European Superleague is Not Only a Good Idea - it May be Necessary for Football to Evolve
Progress in every discipline is a result of accumulation of resources by the best performers - not squandering them on redistribution among the weak.
Part of the reason for creating this Substack newsletter was for it to be a corner for my personal thoughts on topics other than serious stuff, like politics. Sport is one of them - which I’m sure some of you won’t be too interested in (worry not, it will make only occasional appearances here).
The world of football was shaken by the announcement of a formation of a breakaway Superleague in European football, formed currently by 12 of the continent’s most powerful and successful clubs (with a target for 15 founding members + 5 places reserved for teams outside of the group, who would compete for participation in the competition each year).
I have to say that I find the uproar about the new league quite comical, though not surprising as the outrage against the rich and successful is a common theme these days.
Sporting reactionaries have clearly lost sight of what the discipline has become — and have few ideas about how it should progress in the future.
A Brief History of Football
To understand the direction it is developing in, you first have to understand where it came from. Like all other sports, football evolved from a loose and unregulated pastime into an organized discipline sometime in the 19th century. In 1904 FIFA was formed, as a body governing the competition among the first several members.
Early footballers, much like other athletes, swimmers, runners, cyclists etc. were far from professional sportsmen we know today. Sport was typically just a hobby and any opportunity to represent their nation in an official even was little more than an adventure. Niels Bohr’s brother Harald, a mathematician, won a silver medal with Danish football team in 1908 Olympics. General George S. Patton competed as the only American in pentathlon in 1912.
In other words, all sports started by people inventing activities for leisure, which then, gradually, had become professionalized.
School competitions gave way to national leagues comprising clubs which began specializing in the sport in the late 19th and early 20th century. Within the next few decades international competitions commenced - first between national teams (since 1930) and then club champions of each league (since 1955).
For 36 years the European Cup had been a straight knock-out competition between champions of continental leagues. Reform in 1992 introduced a group stage, in 1997 runners-up were allowed to participate as well and in 1999 the format was expanded to the current 32 teams, which include up to four participants from the top leagues (like English Premier League or Spanish La Liga).
As you can see the entire discipline has gone through a gradual process of internationalization, with the European competition becoming more prestigious and desired than local, domestic titles.
With the top tier clubs attracting not only the best footballers but the best managerial staff as well, they have begun to dominate domestic leagues, which have gradually become more boring and predictable.
Yawn…
With the exception of English Premier League, where typically several teams compete for the championship, all other major countries see dominance of one or two clubs.
In Germany, Bayern Munich is heading for its 9th straight league title.
In France PSG is fighting for its 8th title in the last 9 seasons.
In Italy, Juventus is about to lose only its first league race in a decade.
In Spanish La Liga, either Real Madrid or Barcelona have won the competition in 15 out of the last 16 seasons - and lost it only on 5 occasions since 1985. That’s 35 years.
With 36-38 rounds and 18-20 teams in each league (with very few able to provide any challenge) national leagues have transformed into a dreary, boring, sad spectacle, with some of the world’s best players being ferried around to some god forsaken towns to take on small teams in a rather meaningless competition.
This has now crept into the Champions League as well, with more spots in the group stages, allowing quite random teams like Belarussian BATE Borisov, Hungarian Ferencvaros or Danish Midtjylland to compete in the top tier they have little to no chance to make any mark on.
Sure, surprises happen occasionally, but the toll on the world’s top players - who are already forced to play 60-70 games a season - is often terrible. Protracted injuries and drops in physical form from overexertion due to participation in both club and national competitions, spoil the game often in its most crucial moments.
Real Madrid is now playing without its two main full-backs. Bayern Munich was knocked out of the Champions League, having faced Paris Saint-Germain without its leading top scorer and one of the world’s best footballers, Robert Lewandowski. Brazilian Neymar lost decisive Champions League games in the pre-Covid era, due to injuries, watching from the stands how his team was knocked out across two seasons.
Is Champions League just a circus that the top clubs and their footballers serve as performers in, owing a visit to the far flung corners of the continent just to satisfy some grand ideas of access to top footballers under the false pretense of giving poor clubs a chance to take an illusory part?
After many months of games, spring is often the time when footballers fall apart, spending time in hospitals and in physiotherapy, trying to patch themselves up ahead of the most decisive games. But often they can’t make it in time. Why should they and all the spectators be robbed of their performances?
That’s why the Superleague makes so much sense.
After a century of competitions, the footballing elite has largely been crystallized. Some objections may be raised about Arsenal or Tottenham being the founding members, but other than that nobody can seriously claim the Superleague doesn’t consist of the best clubs on the continent.
Why shouldn’t they be facing each other more regularly?
I’ve been a Barcelona fan all my life. 20 years ago I still used to watch every game. Today I tune in for a few in a season. What’s the point of watching it play Ferencvaros in Budapest or Dynamo in Kiev?
Look at the above groups and tell me why do they even exist? Who needs to watch Olympiacos take on Marseille (long past its glory days), Atalanta travel to Denmark to take on Midtjylland, Rennes flying thousands of miles to Krasnodar or the behemoths of Club Brugge traveling to St. Petersburg?
Is this the “Champions“ League? Really?
It’s a joke that UEFA now wants to expand even further, proposing to add around 100 new games and forcing each club to find additional four matchdays during the autumn to accommodate more pointless matches, so that the governing body can ask for a higher price for TV rights, which then it decides how to split.
Is anybody seriously surprised that the big clubs thought it may be a better idea to cut out the bureaucratic middle man and form their own competition that they can sell the rights to directly, without having to share the cash?
And before you get too righteous and charitable that the rich should pay to support the poor, please think why that should ever be? There’s already a ton of money in football - including in 2nd rate leagues. The bulk of expenses of sports clubs are salaries. Best paid footballers in Poland - a ca. 40 million country which struggles to put a club in the Champions League - receive between 20 and 50 thousand dollars per month. And, trust me, many of them struggle to hit the ball straight.
The stories of how young players have to be sought out and trained everywhere are a poor argument too. In today’s borderless Europe many already travel to the best academies organized and financed by the big clubs independently. They have the best people, the most experience and money to use.
There are thousands of footballers that will never make any mark on the discipline. What does anybody owe them, exactly?
Progress in every domain of human life takes place at the cutting edge, among the crème de la crème, a narrow elite, a fraction of a percent of all participants. And they not only are responsible for generating most of the resources to keep the discipline going - they are also the best at using them.
Who is Really Greedy?
Lots of people decry the move as another attempt by the already rich to make even more money. I’m sorry but isn’t the alternative about money as well?
It’s just a disagreement over who gets how much. After all, UEFA wants to milk the Champions League format even more. You want to tell me that isn’t about money? Heck, the entire history of the competition is a progressive expansion with the goal of increasing revenues.
So, tell me, who is really greedy? The top clubs, whose players are expected to perform in 60-70-80 games per season, including traveling thousands of miles with national teams, or the backwater losers, who play maybe half of that, because they rarely represent their country or participate in cups and other competitions?
Who is really pushing the discipline forward?
Europe’s best clubs have largely achieved domestic supremacy and require new, greater challenges. The logical next step after decades of progressing internationalization of club competitions, is to allow them to play each other on a regular basis, enlarging the pool of interesting, competitive games.
Quality over quantity.
The Superleague format - which may still be tweaked - already leaves the back door for 5 teams from outside of the core 15, permitting access of worthy challengers to shake the competition up each season. At the same time it guarantees dozens of interesting games between Europe’s leading clubs every single year.
What’s not to like?
Some people summarised it best. If there is no reward nor punishment for winning and losing, it's not sport anymore. Its business. The beauty of this sport is that some unknown guy have a chance to play in some Znicz Pruszków then Lech then Borussia so he finally becomes known to the world as best no 9. Take the money UEFA gives to national federations and youth football and you might have no Znicz anymore
And on what basis you select the best. Who is Arsenal or Inter to be in so called Super league, what did they achieve. Who is Barcelona, totally in debt. Football needs reform, yes. Less games, yes. Pay cap, yes. But not in the form of Super league where 15 privileged clubs get all the money