The European Super League Cannot Happen

Football is currently staring death in the face. The game is being held at gunpoint by the richest men in the game and we are waiting for them to pull the trigger. After the news emerged today that the 'Top 6' English clubs, as well as the biggest teams in Spain and Italy, have signed an agreement to form a breakaway Super League, the football world rightly erupted in outrage at the disgusting level of greed shown by those in charge of some of the most respected and prestigious football clubs in the world.

Two of these clubs are England's 'finest', Liverpool and Manchester United. The nation's two most successful teams domestically and on the continent are the front runners for a footballing entity to rival any amount of corruption and greed ever seen in the game. Two clubs from cities whose people are unanimously against greed and have working-class beliefs and values ingrained into them from generations past, when football was nothing but a bi-weekly hobby for labourers to spend some time away from the harsh environments of their work and a community to be apart of. 

While football may have been modernised by Etonians and the upper-class, it has always been the working man's game, with the game being played in all possible fashions across industrial towns and cities - whether it be on a field with the classic leather ball, or in an alley between two factories with a rock and sticks for goalposts. My dad grew up in an era in which he could turn up to Anfield on a Saturday afternoon and pay £7 to stand on the Kop. Now, in the era of the Premier League and media conglomerates controlling the amount of money being pumped into the game, families must make conscious financial decisions if they want to follow their team for an entire season - shelling out thousands on season tickets every year, to be rewarded with nothing for their blind loyalty. 

Owners of football clubs in the 21st century sit behind the classic slogans of bygone eras when the words "you'll never walk alone" or "més que un club" ever meant anything. But those phrases still mean something to the people who dedicate their lives to these football clubs, and to repay their faith with a soulless cash grab, to abandon the pyramid scheme which has served football well for nearly 150 years, spits in the face of any integrity this sport had left. 

Gary Neville is right, the clubs involved should be embarrassed that they would even consider turning their back on decades and decades of footballing history and tradition to make up for losses over the past twelve months. 

Yes, the pandemic has hit football hard. The empty stadiums have cut revenue exponentially and clubs like Barcelona have had losses of approximately a billion euros and clubs across the Football League and below are on the brink of liquidation with absolutely no hope of a penny from the bureaucracy of the Top 6, despite their 'best efforts' in Operation Big Picture. The Super League feels like an alternative way for the Top 6 to gain more power and acquire more wealth that would ultimately be more beneficial for English football in the hands of the clubs that need it most. 

I do believe that is important to differentiate between the agendas of football clubs as a whole (staff, players, fans etc) and the agendas of the individual people, like John W. Henry and Joel Glazer, who run these clubs as there is no reason why Ole Gunnar Solsjkaer should be being asked questions about something he has no say in after his side has just won a game of football and he nor anyone else other than the people right at the top of the business should be held accountable for this. However, the fact remains that two American businessmen have taken two establishments loved by many all over the world and turned them into cash cows and pocket liners to pay for their extravagant yachts, and have managed to turn a club founded by railway workers in 1878 into an enterprise no different from the average grey and dull corporation in the States, taking us away from the beautiful vibrancy of football that we know and love. The fans do not want this. 

In summary, the Super League cannot happen, for the good of football.