Footballs biggest open secret: The European Super League

Sandikan

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People moan that the European cup itself can be boring if you play the same teams every few years.
Imagine playing them every week. It'd get stale very quickly.

Any idea of keeping City and PSG out would be laughed out of town to
 

harms

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The whole purpose of the league is to guard against unsustainable hobby spending and protect the position of the old guard so no doubt there'd be a lot of conditions for those clubs to join it.
It's really not and it never was, this is some weird idea that only exists in fan communities. The idea is to get more money and more influence to the clubs by excluding UEFA & national associations from the mix.
 

harms

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2. Using Chelsea as an example again, bankrolled clubs can do more damage to themselves in the long run. Roman A for example never paid off all of Chelsea's debts. He has a holding company that Chelsea owes circa $1bn too and clearly it's a ticking time bomb until he decides to pay it off.
This is another weird statement. If he'll decide to cash in, he'll sell them. There's no point of running Chelsea into the ground in order to what, pay back the money that he had invested in them? Chelsea won't be able to pay that debt anyway and he'll only lose by doing this because the club will simply become broke and its worth will crumble.
 

Mb194dc

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IMO football should be looking at ways to bring salaries and transfer fees down - give football back to the local communities rather than creating yet another tier based on money. Where does it end? In years to come United v Madrid every week on ppv because it generates the most money?
It actually sickens me that fans support these type of proposals. Football is a working mans/woman’s game.
Revenue decline from the current situation combined with high fixed costs will bring transfer fees and wages down massively over next few years. It's not temporary, it's the new normal.

Will be good for football, greed ruining the sport.

I think a super League is only possible to replace the UEFA Champions League, zero chance of clubs leaving domestic leagues. Fans would never accept it.
 

carvajal

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I don't think that playing each year with the same teams would be boring.
I don't get bored of playing against Barcelona or Atlético, or visiting difficult stadiums.
Are you bored of your derby against City or your classic against Liverpool?.
Why exciting matches like United-Madrid have to be played every five or ten years? In addition, the Super League would have knockouts and relegations, so that some team, even from a minor league, could attract great players.
The alternative is what we have now. Leagues dominated by the same teams and wait until March for the good to begin
 

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I like that a league has lots of different stories... Relegation / Europe / The Title etc... If all the teams are as good as each other then where's the drama of upsets? Where's the 7/8/9-0 hammerings? Where are the stories?
 
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But this is the misunderstood part. Juve are among the biggest advocates for it (you can hear it from their CEO) because they earn feck all money from their domestic league and are consistently losing players to other leagues, damaging their ability to compete in the CL. Clubs are businesses as well in the end and they would make more money from a European Superleague.
Yeah I get that financially teams in less financially strong leagues could benefit - but I think that would be a short term gain. If a club is dominant now in a domestic league but then becomes an average club in a super league their whole brand is changed - which had a number of consequences.

There's no really incentive for the English clubs to join a super league. We already have the most popular and lucrative league in the world.
 

Tom Cato

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I've not seen it discussed much in the wider media so I wanted to post it here. I'm not ITK myself but I know someone who knows someone :lol:

Apparently, due to the increasing number of wealthy hobby owners of football clubs like Chelsea, City, PSG etc Europe's elite clubs are looking to protect their financial and competitive positions by creating a European Super League separate from UEFA. The logic being that the gigantic sums of money that wealthy owners (sometimes even countries) can throw at the best players to get them to join a club means historically larger clubs such as United, Real etc wouldn't be able to compete and it was deemed unfair. This was what gave rise to FFP. FFP kept the old guard from creating the Super League but now that FFP has effectively been thrown out in court, there is a big push to create this league again and exclude clubs like Man City, PSG and possibly Chelsea from it. A lot of people see this super league as inevitable and this FFP ruling is the immediate nudge needed to get it started.

Obviously a lot of English football purists and fans of teams that aren't United, Liverpool and Arsenal/Cheslea (who would be part of this Super League) would not be a fan of it. The moral question of whether a club should be able to spend their way to success can be told from both points of view but the reason against it is that other clubs put themselves into debt to compete and possibly go bankrupt, which was the basis for FFP.

Personally, I'd love to see United regularly against the best teams in the world as I'm a United fan and I think as it would be best for the club we shouldn't be frowned upon for pursuing it. It could be good for the English national team to have so many of the best English players concentrated in 3 teams too. We, along with other PL clubs have been most resistant to it until recently due to the popularity of the PL globally but now FFP has been invalidated and City would inevitably spend unlimited money to bring players to them. Same could apply with Newcastle if their takeover is approved, along with Chelsea being given free reign again.

Interested to hear other people's thoughts?

The FFP as a framework has absolutely not been thrown out in court. FFP is a constantly evolving legal framework that has seen numerous changes and will see changes following this debacle as well.

The most important takeaway is that the CAS rejected UEFA's case based on the key parts of the complaints being too old to process. City got off on a technicality that I have no doubt will be adressed in future revisions of the bylaws.
 

Prodigal7

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People moan that the European cup itself can be boring if you play the same teams every few years.
Imagine playing them every week. It'd get stale very quickly.

Any idea of keeping City and PSG out would be laughed out of town to
People still enjoy watching United Liverpool etc every year in the PL. I’d love to see us play Real Madrid etc twice a year.
 

golden_blunder

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Revenue decline from the current situation combined with high fixed costs will bring transfer fees and wages down massively over next few years. It's not temporary, it's the new normal.

Will be good for football, greed ruining the sport.

I think a super League is only possible to replace the UEFA Champions League, zero chance of clubs leaving domestic leagues. Fans would never accept it.
I hope you’re right
 

golden_blunder

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People still enjoy watching United Liverpool etc every year in the PL. I’d love to see us play Real Madrid etc twice a year.
Sorry, I’d take watching matches versus city, Liverpool and hopefully Leeds over watching Spanish or Italian teams
 

Prodigal7

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Sorry, I’d take watching matches versus city, Liverpool and hopefully Leeds over watching Spanish or Italian teams
There’s no reason you have to chose one or the other though. This league would replace the CL not domestic leagues.
A lot of impulsive reactions in here.
 

golden_blunder

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There’s no reason you have to chose one or the other though. This league would replace the CL not domestic leagues.
A lot of impulsive reactions in here.
Football is impulsive.

I assumed we were talking about the idea that was floated previously where top clubs would drop out of their own leagues & the CL in order to setup a new European league. The intention was to take control of decisions and get the money directly cutting UEFA out of the pie

totally against that
 

GatoLoco

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IMO football should be looking at ways to bring salaries and transfer fees down - give football back to the local communities rather than creating yet another tier based on money. Where does it end? In years to come United v Madrid every week on ppv because it generates the most money?
It actually sickens me that fans support these type of proposals. Football is a working mans/woman’s game.
Football's evolution almost since its birth has chosen the way of professionalism and looked to get more and more money.
Try to think of some of the controversy between amateurs and professionals many years ago, when some of the clubs were employing paid players for the first time. I bet some were defending the amateurish character of the sport by saying things like the one you said about giving football back to local communities instead of creating competitions based on money. We all know what happened after. This Super League thing cannot be avoided, it was just a matter of time I guess.
 

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Really hope it doesn’t happen.

I would be in favour of a PL XI vs other league XIs tournament of sorts though, if people really did want some sort of ‘super teams’ competing.
 

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Revenue decline from the current situation combined with high fixed costs will bring transfer fees and wages down massively over next few years. It's not temporary, it's the new normal.

Will be good for football, greed ruining the sport.

I think a super League is only possible to replace the UEFA Champions League, zero chance of clubs leaving domestic leagues. Fans would never accept it.
I don't know about fans not accepting it. Some domestic fans, yeah, especially for teams with big rivalries. But some of the super teams have pretty lame rivalries (who do Bayern, Juve or PSG have that they really care about? e.g., Torino is probably pretty meaningless to Juve), or the rival is coming along (City, Liverpool and United; Barça and Real Madrid). But international fans and more casual fans won't be bothered as much, I'd think.

Anyway, as I said in another thread, I think the European Super League has a lot of practical complexities. I'd rather expect these teams to use the idea of an ESL to pressure the UEFA into adapting the Champions League. For example, access could be exclusively based on tiers. If you are in Tier A, you get guaranteed CL access, regardless of domestic performance. Tier B: you go into the EL. Tier C: you can get into Tier B and participate in the EL based on domestic performance. Then there is promotion/relegation between Tiers A-B-C through performance in the CL and EL. That would achieve a similar thing as an ESL (guaranteed CL for the biggest teams, and no more having to play international minnows), without the practical issues of leaving your domestic leagues, etc. The CL and EL could also become more like a league, so you don't risking being out before the new year and losing the main part of the CL revenue stream. Or whatever other variant to get clubs like United guaranteed CL time!
 

JPRouve

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I don't know about fans not accepting it. Some domestic fans, yeah, especially for teams with big rivalries. But some of the super teams have pretty lame rivalries (who do Bayern, Juve or PSG have that they really care about? e.g., Torino is probably pretty meaningless to Juve), or the rival is coming along (City, Liverpool and United; Barça and Real Madrid). But international fans and more casual fans won't be bothered as much, I'd think.

Anyway, as I said in another thread, I think the European Super League has a lot of practical complexities. I'd rather expect these teams to use the idea of an ESL to pressure the UEFA into adapting the Champions League. For example, access could be exclusively based on tiers. If you are in Tier A, you get guaranteed CL access, regardless of domestic performance. Tier B: you go into the EL. Tier C: you can get into Tier B and participate in the EL based on domestic performance. Then there is promotion/relegation between Tiers A-B-C through performance in the CL and EL. That would achieve a similar thing as an ESL (guaranteed CL for the biggest teams, and no more having to play international minnows), without the practical issues of leaving your domestic leagues, etc. The CL and EL could also become more like a league, so you don't risking being out before the new year and losing the main part of the CL revenue stream. Or whatever other variant to get clubs like United guaranteed CL time!
Marseille is a big rival for PSG. Juve have a lot of them Inter, Fiorentina, Torino and Milan
 

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Marseille is a big rival for PSG. Juve have a lot of them Inter, Fiorentina, Torino and Milan
Well, according to an earlier post (your source, maybe?), Marseille, Inter and AC Milan would all be included or invited, so that covers that part... Also, do Juve fans really care about rivalries with Torino and Fiorentina? Really just asking; but I would assume it's like Liverpool and Everton, or City and United previously: when one club is never an actual rival in the league, the rivalry isn't quite as intense.
 

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I don't know about fans not accepting it. Some domestic fans, yeah, especially for teams with big rivalries. But some of the super teams have pretty lame rivalries (who do Bayern, Juve or PSG have that they really care about? e.g., Torino is probably pretty meaningless to Juve), or the rival is coming along (City, Liverpool and United; Barça and Real Madrid). But international fans and more casual fans won't be bothered as much, I'd think.

Anyway, as I said in another thread, I think the European Super League has a lot of practical complexities. I'd rather expect these teams to use the idea of an ESL to pressure the UEFA into adapting the Champions League. For example, access could be exclusively based on tiers. If you are in Tier A, you get guaranteed CL access, regardless of domestic performance. Tier B: you go into the EL. Tier C: you can get into Tier B and participate in the EL based on domestic performance. Then there is promotion/relegation between Tiers A-B-C through performance in the CL and EL. That would achieve a similar thing as an ESL (guaranteed CL for the biggest teams, and no more having to play international minnows), without the practical issues of leaving your domestic leagues, etc. The CL and EL could also become more like a league, so you don't risking being out before the new year and losing the main part of the CL revenue stream. Or whatever other variant to get clubs like United guaranteed CL time!
The lack of big rivalries is because football has been broken for ages, making a super league doesn't fix it but neither will guaranteed CL tiers, it separates it further. Games that were once massive European showpieces are now the haves vs the have nots. Rivalries are dead because there are 16 or so top clubs in Europe hogging everything. How can PSV v Feyenoord be a big game when both have less money and probably a weaker squad than a bottom half of the table PL team? Bayern and Dortmund would be a much bigger rivalry if its wasn't so one sided. Juve, Milan and Inter could be a huge rivalry again but not with the Milan clubs in the mess they are in. Inter are resorting to signing players who English clubs deem worthless. Feeding off scraps. A more level play field = better rivalries ala the 1980's.

Your Tier A is everything wrong with modern football. Guaranteed CL places would be disgusting. No club regardless of size should be rewarded for failure.
 

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Well, according to an earlier post (your source, maybe?), Marseille, Inter and AC Milan would all be included or invited, so that covers that part... Also, do Juve fans really care about rivalries with Torino and Fiorentina? Really just asking; but I would assume it's like Liverpool and Everton, or City and United previously: when one club is never an actual rival in the league, the rivalry isn't quite as intense.
You asked a question and I tried to answer. Bayern had a big rivalry with the HSV and they have the one with Dortmund but the former is kind of dead since Hamburg are terrible.
 

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Its a funny argument isn't it. Clubs like Real Madrid and Manchester United have their very foundations set in the fact that they were bought by wealthy businessmen that then proceeded to plough money into the club in an attempt to secure dominance over other football clubs. Fast forward 100 years and said clubs aren't happy that a new wave of football clubs are experiencing the very same process. In my opinion, and this will be controversial, if I buy a football club who the feck are FIFA or UEFA or anyone else for that matter to tell me I can't invest in my new asset. It's absolutely ridiculous. Can you imagine being told what you can spend your money on? Oh, you can't upgrade your back garden because your neighbour isn't as rich as you and can't afford the type of things you are upgrading your back garden to. What would you say? Exactly, feck off! Would you then form a back garden committee with your other neighbours and say, you can call around because you lived on this street longer and you haven't bought a lovely new back garden? Of course not, you mind your own business.
Yep, this is where I stand in regards to sugar-daddy clubs. Have to start from somewhere.
 

Jev

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My thinking has always been that, should a Super League ever happen, that would be the point where I stopped watching football. I also think it would be embarrassingly arrogant and entitled by United and other historically big clubs if they were to create a breakout league because they couldn't handle some competition from new clubs. I'd certainly lose all respect for United and the other breakaway clubs.

Fortunately, I don't think it will ever happen. Lots of smoke with no real signs of actual fire for years.
 

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The lack of big rivalries is because football has been broken for ages, making a super league doesn't fix it but neither will guaranteed CL tiers, it separates it further. Games that were once massive European showpieces are now the haves vs the have nots. Rivalries are dead because there are 16 or so top clubs in Europe hogging everything. How can PSV v Feyenoord be a big game when both have less money and probably a weaker squad than a bottom half of the table PL team? Bayern and Dortmund would be a much bigger rivalry if its wasn't so one sided. Juve, Milan and Inter could be a huge rivalry again but not with the Milan clubs in the mess they are in. Inter are resorting to signing players who English clubs deem worthless. Feeding off scraps. A more level play field = better rivalries ala the 1980's.

Your Tier A is everything wrong with modern football. Guaranteed CL places would be disgusting. No club regardless of size should be rewarded for failure.
Hey, I'm not saying I like all this! I like rivalries and local leagues and everything else - basically today's football without almost every league being dominated by a few juggernauts (and preferably a few steps back for the CL as well). I'm just describing where I think things are headed if the big teams are going to insist on having some kind of guarantee of being able to play all the biggest matches every year (through a super league or revampled CL).
You asked a question and I tried to answer. Bayern had a big rivalry with the HSV and they have the one with Dortmund but the former is kind of dead since Hamburg are terrible.
Sorry, didn't mean to come across as argumentative. I was just getting back to my point that a lot of rivalries will either continue in a super league or have become pretty irrelevant for the biggest teams already, so I don't think fear of losing rivalries will be a big argument against the creation of a super league.

I guess in my posts, the underlying theme is that romanticism and sense of history are dead in top-level football. The big teams will use it to their advantage if they can, but it won't stop them from making big moves (like a super league) if that's where they think the bigger money is.
 

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Yep, this is where I stand in regards to sugar-daddy clubs. Have to start from somewhere.
Yeah, I don't mind sugar-daddy clubs either. Green_Red's analogy doesn't really work for me, but my argument is rather that it is extremely hard to compete with the already-rich clubs without a sugar daddy. The playing field is just not at all level if it features clubs with only relatively local fan bases and are limited to the EPL (and the Championship) and others that have international allure, some of the biggest sponsors around, and get CL revenue every year. It could be argued that clubs like Liverpool and United earned their advantage, but in a way, they have just been lucky to have been at the top when football finances skyrocketed. Everton's situation, for example, would have been different if their good period in the 80s would have happened in the early 2000s. In that sense, I think Spurs actually stands out more than any other club in the EPL (more than Pool, United and Arsenal), because they made it into being top 6 mainstays from relative obscurity in the second half of the 2000s while everyone else was rich already, without any outside help. (If I'm not forgetting anything.)

Would be nice if those outside investments were capped somehow though! (If only FFP had teeth...)
 

Revan

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IMO football should be looking at ways to bring salaries and transfer fees down - give football back to the local communities rather than creating yet another tier based on money. Where does it end? In years to come United v Madrid every week on ppv because it generates the most money?
It actually sickens me that fans support these type of proposals. Football is a working mans/woman’s game.
I don't disagree with the remaining part of the post, but with the bolded. Why they should work on bringing the salaries and transfers down? Why it would be better for more money to end on the hands of Glazers than on those of Bruno or Pogba?
 

Revan

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It benefits communities as bankrolling clubs is unsustainable and does two things:
1. drives up the debts of clubs trying to compete with bankrolled clubs. We had £780m of debt as a result of competing with City and Chelsea pre FFP. Post FFP at this moment we have circa 400m in debt
2. Using Chelsea as an example again, bankrolled clubs can do more damage to themselves in the long run. Roman A for example never paid off all of Chelsea's debts. He has a holding company that Chelsea owes circa $1bn too and clearly it's a ticking time bomb until he decides to pay it off.

FFP was designed to make the game more sustainable based on hard evidence but obviously your City, CHelsea, PSG fans etc will say it's the rich clubs trying to hold them back, which is still true I imagine.
No. We had 780m debts because the Glazers bought the club with a debt, not with money. It had nothing to do with Chelsea and especially City (who got bought from UAE 3 years later).
 

Revan

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People moan that the European cup itself can be boring if you play the same teams every few years.
Imagine playing them every week. It'd get stale very quickly.

Any idea of keeping City and PSG out would be laughed out of town to
I don't agree. Very soon the clubs there would get divided into top clubs and midtable/relegation fodder. So it will be a few top clubs that fight for titles, and the remaining who typically don't. So, there would still be the exciting matches when the top clubs fight each other.

A bit like NBA.
 

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I don't agree. Very soon the clubs there would get divided into top clubs and midtable/relegation fodder. So it will be a few top clubs that fight for titles, and the remaining who typically don't. So, there would still be the exciting matches when the top clubs fight each other.

A bit like NBA.
So you think playing Juventus to see who is bottom of the league would be exciting 3-4 times a season , year after year?

The biggest reason this league won't happen is the likes of Juventus cruise their league every year and won't want to be festering at the bottom of any league.
 

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I don't disagree with the remaining part of the post, but with the bolded. Why they should work on bringing the salaries and transfers down? Why it would be better for more money to end on the hands of Glazers than on those of Bruno or Pogba?
In the short term at least, record unemployment. The ordinary person in the street will be buying Jess tickets, less merch and many more turning off their football subs. Either prices cone down or they lose customers. Everything has a knock on effect.

I hope
 

Revan

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In the short term at least, record unemployment. The ordinary person in the street will be buying Jess tickets, less merch and many more turning off their football subs. Either prices cone down or they lose customers. Everything has a knock on effect.

I hope
Oh yeah, customers can always decide to not buy the product, in which case the product will get cheaper.

I just don't get why footballers (and football in general) get criticized for this in particular. I mean, the same argument can be maid for movies and actors, music and singers and so on. I don't really care how much they earn, and neither I found the product less or more enjoyable because of that. Of course, I would also prefer for them to get less money which will result in lower tickets and TV subscriptions, but as long as people are happy to pay those products at those price, it won't happen. And at the end of the day, I would prefer the money to end on the hands of footballers (or singers and actors) than in the hands of the owners of those football clubs etc. A salary cap will only mean that the owners get richer, while we still pay the same amount of money.
 

Revan

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So you think playing Juventus to see who is bottom of the league would be exciting 3-4 times a season , year after year?

The biggest reason this league won't happen is the likes of Juventus cruise their league every year and won't want to be festering at the bottom of any league.
I agree that the league won't happen, and probably shouldn't. I have no problem with that.

Just that, I disagree that it would be boring. It probably would be boring for those who fight relegation (same as it might be now for the clubs that fight relegation) but for those who fight for the title, it would be very exciting.
 

GatoLoco

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Its a funny argument isn't it. Clubs like Real Madrid and Manchester United have their very foundations set in the fact that they were bought by wealthy businessmen that then proceeded to plough money into the club in an attempt to secure dominance over other football clubs. Fast forward 100 years and said clubs aren't happy that a new wave of football clubs are experiencing the very same process. In my opinion, and this will be controversial, if I buy a football club who the feck are FIFA or UEFA or anyone else for that matter to tell me I can't invest in my new asset. It's absolutely ridiculous. Can you imagine being told what you can spend your money on? Oh, you can't upgrade your back garden because your neighbour isn't as rich as you and can't afford the type of things you are upgrading your back garden to. What would you say? Exactly, feck off! Would you then form a back garden committee with your other neighbours and say, you can call around because you lived on this street longer and you haven't bought a lovely new back garden? Of course not, you mind your own business.
The garden analogy is completely wrong for this case from my point of view. What you describe would simply be a fight for power. Some clubs have tons of money, other clubs have the will not to get involved with the former (supposed @Prodigal7's thesis are accurate) or a certain influence to set common rules within a context both kind of clubs share. It's really that simple. Or if you want a different analogy, I cannot force you not to spend the money on stuff you like for your garden, but you cannot force me to be part of a social club I want to leave because I don't like you as one of its members. Nor can you force me not to try to influence the elected directors to provide me with the best commodities in the social club to the detriment of you.
 

SambaBoy

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TV money needs to be split equally between the number of teams in the league first and foremost. You need to start making changes so the game doesn't game away from us in terms of it being a competitive competition. LA Liga is terrible in this respect, I'm sure Barca and Real get 70-80% of all TV money?! How are teams supposed to compete against that.
 

JPRouve

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TV money needs to be split equally between the number of teams in the league first and foremost. You need to start making changes so the game doesn't game away from us in terms of it being a competitive competition. LA Liga is terrible in this respect, I'm sure Barca and Real get 70-80% of all TV money?! How are teams supposed to compete against that.
Why, those TV deals are the fruit of a handful of clubs? Why should a bottom half PL team who has done nothing to contribute to the TV deal get hundreds of millions while teams in Championship don't? Not all teams are supposed to compete, Football clubs aren't equal, they don't all have resources to grow organically and that's why Football uses a relegation system, it's pyramidal.

What you are suggesting is unfair for lower league teams and it's unfair to foreign clubs who have to compete in the same transfer market and continental competitions but aren't subsidized by their leagues to the same extent.