It is official. Founder clubs of the European Super League announced that the league will start as soon as possible.

This idea is not new, its been there for a while now. However, on 18th of April, at 23.30hrs the clubs announced that the league will start as soon as possible. The plan is to start in August.

What is it?

It will be closed competition which will have up to 20 clubs. The founder clubs are Juventus, Milan, Inter from Italy. Real Madrid, Barcelona, Atletico Madrid from Spain. Liverpool, Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal, Tottenham, Manchester City from England. These 12 clubs are founders. However, they wanted Bayern Munich, Dortmund from Germany and PSG from France to join them which they at the moment refused categorically. The financial aspect is very good, for the rich clubs of course. The initial budget for the competition is somewhere around 4 billion Euros. Each club will get 300 million euros before the start of each season.

The games will be played in the mid-week. In the time UEFA Champions League is played. The teams will be divided in two groups of 10. First 3 teams would advance to the quarter-finals and the fourth and fifth teams of each group would play play-off for the last spot in quarter-finals. The final is planned to be played in May, just like the Champions League.

What is UEFA doing?

UEFA is not happy with this. There was a statement already that the UEFA will do everything in its power to prevent this of happening. UEFA is against this because this would seriously jeopardize the UEFA competitions such as Champions League and Europa League. They are also checking the possibility of banning the clubs from the European competitions. Additionally, they want to ban the international players of playing in the European Championship. The FIFA is also by UEFA’s side and they share the same opinions about this matter.

What will happen?

At the moment it is not sure what will happen. Everyone have their point. The rich clubs (that already signed the 23-year commitment to the league) consider that the funds allocated from UEFA are simply not enough. It is the opinion that UEFA keeps the major part of the “cake” for themselves. We can just wait and see how the situation will unfold.

What this means for the “small clubs”

This means that the clubs such as Ajax, Benfica, CSKA Moscow, Red Star will not be able to play matches against the strongest teams in Europe. And, as it is clear so far, there is not place for these teams in the Super League. With this, financially, these clubs will be even more weakened because let’s face it, the fans were looking forward to the clashes of their team with the strongest clubs in Europe. This will most likely become the history if this Super League come to life.

Can you imagine that the Ajax (4 times winner of the Champions League), Red Star and Steaua, the only two clubs from Eastern Europe ever to win the Champions League will never play against Real Madrid, Juventus, Liverpool, Inter and others. This is extremely pointless.

The fans already expressed their dissatisfaction with the new league. Liverpool fans already expressed their opinion by placing the banner (R.I.P Liverpool) which means that Liverpool Will Walk Alone this time.

Gary Neville already said that this is disgraceful of what Liverpool and Manchester United did and that all the clubs from England that are members of the new league should be deducted of points.

Jose Mourinho was fired by Tottenham due to poor results. But, there are some information that he refused to lead the team in this new competition and that that was the real reason of why he was sucked. If this is true, all respect to Mourinho.

Some rich clubs as mentioned above refused to be part of the new competition. However, many think that PSG refused this since owner of PSG Nasser Al-Khelaifi is the owner of the company in Qatar who organizes the World Cup, and he is afraid that FIFA will take away the World Cup from Qatar. What is the true behind this, time will tell.

Final Words

I am afraid that the new competition will do more harm than good to the world football. Let’s hope that this will not see the light of the day. However, it is clear that the Champions League need some improvement but forming of new league is not the way to deal with this issue.