What does a European Super League look like?

diarm

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This has been whispered about for years but what would it actually look like? Do people think it would be a replacement for the Champions League or would the traditional big clubs actually walk from their domestic competitions?

Who would be included? How would it be regulated? Is it a double standard to exclude PSG, City and Newcastle because of who their owners are, but include Real Madrid and Barcelona with the murkiness surrounding how they finance their clubs? Do Chelsea qualify and if so, why?

Could we also then see a rival competition set up, including PSG, City, Newcastle, Chelsea and all the other oil money playthings that inevitably pop up in the wake of FFP's death?
 

SuperiorXI

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Can't see it happening, it's too reckless a move. It's more likely the teams strike to have clubs like City removed from the competition.
 

foolsgold

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It looks like shit, it has very few away fans due to cost and the home fans lose interest in it very quickly.
 

André Dominguez

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In terms of TV rights it would be highly profitable for European top club. It would ruin the national competitions though.
 

fps

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It looks like boredom and the end of European football's cultural domination.
 

Bulldog United

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This has been whispered about for years but what would it actually look like? Do people think it would be a replacement for the Champions League or would the traditional big clubs actually walk from their domestic competitions?

Who would be included? How would it be regulated? Is it a double standard to exclude PSG, City and Newcastle because of who their owners are, but include Real Madrid and Barcelona with the murkiness surrounding how they finance their clubs? Do Chelsea qualify and if so, why?

Could we also then see a rival competition set up, including PSG, City, Newcastle, Chelsea and all the other oil money playthings that inevitably pop up in the wake of FFP's death?
If the clubs walk away from domestic competitions, and UEFA is not involved, then FIFA and UEFA will ban all participants from international football too. It would be interesting seeing how many footballers who would accept the risks of playing in this new Super League format under those restrictions.
 

JPRouve

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It depends a lot on how it's implemented. It could look like Super Rugby with franchises(super clubs) playing in a 5 months competition every year. And national leagues playing the rest of the year.
 

RashyForPM

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Would be a horrible idea and very unfair on the smaller clubs. However, if it were to happen and comprise of 20 teams like a normal league, it would probably look something like this if I haven’t forgotten anything obvious:

Man United
Barca
Real
City
Liverpool
PSG
Juventus
Atletico
Inter
Chelsea
Dortmund
Napoli
AC Milan
Leverkusen
Valencia
Marseille
Ajax
Porto
Benfica
Sevilla

For the record, I think we’d finish 8th in this theoretical league behind the 7 teams listed after us above. I do think we have the 7th best squad in the world, but Atletico always fare well against top teams.
 

MikeUpNorth

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Would be a horrible idea and very unfair on the smaller clubs. However, if it were to happen and comprise of 20 teams like a normal league, it would probably look something like this if I haven’t forgotten anything obvious:

Man United
Barca
Real
City
Liverpool
PSG
Juventus
Atletico
Inter
Chelsea
Dortmund
Napoli
AC Milan
Leverkusen
Valencia
Marseille
Ajax
Porto
Benfica
Sevilla

For the record, I think we’d finish 8th in this theoretical league behind the 7 teams listed after us above. I do think we have the 7th best squad in the world, but Atletico always fare well against top teams.
Bayern?
 

padr81

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I was thinking of what the superleafmgue would look like.

Barca, real, Atletico, liverpool, city, Chelsea, Juventus, Lazio, atalanta, Bayern, dortmund, Leipzig, porto, benfica, ajax, Celtic, shakhtar and shamrock rovers sounds legit.
 

GDaly95

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There aren't many things I can think of that'd instantly make me fall out of love with football.

This is one of them.
 

JPRouve

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People should always keep in mind that PSG's chairman is an ECA executive, the idea that PSG are outsiders is a fantasy.
 

Cloud7

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I may be interpreting this wrong, and I’m open to being corrected, but I feel as if people usually get the concept of a super league wrong, particularly when they mention teams breaking away from the domestic leagues to be part of it.

I was always under the impression that if such a league were created between the top clubs, then it would be in place of the champions league, with the clubs themselves controlling who gets to be part of this tournament, rather than a breakaway from domestic leagues and replacing normal league football?
 

onemanarmy

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Sounds terrible. CL is becoming more boring every year, with the same 8 teams playing the quarter finals, this would be even worse.
 

Nick7

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Would a hypothetical Super League include a salary cap and spending limits, a la US Sports?
 

JPRouve

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I may be interpreting this wrong, and I’m open to being corrected, but I feel as if people usually get the concept of a super league wrong, particularly when they mention teams breaking away from the domestic leagues to be part of it.

I was always under the impression that if such a league were created between the top clubs, then it would be in place of the champions league, with the clubs themselves controlling who gets to be part of this tournament, rather than a breakaway from domestic leagues and replacing normal league football?
No, it's a breakaway with an actual league between big clubs.
 

DWelbz19

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Shite is what it looks like.
 

fps

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Would be a horrible idea and very unfair on the smaller clubs. However, if it were to happen and comprise of 20 teams like a normal league, it would probably look something like this if I haven’t forgotten anything obvious:

Man United
Barca
Real
City
Liverpool
PSG
Juventus
Atletico
Inter
Chelsea
Dortmund
Napoli
AC Milan
Leverkusen
Valencia
Marseille
Ajax
Porto
Benfica
Sevilla

For the record, I think we’d finish 8th in this theoretical league behind the 7 teams listed after us above. I do think we have the 7th best squad in the world, but Atletico always fare well against top teams.
This is definitely one model. I feel it would be a disaster because the "superclubs" would themselves become mid-table and relegation clubs. When you're not blitzing opposition all the time fans aren't going to come on board in the same way either, with all due respect, how are Porto fans going to react to this when suddenly their best players can't actually lay a glove on anyone?

To preserve the dignity of some of the smaller "superclubs" I imagine it would be a round-robin kinda format with a couple of different league systems. I also think they'd have to put in 2 leagues with promotion and relegation because otherwise most clubs would have nothing to play for most of the time, and it's the narrative that draws a lot of people in more than any individual game. "If X beat Y, they might beat relegation if G beats D", etc.

I'll just reiterate here what I said above, I think a super league would die and those clubs would die.
 

Lynty

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Personally I hope it doesn't happen. But if it does, I expect it to adopt a lot of its structure and even rule changes from NFL.

Salary caps will be implemented.
Drinks breaks will be included to keep younger audiences engaged.
Advertising will get out of control.
Transfer market will collapse in favor of something resembling a draft system with compensatory payments made to national leagues.
South American football will suffer the most
Football League in England would benefit with better match day attendance and higher quality of football
We'd all support Manchester United + another local team

Unfortunately, it probably will need to happen at some point in the next 20 years. The current model is unsustainable.
 

RashyForPM

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This is definitely one model. I feel it would be a disaster because the "superclubs" would themselves become mid-table and relegation clubs. When you're not blitzing opposition all the time fans aren't going to come on board in the same way either, with all due respect, how are Porto fans going to react to this when suddenly their best players can't actually lay a glove on anyone?

To preserve the dignity of some of the smaller "superclubs" I imagine it would be a round-robin kinda format with a couple of different league systems. I also think they'd have to put in 2 leagues with promotion and relegation because otherwise most clubs would have nothing to play for most of the time, and it's the narrative that draws a lot of people in more than any individual game. "If X beat Y, they might beat relegation if G beats D", etc.

I'll just reiterate here what I said above, I think a super league would die and those clubs would die.
Good reply this. Never actually thought about it that way. Fans of the Porto’s, Benfica’s and Valencia’s would go a whole season seeing their club win less than 7 games. Fairly sure many would just boycott games after the first couple home ones end in bashings.

Besides, travel time has to be taken into account too. Fans can travel to away games within a nation and overseas sporadically, but if they’re asked to fly every fortnight, not only would it be too expensive, it would also be exhausting. I plan to be a United ST holder in the future but I couldn’t if I had to fly across the continent to watch and support my team.

There cannot be a Super League. The game we love is better off this way.
 

Bojan11

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I was thinking of what the superleafmgue would look like.

Barca, real, Atletico, liverpool, city, Chelsea, Juventus, Lazio, atalanta, Bayern, dortmund, Leipzig, porto, benfica, ajax, Celtic, shakhtar and shamrock rovers sounds legit.
Not sure your club understands legit.
 

arthurka

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Don't want.. UEFA needs to find a solution to these oil clubs moving forward..
 

P-Nut

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I can see it eventually coming in to replace the CL, but replacing the national leagues would cause all the issues mentioned above about teams playing abroad every other week, and some clubs having nothing to play for.

The champions league in its current format has 13 games if you make it to the final. If you had several divisions of 8 teams a league that'd be 14 games a season playing home and away.

1st division

Madrid
Barcelona
Bayern
PSG
Liverpool
City
Juventus
United

2nd

Atletico
Chelsea
Inter
Dortmund
Spurs
Etc....

That's the only way I can see it working, however it's not what they would want to put in place
 

Infra-red

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Personally I hope it doesn't happen. But if it does, I expect it to adopt a lot of its structure and even rule changes from NFL.

Salary caps will be implemented.
Drinks breaks will be included to keep younger audiences engaged.
Advertising will get out of control.
Transfer market will collapse in favor of something resembling a draft system with compensatory payments made to national leagues.
South American football will suffer the most
Football League in England would benefit with better match day attendance and higher quality of football
We'd all support Manchester United + another local team

Unfortunately, it probably will need to happen at some point in the next 20 years. The current model is unsustainable.
Pretty much this. No promotion or relegation either, obviously.

As you say, essentially, the NFL.
 

Cloud7

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No, it's a breakaway with an actual league between big clubs.
Oh, well in that case that doesn’t sound too appetizing at all. A substitute for the champions league might be more palatable, but I can’t get on board with this at all.
 

JPRouve

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Oh, well in that case that doesn’t sound too appetizing at all. A substitute for the champions league might be more palatable, but I can’t get on board with this at all.
But why do people talk about a substitute for the CL when the competition is totally controlled by the ECA who are the ones who would create that other competition. Sometimes I feel that people are being very naive, they seem to think that the UEFA is the problem when it's the rich clubs themselves.
 

MikeUpNorth

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A super league that does away with domestic leagues is clearly a bad idea for the game.

However, I think there is a lot of room to improve the major European competitions. For example, Man Utd have only played Juventus twice in the last 20 years - that's mental and far too infrequent for two giant clubs. We've only faced Real Madrid 3 times in 20 years. Crazy.

As a fan, I'd love to see those big matches between the giant clubs a bit more frequently. Not every year, but more often than once a decade. There has to be a happy middle ground.
 

africanspur

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Would replace the CL I think. And would be genuinely horrible.

Has the CL not already started to move towards a similar model? Your winnings and seedings etc are at least in part based on your historical record in the competition? Making it even harder for new clubs to break in on a long term basis.
 

Judas

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Even as a replacement to the CL it would be awful. Big games are only big games if they're not happening every week. I don't get how anyone could be excited for it.
 

diarm

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The issue with salary caps and such, is that state run clubs like City and PSG still have the facilities to pay enormous salaries and benefits to players and coaches off the books. There will never be any regulating body that can prove what money City have paid to Pep or Aguero via accounts in the Seychelles.

I could see a situation arise whereby the traditionally great clubs, the ones with actual fan bases, look to protect themselves from the plastic clubs.
 

JPRouve

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The issue with salary caps and such, is that state run clubs like City and PSG still have the facilities to pay enormous salaries and benefits to players and coaches off the books. There will never be any regulating body that can prove what money City have paid to Pep or Aguero via accounts in the Seychelles.

I could see a situation arise whereby the traditionally great clubs, the ones with actual fan bases, look to protect themselves from the plastic clubs.
That's the not the issue with salary cap, you just have to look at the Saracens, people focus on City and PSG for no good reason when it comes to these things. The issue with a salary cap is that we are talking about clubs in totally different financial environments, there isn't really a figure that is relevant for everyone as long as they don't live in the same markets.
 

sun_tzu

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Midweek league
10 clubs (or 20 in 2 divisions) play each other 3 times a season - home, away and a neural venue (middle east for example during the winter breaks ) and they ditch FA cup / league cup and dont take up UEFA places in cl or eurpoa
thats 27 games

CL qualifying = 4 games
Group stages = 6 games
knock out = 7 games
FA cup = 6 games
league cup = 6 games

thats up to 29 games they wont play in so fitting in the fixtures is certainly possible ...

perhaps even a mini summer knock out competition at the end of the season with the top 8 in a neutral venue (new york, tokyo, bejing etc) over a week - its only a week and 3 extra games

Clubs sell individual TV rights online to home games and keep all the revenue - no FFP / UEFA involvement

They all get to play in their regular leagues as normal