Plans for a European football superleague collapsed spectacularly on Tuesday when the project’s six Premier League clubs – half of the Super League’s founders – walked out on the plan just two days after it was announced.
Manchester City, one of six England teams to sign up as founders of the new Super League, was the first to confirm it was out, saying in a one-sentence sentence that it had begun withdrawing from the project.
Within hours, Chelsea, Manchester United, ArsenalTottenham Hotspur and Liverpool all indicated that they too would refuse to participate.
Shortly after that it was all over. Inter Milan had also been eliminated and just after midnight in Europe, a top Super League official confirmed that the entire project had been put on hold.
The denouement was a stunning implosion for a multi-billion-dollar proposal that had sparked outrage from nearly every corner of the sport since its announcement on Sunday, and the culmination of a frantic 48 hours of arguments, threats and intrigue at the highest. level. of world football.
City’s turnaround came shortly after celebrated Spanish coach, Pep Guardiola, had done just that slammed plans for a private game, saying, “It’s not a sport if it doesn’t matter if you lose.” Chelsea spent all day preparing documents to make a similar turnaround, according to a person familiar with the club’s discussions. It did so while its fans held a protest march in the street outside the club’s stadium.
Tottenham Hotspur regretted his participation. Manchester United acknowledged that its fans had changed the club’s mind. “We have listened carefully to the response from our fans, the UK government and other key stakeholders,” said the team. Arsenal’s announcement came with an apology.
Manchester United had previously announced that its Executive Vice President, Ed Woodward, one of the main drivers behind the Super League plan, would be leaving the club at the end of the year. Neither he nor the club’s co-chair, Joel Glazer, made reference to the Super League about his tenure in a statement.
The loss of the giant Premier League clubs was the death knell for the Super League, as it had stripped the competitive legitimacy and relevance it had hoped would become attractive to sponsors and broadcasters, and the remaining clubs – Real Madrid, Barcelona and Atlético Madrid. from Spain, and Italy’s Juventus and AC Milan – with little choice but to drop the proposal.
None of those teams made a public statement about the Premier League’s departure, and the company that hosted the Super League did not respond to requests for comment.
Less than 24 hours earlier, Florentino Pérez, the president of Real Madrid who had been named the first Super League president, had told a Spanish television interviewer that all clubs had signed binding contracts and could not leave. Within a day, half did.
European football governing body chairman Aleksander Ceferin praised the announcement of Manchester City, the first of the teams to withdraw. Ceferin had fought fiercely in public and privately this week to avert the departure of the top clubs, and had spoken in vivid terms about the sense of personal betrayal he had felt from some of their top executives.
“I am delighted to welcome City back to the European football family,” Ceferin said minutes after City’s announcement, adding: “It takes courage to admit a mistake, but I have never doubted that they will. had the ability and common sense to make that decision. “
Other top clubs in Europe had already rejected the project. French champions Paris St.-Germain, a team with deep pockets that had been courted by the Super League, announced on Tuesday that they would not participate. The decision came a day after German clubs Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund made their opposition public. The eternal national champion Ajax, four-time winner of the Champions League, soon came out against the plan.
The Super League, an alliance of a dozen of the world’s best, richest, and most popular teams, is said to have rethought football structures and economy, bringing about one of the greatest redistributions of wealth in sports history by moving billions of dollars to a handful of clubs permanently would join the new elite league. Some of the biggest football brands – including Real Madrid, Manchester United, Liverpool and Juventus – would be part of the competition.
Instead, it seemed to be falling apart amid a growing wave of internal insurgency, political pressure, fan anger, public spot and, finally, the humble U-turns by several of the founding teams.
European football officials had erupted over the weekend over the plans for the competition, seeing them as a direct challenge to domestic leagues and continental leagues such as the Champions League, which have been the backbone of European football for a century.
That outrage spread quickly. Players from the future Super League clubs publicly opposed the plan. Coaches did little to hide their dislike of it. And politicians in England and France promised to oppose the plan with official measures.
In Britain, Prime Minister Boris Johnson met representatives of Premier League fans and leaders on Tuesday. Later, his office promised to do whatever it takes to stop the multi-billion dollar competition from continuing, and vowed that nothing was off the table.
“We are exploring a range of options, including legislative options,” said Max Blain, Johnson’s spokesman.
Later in the day, hundreds of fans protesting against the Super League marched to Chelsea’s stadium for the game against Brighton, a day after Liverpool fans surrounded the team’s bus when it arrived for a game against Leeds United.
After that match, the Liverpool coach and his players revealed that they had not been consulted about the plans, and at least one said he did not want to be a part of it. “I do not like it, and hopefully it doesn’t happen, ”said club veteran James Milner.
Several of his teammates came on Tuesday tweeted that feeling at the same time, making it clear that the players were collectively against Liverpool’s decision to sign up.
Chelsea, like some of the other founding clubs, was surprised by the strength of the backlash against the proposals from its fans and the wider British public. The power of the feeling led to the change of the team, according to the person with knowledge of the club’s plans.
The Guardian newspaper reported that the team had to withdraw after an uprising from players who were concerned that they would not be able to compete for their national teams in global events such as the World Cup or regional tournaments such as this summer’s European Championship and the Copa América in South. -America. .
Those threats came from UEFA, which oversees football in Europe, and FIFA, the sport’s global governing body.
FIFA had warned clubs in January that it would exclude them and their players from international competitions if they push ahead with plans for a new league, and the organization’s president, Gianni Infantino, appeared to be renewing that threat – without repeating it – in a speech to European football officials on Tuesday.
“If some choose to go their separate ways, they have to live with the consequences of their choice, they are responsible for their choice,” Infantino said in a speech in Montreux, Switzerland. “In concrete terms, this means that you are either inside or not. You can’t be half in and half out. This must be absolutely clear. “
The threat, if FIFA continued, weighed heavily. The 12 Super League clubs employ many of the world’s best players, including the cores of the national teams of Brazil, Argentina, England, Italy, Spain, France and even the United States.
In private, some of the clubs involved in the project expressed their frustration with the way it had been rolled out since Sunday. A statement to announce a league that backers said would “open a new chapter for European football” came late Sunday as much of Europe was asleep.
But after the teams involved made almost no public comments, Pérez, the president of Real Madrid, became the only executive involved in the plan to defend it publicly when he appeared alone on a chat show that took place in Spain at midnight on Monday. broadcast.
Pérez, one of the main proponents of a superleague for years, insisted that the project would benefit all of football, which he said was at risk of economic collapse due to the coronavirus pandemic. He did not go into why so many of the clubs that signed up for the new league were so poorly managed before the pandemic hit, and he failed to make compelling arguments for how even more billions of dollars in television and sponsorship revenue was channeled to a handful of people . top clubs would save the leagues and teams that would be left out.
“Every time something changes, there are always people who oppose it,” Pérez said at the time. “We are doing this to save football at this critical moment.”