed.
That's a normal business thing though no? Make a big change, some good, some bad and then hand it to the next guy for a clean start.
 

Ixion

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Do you think the ESL will return the European Cup trophy counts to UEFA now or does everyone start from 0 again.
 

JohnnyKills

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La liga teams are still there.
I am very disappointed in Barcelona, I thought they would fight for the leadership with perez. Not let real madrid take the leadership of ESL.

Would be funny seeing laporta and perez fight for leadership of this shambolic plan

Instead they hid in the background.
Those 'Mes Que Un Club' seats need ripping out.
 

JohnnyKills

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From 2024 the two teams with the highest uefa coefficient will be invited to play which basically means 2 English teams who don’t make it, so basically the top 6 always get in most probably as the better teams from the other three leagues are basically shoe ins.

I actually think this is fair because being one of the better teams in the champions league should count for something.

So basically I hope liverpool
Finish fifth this year :lol:.
I honestly don't think there's much wrong with the CL as it is. Yes, the very name 'Champions' is a misnomer but it means all the strongest clubs get in every year and you have to beat them to win it.

To me, that's better than the old knockout comp which only allowed the actual champions of each country to enter. Think of some of the rubbish teams Liverpool beat to win their European Cups FFS. They were obviously a great team, but they got some seriously easy runs at times.

What we have at the moment is a nice balance between the traditional 'elite clubs' and teams like Leicester and West Ham, who can qualify if they have a good season.

Not sure what to make of the reform proposals - six teams from the PL seems a lot, but at least it reflects the balance of power in European football and there's an element of competition involved. A million times better than the ESL proposals for me.
 
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JuveGER

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I honestly don't think there's much wrong with the CL as it is. Yes, the very name 'Champions' is a misnomer but it means all the strongest clubs get in every year and you have to beat them to win it.

To me, that's better than the old knockout comp which only allowed the actual champions of each country to enter. Think of some of the rubbish teams Liverpool beat to win their European Cups FFS. They were obviously a great team, but they got some seriously easy runs at times.
Agree. It's nostalgia. Why would anyone want the best teams of continent spread across three competitions? Also, people forget, that teams from smaller countries were more competitive, because there were strict limitations on foreigners until the mid-90s, so less players moved abroad and smaller teams could build strong teams if there was a good generation of local players. That's not the case anymore. The old European would have few competitive games today.
 

Member 101269

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I don’t personally have an issue with the idea of a SL. It’s the guaranteed qualification which is the main gripe for me. Had they said the same qualifying criteria apply as CL the who cares about a revamped format. That’s basically what UEFA just approved anyway.
I didn't have an issue with guaranteed qualification, in part because there already is implicit thinking every year, this just formalised that. It was how those extra five (or more if it evolved) were allocated that interested me. I felt there would be pressure to increase numbers for teams to join. I had issue with UEFA's proposal based on "fixtures against 10 different teams, half of them at home and half of them away.", The coefficient bias is no different than guaranteed qualification. If you've done well previously this is your fall back inclusion.

While the ESL has gone, maybe for now, i suspect it will resurface again. Perhaps post-covid economic meltdown..
 

bosnian_red

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I didn't have an issue with guaranteed qualification, in part because there already is implicit thinking every year, this just formalised that. It was how those extra five (or more if it evolved) were allocated that interested me. I felt there would be pressure to increase numbers for teams to join. I had issue with UEFA's proposal based on "fixtures against 10 different teams, half of them at home and half of them away.", The coefficient bias is no different than guaranteed qualification. If you've done well previously this is your fall back inclusion.

While the ESL has gone, maybe for now, i suspect it will resurface again. Perhaps post-covid economic meltdown..
I mean... there really isn't implicit thinking every year, especially given how often United have missed out on it. Or Arsenal. Or Spurs. And now to be Liverpool or Chelsea along with Arsenal and Spurs. Dortmund set to miss out. Juventus with a chance to miss out, barely in 4th after years of dominance. Not so long ago got relegated themselves (for different reasons of course).

Football dominance goes up and down in waves. What might feel like an eternity always ends. Liverpool dominated for a long time. Then United for a long time. Now City has been at the top. Barca have been dominant as they've had probably the greatest player of all time during the past 16 years. Lyon went like 7 years straight of winning the French league in the mid to late 2000's. That ended.

Likewise Real Madrid over the past decade with the impact Ronaldo had there. Nobody's dominance lasts forever.
 

BusbyMalone

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Before this whole thing basically collapsed last night, I was reading all the articles and listening to a few podcasts about it all, and one thing stood out and that's how so many people completely overestimated the intelligence of the people involved. That's not to say I wasn't worried about this thing going ahead (i was at the beginning), but the prevailing opinion was that "these people are smart. They know what they're doing, there's no way they would go ahead without having everything in place. There's no stopping it, they will have their lawyers in place to prevent them from being thrown out of any other competition. These guys aren't stupid"

And then after a few hours of demonstrations from fans, the whole bloody thing collapsed in a matter of hours. I was saying earlier on, that as soon as one club drops out, that's it. And they did. When you started to scrutinize it even a little bit, you realized the whole thing was built on sand. And for anyone taking any sort of notice to how these people run their club they will already know this, but hopefully, this will dispel the myth that these people are some kind of super-geniuses who think through everything and have all their bases covered. Obviously, this is absolutely not the case.
 

JohnnyKills

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Bet all these owners are delighted that we're still playing behind closed doors.

Be interesting to see what happens now. All these owners have been totally unmasked (although ours didn't bother wearing a mask to begin with). Surely the protests start again now?
 

sparx99

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4.2 + 4.1 + 4 + 3.2 + 2.8 + 2.3 = $20.5bn without all the other clubs but I don't seriously believe the government will do anything about it, never mind the cost, the legal arguments forever more, they won't want to get involved. Boris just thought it was a good horse to back to become more popular with the disgruntled fans.
I must have missed one out. Regardless, Boris is just using it to avoid talking about Greensill and now Dyson. My point regardless is £10-20bn of Govt loans or Gvot backed bank loans to buy 50% of clubs isn't wholly unrealistic. They have all tools available to them. I don't think we should be limited in our ambition. It may be the only way to get Utd off the Glazers otherwise we are looking at China or Saudi money and its not really any better.
 

Pogue Mahone

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John Barnes nailed it here:

These takes are so fecking boring. Everybody knows UEFA/FIFA are corrupt. Everybody knows that the oil money is ruining the game. This is not new information.

What happened in the last 48 hours was an attempt to permanently lock out dozens of football clubs from the most lucrative competition in the game. This attempt failed primarily because the fans let it be known that they wouldn’t get behind this. And this includes fans of clubs who stood to benefit from the initiative. Belittling that achievement by reminding everyone of stuff we all knew already is mean-spirited nonsense.
 

Adisa

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Agnelli on why the Super League is still needed:

Football is no longer a game, it’s a business sector and what it needs most is stability.
"On the domestic side as well. In Europe, the most valuable match is no longer the Champions final but the English first division football playoffs to be admitted to the Premier League: 150 million. That isn’t stability.
"We need ironbound economic and financial regulations like those established in the Super League.
“The Super League will go forward regardless. If [UEFA] put forward proposals, we will take them under consideration. We’ve written to the presidents of FIFA and UEFA to begin a conversation”.

So, one of the key reasons is that Spanish and Italian clubs do not like the finances in English football.
No. They see it as evidence that the current CL and their domestic league's aren't worth the effort anymore. Unfortunately for them it's why the English teams couldn't risk upsetting their domestic stakeholders. I do agree with some of their arguments. UEFA need to sit down with these clubs and renegotiate the distribution.
 

Dennis Viollet

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I am very disappointed with the behavior of all the clubs involved. Now it is easy to leave, but they had to think about it before accepting. Something never seen before was perpetrated, it was a real coup. They should all be punished, including us.
The sad thing is that nothing will change, there will always be stronger ones who will be the most bossy with the weakest. Dreams cannot be bought and all clubs, even the "smallest" and the "poorest" deserve to dream... big.
 

JSArsenal

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The 12/15 are so stupid it's unbelievable tbh. If they had sold this as a revamped CL and relegation was involved, then everyone would have lapped it up.

Okay, let's make it based on history, fine. Clubs that finish below 10th are relegated from it and replaced by clubs that finished 1st and 2nd in the big 5 leagues. If all of those clubs are already in it, go to the 3rd and 4th place club and base it on country coefficient or something. Or the 3rd and 4th placed clubs from around the European leagues take part in a Europa League style tournament/version of the ESL for entry into the ESL during the 3rd season. That way you have a shake up of the participants every 3 years. Imagine Leicester facing all of the top European sides rather than Copenhangen and Club Brugge.

How I see it:

First season of ESL alone
Second season of ESL combined with a UEFA Cup league with teams that finished 3rd/4th in their respective leagues. Relegation kicks in for the first time for the ESL. Perhaps the teams that finished in the bottom in the first season start off with a points deduction or can't choose the order of the away/home matches. Clubs are relegated from and promoted to the ESL
Third Season New look ESL with promoted teams.

And Bob's your uncle.

UEFA have diluted the competition too much and this lot had a chance to make it elite again but blew it by not wanting anyone else to participate or basing it on merit.
 

BusbyMalone

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These takes are so fecking boring. Everybody knows UEFA/FIFA are corrupt. Everybody knows that the oil money is ruining the game. This is not new information.

What happened in the last 48 hours was an attempt to permanently lock out dozens of football clubs from the most lucrative competition in the game. This attempt failed primarily because the fans let it be known that they wouldn’t get behind this. And this includes fans of clubs who stood to benefit from the initiative. Belittling that achievement by reminding everyone of stuff we all knew already is mean-spirited nonsense.
It really is. Being against the formation of this so-called "Super League" is not an endorsement of UEFA/FIFA and the shit that they get up to. The people who come out with these takes believe themselves to be so fecking above it all, too.
 

adexkola

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These takes are so fecking boring. Everybody knows UEFA/FIFA are corrupt. Everybody knows that the oil money is ruining the game. This is not new information.

What happened in the last 48 hours was an attempt to permanently lock out dozens of football clubs from the most lucrative competition in the game. This attempt failed primarily because the fans let it be known that they wouldn’t get behind this. And this includes fans of clubs who stood to benefit from the initiative. Belittling that achievement by reminding everyone of stuff we all knew already is mean-spirited nonsense.
This. This. And this.

Twitter is full of these takes. From people who think they're saying something profound.
 

adexkola

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It really is. Being against the formation of this so-called "Super League" is not an endorsement of UEFA/FIFA and the shit that they get up to. The people who come out with these takes believe themselves to be so fecking above it all, too.
Yeah they think they are being profound or some shit.