There was a time not too long ago when the word “Super League” was not a taboo subject in UEFA offices. A time in which European football, eager for change, for new motivations, for more money and power, mumbled in its corridors the need for a modification of the Champions League format.. A time that has a specific date: March 19, 2018. That day, in a meeting room in Nyon, the Executive Committee of the highest continental football organization slipped an idea on their table to implement a radical change in the Champions League: “We must create a Super League.”
Five years later, UEFA starts today the last edition of its best competition before launching a new format starting with the 2024-2025 season. It will be the great change of this century. It will go from 32 to 36 teams, it will forget about group stages, it will form a regular league in which the teams will play 8 games and eight places will be granted for the playoffs. “There will be more matches of a higher level, more uncertainty until the end of the league and we will not have dead duels,” the organization assures this newspaper.
More higher level matches. Does that phrase remind you of anything? “The matches between the greats generate more money,” claimed Florentino Pérez on April 18, 2021, the date on which the Super League project was presented.. One day before, curiously, the official announcement of the change of format of the new Champions League. Nothing is coincidence, logically. “We quickly announced the creation of the Super League because we were notified of the publication of the new format of the Champions League,” they remember.
The CJEU resolution
Since then, European football has only been understood from the trenches of the sporting, media, political and social war between UEFA and the Super League.. The Court of Justice of the European Union continues to analyze the case and extends the verdict on the winner of a trial that has the leaders in suspense. The resolution, at the earliest, would arrive at the end of October, according to sources close to the judicial process.
Meanwhile, the European Cup begins with the promise that in twelve months everything will be different. That the tournament will change, says Aleksander Ceferin, “maintaining the dream of any European team and not being a small self-selected cartel”, in reference to the ideas of its greatest enemy. The hints, and the knives, fly throughout the continent. UEFA and Super League do agree on a chronology of events: the competition led by Florentino Pérez and Real Madrid is “a reaction to the new format of the Champions League,” they admit from the young project. «The new format is not a response to the Super League. “Discussions about this began much earlier,” admit UEFA sources.
UEFA and Super League not only agree on the chronology, but also on some of the problems of European football. Their big differences are in how. “This change in format is a necessary evolution to make the competition more attractive and ensure the long-term growth and sustainability of European football,” they insist on the top continental competition.. A phrase that, again, they also pronounce on the other side of the battlefield when defending the creation of the new competition.
And then, “why do they fight?” readers will ask.. You won't be surprised by the answer: money.. UEFA sold the television rights to European competitions to Telefónica this summer for three years and 960 million. In 2017, the same three-season contract cost Mediapro 1.1 billion. “Audiovisual rights are decreasing throughout the football world except in the Premier,” a manager of a LaLiga team tells EL MUNDO.. Therein lies the great argument of the Super League: “I don't believe that 4,000 million people will go to television to watch unknown clubs,” said Florentino.. In the Super League they go further: «The new format is a disaster and a commercial failure. There are more games of a higher level, but there are also more games of a lower level.
At UEFA they defend themselves by ensuring that the value of the competition has increased by 25%, with an improvement also in the figure received by the clubs that do not participate in their competitions: from 4% to 7% of the total income, which They are estimated at almost 4,000 million. “We have improved our data significantly,” they emphasize in UEFA. But Super League sources assure that the initial forecasts were for a 60% improvement and income of 5,000 million “which they are not going to achieve.”
The clubs, against Al-Khelaifi
In the middle of the trenches, now silenced while waiting for the CJEU, other clubs have created the Union of European Clubs, an organization made up of middle-class teams contrary to the interests of the ECA (European Clubs Association) governed by Nasser Al- Khelaifi. So we not only have war in competitions, but also in clubs. This new organization was born with the support, among others, of Javier Tebas, who accused the sheikh and the ECA of representing “only the elite clubs.”. The president of LaLiga demands greater “protection” for domestic tournaments. «The ECA wanted more European matches on the calendar and more big teams in European competitions, but from the Leagues we want to continue protecting our growth. This new format of the Champions League is the result of a negotiation between different interests,” sources from the Spanish entity summarize.
And on the horizon, Saudi Arabia, the new protagonist of the continental circus that threatens to destroy all the trenches even before UEFA and the Super League finish their own war.. Ceferin has already warned that the Saudi teams will not be in this new Champions League format, but the battle for European football does not stop.