The European Super League was a breakaway league announced in April 2021, and it was set to feature 20 of the biggest European football clubs, with the 12 founding clubs Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United, Tottenham, Atletico Madrid, Barcelona, Real Madrid, Juventus, Inter, and Milan.
The idea of this league was to reform the sport following the losses incurred due to the pandemic and rival the currently-existing Champions league format, all while maintaining the prestige of the historic domestic calendar. The primary objective of these clubs was to create a big money, high-stakes competition with 15 permanent teams and 5 additional teams that qualified each year, based purely on footballing merit, so it’s not hard to see why the world reacted the way it did.
There is no scarcity of reasons for why the super league faced the backlash that it did, but we can certainly assume that the primary cause of concern was the elitist and exclusionary nature of the competition, which would take away the surprise element from ‘The Beautiful Game’ and deprive us of an underdog story: something that is always so special to witness and participate in.
A majority of the public felt like the game was being threatened by certain power-hungry individuals in important positions, and they thought that the element of competition was made redundant as the game seemed to favour money over passion or love for the sport.
Not only was there immediate backlash from fans, but also from prominent personalities like ex-footballers, managers, and even the prime minister of Great Britain, Boris Johnson. Fans of the Premier League’s “Big Six” took their protests to the stadiums, as did other fans in front of the stadiums of other founding clubs.
After this strong disapproval and bleak future of the Super League, it collapsed when Manchester City, Manchester United, Liverpool, Chelsea, Tottenham and Arsenal, who were 6 of the 12 leading European clubs, decided to pull out of the competition.
While plans for the Super League seem to have fizzled for now, JP Morgan has shared that they would like to reconsider this project in a more accepting manner in the future.
