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Real Madrid versus FC Barcelona - is that still La Liga?
Photo: JAVIER SORIANO / AFP
So this is the next step.
According to several international media, twelve clubs have agreed on plans for a Super League, with five top English clubs, three from Spain and three from Italy.
Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund are not there, nor are the sheikh clubs Manchester City and Paris Saint-Germain.
At the moment, it is hard to imagine that this will really happen.
Fifa and Uefa, as well as the leagues from England, Spain and Italy immediately threatened with severe sanctions up to and including exclusion from the national leagues, players from the clubs concerned would no longer be invited to international matches, the Champions League would then also take place without these clubs.
The German Football League has joined the UEFA statement.
In other words: that would be the end of European football as we know it so far.
Uefa's reaction is itself cynical
What is clear: The distribution battle for the soccer millions is in full swing. The fact that Uefa and the leagues react so sharply certainly has nothing to do with the fact that they have suddenly become the lord seal keepers of traditional football. Rather, they see their own benefices in danger. Uefa wants to give the Champions League a new structure on Monday, with even more games and even more clubs. The Super League considerations would torpedo these plans. The Cow Champions League could then no longer be milked the way Uefa imagines it. In this respect, it is at least as cynical when Uefa calls the Super League "a cynical project" in its statement.
And that, for example, Paris Saint-Germain refuses to join this club of the super-rich, apparently has the disgraceful reason that PSG boss Nasser al Khelaifi, as boss of the BeIN Media Group, is interested in a Champions League that is as lucrative as possible. beIN has already invested many millions in the European premier class.
The lack of German clubs, specifically the lack of Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund, certainly has other reasons: The Super League is viewed more critically by the public in Germany than in England, for example, and the club structures in the Bundesliga are still there others, the suspicion here even greater against investor models in football.
Bayern and BVB know what thin ice they would be on if they abandoned this basic consensus.
Such residual shame has long since ceased to exist at Real Madrid or Manchester United.
Even better served with today's structures
A Super League, decoupled from national league operations, is currently still a particular interest of a few few clubs. There are still too few to really undermine football. That's probably why it's just a sham project, an instrument to rattle the saber and put the associations and leagues under pressure. Real, Barcelona and Liverpool probably know themselves that they'll do better at the moment if they use the current structures. Simply put: At the moment, there is even more to be gained from the league and Champions League.
The clubs are very well aware of the risk of not only losing fans, but also sponsors if a club competition hangs too much in a vacuum.
And a Super League without Bayern Munich and PSG, the two finalists of the Champions League last year, that would be an artificial structure, half-hearted.
Nothing yet to excite the masses.
It is a test balloon, checking the reactions.
This is then intensively evaluated internally at the top clubs.
Armed with this knowledge, the next escalation level will be ignited in the foreseeable future.
