12 Soccer Teams Announce Formation of European Super League

[Arn]

I don't think it was necessarily the basic desire to make more money, I think it was more the fact that it was to make those clubs the money exclusively.

One of the things about the European football (soccer) set up is that it is a meritocracy. Anyone who wants to can make it to the top. See Leicester as a recent example. That is, of course, brought about by the investment of a wealthy owner. But that is done with the possibility of winning a league title and then you get your reward by qualifying for the Champions League and the associated financial windfalls etc that come with that.

This new league was going to be a closed shop, with apparently a couple of invited clubs (but with 6 English clubs already in there, what chance any of the invites would go to another English club?).

I think taking away that sense of aspiration was a much, much bigger rallying point for the fans of other EPL clubs than the money.

It was indeed, an incredible underestimation of the fans and players feelings, however, by this group of out of touch (primarily North American) businessmen.

 

[Arn]

So just picking up on this again.

The big news in European football of late is probably that Lionel Messi has departed Barcelona for Paris St Germain.

The reason that he has departed is that Barcelona were forced to cut their annual wages from ?450m to around ?135m. This figure is derived from a "financial fair play" model which takes into account clubs turnovers and profits etc so it's not a "hard" limit for all clubs.

It turns out that Barcelona currently have debts/liabilities of around ?1.1 BILLION ($1.3bn).

Madrid are in slightly better shape with debts/liabilities of just ?800m ($935m).

So I guess why we can see there was a bit of a desire by the Spanish clubs to try and ensure a higher level of income.

The Barcelona mess is quite astounding if you want to take some time out to read about how not to run a business/sports club.