The European Super League makes a stunning comeback as Real Madrid, Barcelona and Juventus are understood to have contacted more than 50 clubs in the hope of creating a new European tournament that would replace the UEFA Champions League.
According to a publication on Telegraph football, the European Super League backers have revealed today that they want to launch a new version of the project that crashed two years ago: a multi-division competition of 60 to 80 teams with no permanent members, and a minimum of 14 games per club, per season.
The announcement was made in various European newspapers by A22, the Madrid-based sister company of the Super League (ESL), and timed to coincide with a new push from the three remaining rebels Real Madrid, Barcelona and Juventus to continue their battle with Uefa.
A22 claim that the new project is a result of detailed conversations with clubs around Europe on the financial problems facing them. For the past few months A22 and the ESL have focused their attacks on the wealth of the Premier League, its dominance of the transfer market and the effect that has on other European leagues with less lucrative television deals.
There are no details yet on how the original 60 to 80 teams would be constituted or how they would drop out of the proposed competition to make way for new clubs. The original ESL, in April 2021, was pilloried for offering permanent membership to its founding clubs of which six were from the Premier League: the two Manchester clubs, Liverpool, Chelsea, Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur.
The format of the proposed new Super League has been kept a secret by Real, Barcelona and Juventus, but even now there are still questions about how it might work – were it ever given the legal room to operate. A22, as well as its major backers like Real president Florentino Perez, has claimed in the past that there would be greater solidarity payments for clubs who do not participate in European competitions.
Javier Tebas, the president of La Liga, was among the first to respond to today’s announcement. He tweeted: “The Super League is the wolf, who today disguises himself as a granny to try to fool European football, but his nose and his teeth are very big. Four divisions in Europe? Of course the [top division] for them [the founding clubs], as in the 2019 plan. Governance of the clubs? Of course only from the big ones.”
