There is a large amount of ire being rightly aimed at Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United, Tottenham and my team Arsenal this evening as they are being outed as the six British teams along with Atletico Madrid, Barcelona, Real Madrid, AC Milan, Inter Milan and Juventus signing up to a breakaway European Super League.
The big idea is to have a money spinning closed league only open to the 'Big European Teams' to replace the Champions League but UEFA, the British, Spanish and Italian leagues have issued a strong, joint statement saying that any clubs taking part in the new competition would be banned from competing in their domestic leagues, UEFA competitions and players involved with clubs taking part would be denied the chance to represent their national teams.
UEFA were expected to announce an expanded Champions League format but this news may have sunk that especially as a carrot of £310 million for each member of the new league is being dangled in front of the club chairmen which eclipses the £130 million a club winning the Champions League would pocket.
The money making owners of clubs are obviously behind it and they care very little about a clubs history or tradition, they are out for themselves and making as much money as possible but the UEFA threat to ban teams from their domestic leagues will cause a few minds to sharply focus as will the threat to players of those teams who will no longer be able to play for their nations. Would players refuse to sign for a club if they were denied this opportunity and the clubs then only able to attract players who are past their international best and after one last payday like happens in the current American League.
Big respect to French and German teams for ruling out being involved in all this but football is a super rich plaything nowadays anyway but as much as it would hurt to see my Arsenal involved and therefore out of the domestic competitions, it may make the Premier League and FA Cup competitive again if the usual suspects are no longer involved.
The six Premier League clubs have some big decisions to make but from what i have seen, they may become very, very rich but whether they will retaining their loyal fan base who will be further fleeced to pay to watch the games is something else altogether, and i very much doubt it.
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