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Football’s rebel Super League is facing a tough European defense, as competition promoters toil to get their tournament up and running.
France has rallied European Union support for a joint statement from member countries, which would look to ensure a “link between annual performance in domestic competitions and all European competitions,” according to a draft seen by POLITICO. The statement has been signed by all EU members apart from Spain.
French President Emmanuel Macron’s government is now urging the European Commission to draft legislation that solidifies that link. The language connecting domestic performance and international qualification in the French memo goes further than any previous EU statements, which have never before targeted the Super League so explicitly.
Put simply, it would mean: UEFA’s Champions League, in; A22’s Super League, out.
A22 Sports Management, the promoter company behind the Super League, has been attempting to resurrect their project — which first launched before instantly collapsing in April 2021 — since a Court of Justice of the EU ruling in December last year cracked open a door for their plans.
The French push to legislate the Super League out of existence comes as European football’s governing body UEFA prepares to host its Congress in Paris on Thursday.
The EU has taken a stance against the Super League for years and the French document presses the Commission “to reflect on appropriate ways to pursue the 2021 Council Resolution regarding the safeguarding of the openness of competitions, sporting merit, solidarity and values in sport.”
A22’s yearslong bid to create a competitor to UEFA’s Champions League has scarred European football and it flared up again late last week.
Barcelona chief Joan Laporta, one of the two remaining pro-Super League club bosses along with Real Madrid’s Florentino Pérez, told a Spanish radio station that the competition could launch as early as next season. He reeled off a list of clubs he said were on board.
Before the afternoon was out, several of the clubs named by Laporta — including Italy’s AS Roma and France’s Olympique de Marseille — had rushed to reject his claim.
Bitterness and betrayal
The episode was symbolic of a three-year feud between UEFA, top clubs and A22, which has been marked by bitterness, resentment and betrayal.
In one explosive face-to-face encounter, top A22 officials were shredded by the European football establishment during a closed-door meeting in Nyon at UEFA’s Swiss headquarters.
“Go out, play your own competition but it will never succeed,” UEFA chief Aleksander Čeferin told three top representatives from A22 during the knives-out meeting in November 2022 on the shores of Lake Geneva.
The Super League model — the current iteration of which aims to create a three-tiered league for the top 64 clubs in European men’s football — is “not football,” said Čeferin.
Under A22’s latest proposal, “domestic leagues will continue to be the initial entry point to the European club competitions and accordingly domestic performance will decide about qualification” to the Super League, an A22 spokesperson told POLITICO.
The vehement opposition to the Super League project initially stemmed from the organizers’ plan to have permanent members as part of a semi-closed competition. This was anathema to European football stakeholders, particularly the fan groups, for whom the Continent’s merit-based qualification system and promotion and relegation are sacrosanct.
“I’m sick and tired [of] these comparisons with American sports … Because European football is much stronger than anybody else,” the UEFA president added, according to a full transcript of the meeting seen by POLITICO and independently verified.
The meeting was attended by 31 representatives from UEFA and European football leagues, clubs, players and fan groups, as part of a cacophony of animosity toward plans for a Super League.
European football’s most powerful club boss, Paris Saint-Germain’s Qatari chief Nasser al-Khelaifi who also runs the European Club Association (ECA), repeatedly accused the Super League trio of telling “lies,” and said they wanted to “kill the domestic leagues.”
“This is about trying to impose what [Real Madrid President] Florentino Pérez thinks and what he wants for European football,” added Spain’s La Liga President Javier Tebas.
Much of the hostility came from Čeferin himself, as the UEFA boss clashed with A22 CEO Bernd Reichart on several occasions. At one point, Čeferin corrected him to say “we call it women’s football, not women’s soccer.”
“Nobody’s afraid of you. We [are] try[ing] to be nice,” Čeferin later told Reichart, in a warning.
Multiple participants in the meeting pointed out that although European football officials often disagree, they were united in their opposition to this project.
The Super League “is a venture which is completely opposed by everybody who is sitting in this room, regardless of the fact that we disagree with each other all the time on everything that you’re touching [on],” Dariusz Mioduski, ECA vice chairman and Legia Warsaw president, told A22’s representatives.
Atlético Madrid’s CEO Miguel Ángel Gil, who had originally joined the project in April 2021 and then withdrew a few days later, confessed he had “made a mistake.”
The Super League goes “against the fan culture of European football. So, trying to impose these franchising models in Europe is wrong,” Gil said.
A22’s Reichart continually insisted he was looking to engage in a “dialogue” at the Nyon roundtable, but was completely isolated as he sought to fend off criticism that poured in from all sides. A22 had accused UEFA of running an illegal monopoly in European football.
An A22 spokesperson told POLITICO the meeting in Nyon was “a demonstration of power by the ruling monopolist.”
“Our takeaway from the meeting was that the status quo back then was satisfactory to UEFA,” the spokesperson said in a written statement, adding: “Fortunately, the ECJ ended the status quo and UEFA’s monopoly after 70 years in December for the benefit of the whole football family.”
Uphill struggle
But since the hostile meeting, the EU court ruling has provided a pathway to the creation of alternative football competitions on the continent, emboldening the Super League’s backers.
The Super League “could start next season or in 2025-26, and if it’s not like that I’ll think about it,” Barcelona’s Laporta told Catalan radio RAC1 last Friday.
Yet, the court’s ruling wasn’t a blanket victory for the Super League either, experts say.
It has some elements in UEFA’s favor — for example, the Luxembourg-based court did not state that the organization’s dual role as a governing and regulatory body was a problem.
A key element in the decision is the so-called pre-authorization rules, under which any new competition has to be approved by UEFA (or FIFA). The ruling says that these rules need to be “transparent, objective, non-discriminatory and proportionate.”
In a statement issued after the court’s decision, UEFA said it had already complied with the judgment by amending its rulebook in June 2022, which essentially protected UEFA’s flagship competition, the Champions League.
But the “non-discriminatory” element could still pose issues for European football’s governing body.
“That is an important message that the court is sending that you need to allow for potentially innovative new competitions,” said Jasper Wauters, an attorney at White & Case specialized in sports law.
This is not limited to the Super League, but could also be applied to new transnational championships, like a unified football league for Benelux countries, he added.
Now, the question is: “Are these [new] criteria … sufficient?” the lawyer asked.
What’s more, the ruling also states a need for “procedural guarantees” to oversee the process, Wauters said — and that’s where “maybe … the politicians need to step in.”
“One could say, maybe it’s time for a European regulator,” the lawyer said.
Whatever happens next, between the renewed French-led political opposition to the Super League and the ongoing antipathy from football chiefs and fans, A22’s pathway to launching a Super League seems like more of an uphill struggle than ever.
