The Real Football Thread

[BlueRoads]

Hot off the grill - any thoughts on this European Super League? Is it just a proposal, or a done deal? Inquiring minds want to know.

Super League: Why have the plans collapsed?

Backers for a European Super League have admitted that the plan cannot go ahead.

www.bbc.com

At first I was pretty sure this is just a part of their usual power play, trying to put the Uefa under pressure, but now it looks very much a done deal, hard to get out there. It's definitely not just a proposal. The documents are signed. Who will succeed in which way in the courts is not clear, though. I don't know how this will end. Could be

• Super league and national leagues coexisting, no Champions league
• Super league, national leagues and Champions league all co-existing and creating a chaotical system nobody really understands
• Super league seriously wants to go through, but in the legal process they don't succeed and give up, leaving a shattered battlefield

Although I hate the idea of a super-league with clubs who can't be relegated because they are rich, no matter how bad they play, the outcry of many is quite bigoted. Already it's almost impossible for the big clubs to fail before the last sixteen. The biggest clubs already have so much more money than anybody else, the Uefa and Fifa are corrupt to the core, everybody's selling matches to places just because they offer more money. Right now, while going blabla about fans and grassroots the Uefa wants to push cities like Munich to let spectators into the stadium this summer despite corona, otherwise they will take the EM from them.

I'm just degusted by all sides. Often I'm able to push all of this aside and just look at the games (well, I'm not much a fan of the World Cup and national teams), but this may be just too much for even me. It might end up in a very confusing system. In a comment the possible outcome was compared to the European basketball system, I'm also thinking of how they ruined boxing with all these different associations and titles... I think people want a system where you can go up and down and which has a clear hierarchy, not several parallel, intransparent systems. Or maybe that's just me.

Well, the reactions seem to differ in several countries. The English are shocked, the Spanish are a bit neutral, the Germans are totally against it, but don't really feel that affected. We only have this big super-club Bayern Munich, which is hated by many anyway (so far they don't want to go to the super-league, I think they know they would lose all support in Germany), and people seem to think, well, if they want to go, let them go, the league would be more equal afterwards...

I suppose corona has put several clubs which were already in financial trouble under even more pressure and they didn't want to wait any longer. Of course Corona is not the real reason. Several clubs totally mismanaged and then Corona was just too much.

 

[djpbaltimore]

I have recently found most of the group stage games of the Champions league to be dull, verging on unwatchable. Barring a few surprises, you can determine who will advance out of which group ahead of time. Kinda kills the drama. I don't really see how the recently announced revamped Champions league will be much of an improvement either. That doesn't mean that a breakaway league is the answer, but the financial ducks seem to be in a row at this stage, so this Super league seems more than a bargaining ploy. I can see why the English clubs are in favor, given that they are going to get 6 of the 20 spots, but I see less reason for any of the continental teams to be this eager over it. Unless their debts are that problematic, does anybody think Madrid or Barca or Munich needs an automatic berth to the top club competition? I do think this would be popular to many international fans of socc..... err futbol.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Well, I'm sure Koronin's friends who support Real Madrid and don't care about Spanish riders unless they're the next Contador and Valverde will at least be happy. This is like the Jonathan Vaughters franchise plan on steroids. Closed shops meaning nobody else may ever dare to dream again. For a team like Barcelona, it's a stab at something to give them even more control over financing of the sport in Spain (in Spain, each team gets the share of the TV money that it individually earns, rather than, like, say, the EPL, it being distributed evenly between all the teams in the top flight, so Barcelona and Real Madrid, being the teams with the most media attention and the largest fanbases, gain the most TV income, get the most exposure and first dibs on creating new fans, and a self-perpetuating dominance that is only periodically pierced develops) because they've managed their finances very poorly and are in huge debts that they are in the middle of renegotiating, so something like this that directs more assets directly to the club rather than the league or the federation will be a massive boon to them in the short term in keeping the creditors from coming a-knocking. I mean, UEFA and FIFA are a lot of things that are not positive, but kudos to these twelve money-grubbing executive committees, they've found a way to turn UEFA into the good guys and the defenders of fans' and teams' interests.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

I have recently found most of the group stage games of the Champions league to be dull, verging on unwatchable. Barring a few surprises, you can determine who will advance out of which group ahead of time. Kinda kills the drama. I don't really see how the recently announced revamped Champions league will be much of an improvement either. That doesn't mean that a breakaway league is the answer, but the financial ducks seem to be in a row at this stage, so this Super league seems more than a bargaining ploy. I can see why the English clubs are in favor, given that they are going to get 6 of the 20 spots, but I see less reason for any of the continental teams to be this eager over it. Unless their debts are that problematic, does anybody think Madrid or Barca or Munich needs an automatic berth to the top club competition? I do think this would be popular to many international fans of socc..... err futbol.

In Germany the clubs are by edict part-owned by fans, so I can't see this really flying there. And yes, I remember the days when an away tie at IFK Gothenburg or Galatasaray was something to fear, but those days are long since gone. I remember CFR Cluj beating Roma a few years ago, but it meant nothing. The group stage was set up to protect the cartel. Cluj got their big upset, but over 6 games Roma went through comfortably and Cluj went home with nothing but those memories. It was largely UEFA's interest in making money that got the Champions' League bigger and refocused it around glamour ties sending ever more money to the big 5 leagues (and even then, four and a half really, as Ligue Un has always been #5 of 5) and pushing smaller nations to the background. I mean, only a couple of years ago, freaking AJAX, one of the most storied and legendary teams in Europe (I still believe that the mid-90s Ajax team is the best club side I've ever witnessed) were an underdog story in the Champions' League. So this is very much a case of UEFA reaping what they've sown, in that they've continued to pump the tyres of the big teams, engineering a format that makes the rich richer and the poor poorer, increasing overall market share and revenues of the big teams in order to make money off them, to such a point as now the big teams have decided they don't actually need UEFA anymore and their market presence is dominant enough that they can cut out the middleman.

 

[BlueRoads]

I have recently found most of the group stage games of the Champions league to be dull, verging on unwatchable. Barring a few surprises, you can determine who will advance out of which group ahead of time. Kinda kills the drama. I don't really see how the recently announced revamped Champions league will be much of an improvement either. That doesn't mean that a breakaway league is the answer, but the financial ducks seem to be in a row at this stage, so this Super league seems more than a bargaining ploy. I can see why the English clubs are in favor, given that they are going to get 6 of the 20 spots, but I see less reason for any of the continental teams to be this eager over it. Unless their debts are that problematic, does anybody think Madrid or Barca or Munich needs an automatic berth to the top club competition? I do think this would be popular to many international fans of socc..... err futbol.

Barcelona is bankrupt. It's not easy to know the exact figures of the other clubs, but I think Madrid and the Italian clubs are in very serious trouble as well. They already were before corona, and now they didn't have any fans in the stadium. Bayern is okay. That's one of the reasons they are out for now.
I think matches between the best clubs are a very nice idea... but that's what the champions league was meant for. The decisive difference is that they do now want a system where you can't ultimately fail. And the general participation in this league is not so much built on merits, more on money and "history". It's clubs who don't want mismanagement and failure to put up real modern projects to be punished.

And then, although I'm not really a stadium-goer, of course the roots of football are fans who play the game themselves and who go to all the matches of their club. I wonder whether those who made these plans are over-estimating football itself. Will people in India, North-America, China still care so much about games where no local, over-enthusiastic fans are in the stadium? Aren't they often (especially in Asia) drawn in by the feeling that this is a sport that matters to people in the countries where the matches are played? For instance, Messi and Ronaldo first became legends, symbols in Europe, were adored by many millions in Europe and South-America... and then people in Asian countries became interested in them. And, although I don't want to attribute this to every Asian fan, it's often more the cult becoming a bigger cult, just like they often like Manchester United because it is such a legendary club.

In Germany the football viewing numbers on TV during the Corona time went down - despite people spending more time at home and having less distractions - they were annoyed by the feeling that football doesn't care about society and was asking for privileges and so on, the players secretly going to hairdressers when the general population couldn't...
Even football is not undestroyable as a product.

 

[Devil's Elbow]

The UEFA had one last chance to stop the big clubs from becoming the all-powerful monster of their own making with FFP and they botched it. Governments had their chance to step in for the fans and only the Germans did it. Now, actual football is definitively gone if this goes as planned (and it probably will). The whole talk of 'legacy fans' (ESL's word choice, not mine) having become surplus to requirements says it all really.

 

[Kaptain Kool]

And then, although I'm not really a stadium-goer, of course the roots of football are fans who play the game themselves and who go to all the matches of their club. I wonder whether those who made these plans are over-estimating football itself. Will people in India, North-America, China still care so much about games where no local, over-enthusiastic fans are in the stadium? Aren't they often (especially in Asia) drawn in by the feeling that this is a sport that matters to people in the countries where the matches are played? For instance, Messi and Ronaldo first became legends, symbols in Europe, were adored by many millions in Europe and South-America... and then people in Asian countries became interested in them. And, although I don't want to attribute this to every Asian fan, it's often more the cult becoming a bigger cult, just like they often like Manchester United because it is such a legendary club.

idk in my country (Thailand), popularity followed who was good/known once there was TV access. EPL/PL was first aired extensively here... Liverpool, Man U and Arsenal. Chelsea had a small following that grew once they became top tier in the early 2000's. Everton because of local sponsorship. By the time Messi and C Ronaldo came around, there was no delay in awareness. It's true that the Messi era has made Barca the most popular team here. But I don't think it has anything to do with passionate fans at stadiums. Camp Nou is, what, even half full for most La Liga matches? Stick more matches between big teams on TV and more people will watch it. UEFA knows that local fans can be passionate about a domestic league or European match, but without the big, popular teams no one will watch.

 

[Pricey_sky]

A disgusting and unforgivable act by these 12 clubs who seem to have united almost all of the footballing world against them.

Of course, we can all argue about how modern football is already tailored towards the very top teams, but it is still fair competition. Leicester City can win the Premier League, Porto the Champions League, Greece the Euro’s. Now we are supposed to support a competition where promotion and relegation is non-existent, a closed shop where the greedy rake up the profit.

Some clubs have really struggled to make ends meet during this pandemic, and we get these clowns trying to cut themselves away, I really am appalled.

One positive is it seems to mobilised a lot of supported together, nobody wants this, the players don’t, the managers don’t, the fans absolutely don’t.

 

[BlueRoads]

A disgusting and unforgivable act by these 12 clubs who seem to have united almost all of the footballing world against them.

Of course, we can all argue about how modern football is already tailored towards the very top teams, but it is still fair competition. Leicester City can win the Premier League, Porto the Champions League, Greece the Euro’s. Now we are supposed to support a competition where promotion and relegation is non-existent, a closed shop where the greedy rake up the profit.

Some clubs have really struggled to make ends meet during this pandemic, and we get these clowns trying to cut themselves away, I really am appalled.

One positive is it seems to mobilised a lot of supported together, nobody wants this, the players don’t, the managers don’t, the fans absolutely don’t.

Unfortunately I think this only applies to the UK. There it's the big six breaking away. From what I read from Spanish sources it's not that clear there, and in Germany we don't seem to feel affected that much.

It seems it's getting even worse. They really seem to be in for an American show-sport, with Perez saying the matches might be too long for "young viewers"...

Maybe they should simply build their super-league with a new version of football, call it the super-football... and we can stay here and have our normal version.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Well, the Italian sources have been just as anti as the British ones.

And the main sources of optimism in Spain have been a couple of newspapers and sites based out of Barcelona (which is the club in the biggest financial hole, so they probably have a vested interest in the club continuing to generate copy) and Florentino Pérez, who is hardly going to crap on the proposal that he co-authored, especially when inside sources have stated that Real Madrid and Manchester United were the biggest proponents behind it.

He also says they're doing it to save football because it's struggling financially, which is 100% pure Supply Side Jesus fallacy. "They say your teachings are misleading, Supply Side Jesus, and make the rich richer, but the poor poorer" "Ah, but Pilate, average income is going up!" And apparently the problem, according to Pérez, is that people are driven away from the sport by too much poor quality football, so the solution is apparently to bar anybody not elite enough from playing it.

And the temerity of Manchester City and Tottenham Hotspur claiming they belong at this table while excluding the likes of Porto and Ajax. Spurs have no better a European Cup history than Malmö, Panathinaikos or Club Brugge, and a worse one than Steaua Bucharest or Nottingham Forest who aren't even in the top tier of English football anymore, while Manchester City have never even made a European final.

 

[BlueRoads]

This is all so ridiculous, pure comedy. It's especially nice that this comes at a time when Atletico is leading the Spanish table, Atalanta is about to get a Champions League spot again, Leicester and West Ham are 3rd and 4th, while Tottenham is 7th and Arsenal is 9th... well if it was such a closed society already and everyone was so way below your level anyway you wouldn't need to be in such fear, guys, hm?
"We are much too good for the rest for it to be interesting" and "we need the financial security to safely be the best" don't even fit together in one bigoted argumentation.

But the more I think about it the more I feel like they should just go and do their own thing completely. Just don't mix them with ordinary football anymore. Let them move away to become a new sport... and hope that the old sport becomes a little bit better in the process because it reflects what it is and wants to be... (just my nice dream).

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Well, that's just it, isn't it. A bunch of teams who've spent beyond their means at an unsustainable level and need the financial protection to dig them out of the hole they've got themselves into, a couple of teams who are seeing their status eroded by results on the field and are scared they won't be able to live the high life anymore so are looking to insulate themselves against going through rebuilding, and the occasional Johnny-Come-Lately who has secured a spot at the top table and wants to close the door behind them.

Plus of course, there has been absolutely nothing about parity rules. Every sport which has succeeded with a format without promotion/relegation has parity rules, otherwise there's zero jeopardy but zero motivation in bottom-feeding teams. Promotion and relegation are reward/punishment motivators in and of themselves, creating a meritocratic pyramid. The American franchise system doesn't have that (but it has been an oft-mooted topic in MLS) but the big American sports leagues have salary caps and a draft system that punishes a team for spending beyond its means. How often now in the NHL are we seeing teams actually paying a worse team to take a bad contract off their hands because they don't have enough cap space? This ensures good players can be spread throughout the league. If the mooted ESL comes to pass and doesn't have this, a team like Arsenal which is mid-table in the current EPL season is likely to get picked apart with weekly fixtures against better teams. What incentive is there, then, to sign for that team in the off-season? Oh, you can play in the ESL, sure, but you'll be losing most weeks, and most players don't like that. Better to play outside of the ESL in a good team and try and get a better ESL team interested. So a team like Arsenal then has to offer bigger salaries to encourage signings and make themselves more competitive - and it was this very issue that handcuffed them a couple of years ago when they had to let one of Alexis Sánchez and Mesut Özil walk, and the one they kept was then signed to a humongous contract that became a millstone and they couldn't get rid of unless they let him go for free.

 

[gregrowlerson]

Finally a thread in this section to challenge covid!

Greed can lead to more greed, and we see this with European soccer. IMO it would have been better to have kept the Champions League as its name suggested; to be only reward for those teams who actually won their local league the previous season. Giving clubs from outside the big few countries a realistic chance (especially if they kept it to reduced number of group games) to actually win the tournament. It would also extend the prestige, the honour of playing in the CL, as no matter what club you played for you wouldn't be guaranteed that honour every season. Once this changed (because of $) in the mid 90's, and was soon extended to as many as four clubs from big leagues (you can finish fourth in your league and then win the European Cup, what a joke), a part of European football died. And there really was no need for it, as the secondary, still very prestigious UEFA Cup gave good clubs that didn't win their leagues a chance to win European silverware.

The latest football news is just a continuation of $ > tradition.

 

[djpbaltimore]

Greed can lead to more greed, and we see this with European soccer. IMO it would have been better to have kept the Champions League as its name suggested; to be only reward for those teams who actually won their local league the previous season. Giving clubs from outside the big few countries a realistic chance (especially if they kept it to reduced number of group games) to actually win the tournament. It would also extend the prestige, the honour of playing in the CL, as no matter what club you played for you wouldn't be guaranteed that honour every season. Once this changed (because of $) in the mid 90's, and was soon extended to as many as four clubs from big leagues (you can finish fourth in your league and then win the European Cup, what a joke), a part of European football died. And there really was no need for it, as the secondary, still very prestigious UEFA Cup gave good clubs that didn't win their leagues a chance to win European silverware.

The latest football news is just a continuation of $ > tradition.

A tournament with only champions would be worse than the current iteration IMO. In principle, I can agree with the latter, but Liverpool vs Milan in Istanbul would never have happened under that format.

Well, that's just it, isn't it. A bunch of teams who've spent beyond their means at an unsustainable level and need the financial protection to dig them out of the hole they've got themselves into, a couple of teams who are seeing their status eroded by results on the field and are scared they won't be able to live the high life anymore so are looking to insulate themselves against going through rebuilding, and the occasional Johnny-Come-Lately who has secured a spot at the top table and wants to close the door behind them.

It is interesting how this is very much a reflection of society as a whole. The fear of petrodollars being used to turn some moribund but big club like Newcastle or Leeds into another Manchester City has to be scaring the Arsenals of the world. I will be curious to hear how they anticipate incorporating the last 5 wild cards with the legacy franchises. On the surface, you can see ways to make this more open to the rest of the European clubs, but really this seems like a way to add a rotating cast of minnows so the big clubs can get a squash match on occasion and insulate themselves from the bottom of the table.

A disgusting and unforgivable act by these 12 clubs who seem to have united almost all of the footballing world against them.

Of course, we can all argue about how modern football is already tailored towards the very top teams, but it is still fair competition. Leicester City can win the Premier League, Porto the Champions League, Greece the Euro’s. Now we are supposed to support a competition where promotion and relegation is non-existent, a closed shop where the greedy rake up the profit.

One positive is it seems to mobilised a lot of supported together, nobody wants this, the players don’t, the managers don’t, the fans absolutely don’t.

This will really illustrate the power of the local fans who will fill the stadiums compared to the potential influence of international fans who don't. I think the owners are rightfully confident that bringing a slate of top clubs to the park will bring people back into the fold. The dislike of the Glazers hasn't done much to impair Manchester's bottom line. I doubt the owners will mind being the villain if it yields them more loot.

 

[Nirvana]

Personally i'm nostalgic of when i was a kid and there was the Champions' Cup for the league winner, the Cup Winners' Cup for the cup winners and then the UEFA Cup for the others (until the 90s was a hell of a tournaments, sometimes the hardest), when in 1991 they started to change formats to applease the big club they started to screw the system.
Anyway i don't think an European League would be really bad if done as a real league for the top teams (maybe with two/three levels and promotions/relegations) besides national leagues and the various cup (just think at the Brazilian system), possibly avoiding the new Champions League that looks crappier than ever.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Yea, the problem is that now they've come so far along the appeasing the big clubs route that they can't put the genie back in the bottle. The days of the Champions' League actually justifying that name are long, long gone, and of course that has only served to strengthen the divide between the big leagues and the lesser leagues, pushing more money into a small number of elite leagues, impoverishing smaller ones and driving all the talent to the small number of big leagues, ensuring they get further in European competitions and the cycle continues.

Like I said, two years ago Ajax getting to the semi-finals was a fairytale. Ajax. Since 2004's win for FC Porto, for fifteen years all finalists came from the same four leagues and it was only last year in the somewhat unique format that PSG brought another French team to the table. No team from outside those 5 leagues got out of the group stage last season. Champions' League? 16 teams of whom a maximum of 5 could be champions. The Cup Winners' Cup's disappearance has also coincided with a huge drop in prestige for the domestic cup competitions in the countries with the biggest leagues, because the Champions' League windfall means coming 4th is more important than winning.

It's a bit like my issue with the way the UCI's points system meant winning the KOM or the queen stage was less important than preserving your 9th place in the GC.

 

[BlueRoads]

Exciting developments. It's a great soap right now.

 

[Pricey_sky]

Suddenly the 6 English clubs have realised the a monster they have unleashed and are backtracking. Man City and Chelsea want out, Ed Woodward has resigned from Man United.

A huge day for fans of football and a massive statement to any selfish billionaire owner who doesn’t listen to the supporters of the game.

Football is for the fans.

 

[Tricycle Rider]

Suddenly the 6 English clubs have realised the a monster they have unleashed and are backtracking. Man City and Chelsea want out, Ed Woodward has resigned from Man United.

A huge day for fans of football and a massive statement to any selfish billionaire owner who doesn’t listen to the supporters of the game.

Football is for the fans.

On no message board that I've visited were fans actually for this ESL idea, glad things worked out in their favor. That was pretty damn swift, btw., I'm impressed.

 

[djpbaltimore]

Dodged a bullet with that one. Meritocracy in European futbol is preserved!

There is a writer on an American website that summed up the mood in a way that makes sense to me. I think that the owners of the bigger clubs had to be a little surprised that their own fans were so up in arms about the move. I just hope that the end result is a re-think of the Champions League. What they are proposing stinks. But given what UEFA did to the Euros, I am not optimistic that they will find a good solution.

The conundrum, in other words, is that European club soccer is being steered by two contradictory imperatives at the same time. There’s an imperative of attention and money, which tells the big clubs to act as though they’re the center of the universe, and there’s an imperative of sentiment, which tells them to act as responsible members of a community.

The European Super League Pyramid Scheme

Two contradictory imperatives—money and sentiment—fuel any discussion about the future of European soccer. Sunday’s announcement of a breakaway league revealed which side the game’s elite clubs have chosen.

www.theringer.com

 

[BullsFan22]

Liverpool and Manchester United should have never let Americans or American firms into their clubs. It’s all about profit for American oligarchs. They wanted to turn this into an American type of league with no relegation, one league and that’s it. Glad the fans, players and coaches reacted the way they did. Now FSG and the Glazers need to leave.

 

[BlueRoads]

Pérez blames one breakaway English club for Super League's collapse

The Super League collapsed partly because one club, understood to be Manchester City, was not fully on board, according to Pérez

www.theguardian.com

I know the Guardian wants Pérez to look bad, but he did their job incredibly well.
Again one really has to wonder what *-heads are leading clubs and businesses of that size. I can (intellectually) understand they are corrupt and morally nuts, but while said to be smart he sounds like he has the intelligence of a banana.
Guys like Agnelli and Ceferin at least sound like mildly clever snakes.
And just totally unearthed, all of them.

The only one who's an "insider" and gave a very reasonable and not too shy comment was Guardiola - I'm not a fan of his in general, but that was good. The others are mostly disappointing.

Maybe a start for a better competition at the top, with a merito-hierarchy, would be

• put smaller leagues together, like the Belgian and Dutch one, there could be many more melts.
• then instead of third and fourth of a league playing Champions, make it first only
• implement better financial fair play and don't let clubs escape through loop-holes
• make the fall from first to second league financially softer so that teams do not have to be over-afraid of getting relegated and never coming back again
• implement better rules against debts that can never be repaid unless an wonder-over-wealthy saviour with his own interests comes along
• have less meaningless competitions and matches, so that players are fresher and healthier and there is also more chance of an upset, for instance get rid of second-leg cup games and the nations league
• try to remember that generation z is not only a fortnite-addicted consumer generation that cannot concentrate on more than a snapchat video, but also in many countries the generation that fights against climate change, is more interested in ecological and healthy food, stands up in many countries against dictatorships, willing to sacrifice their life. Maybe some of these people are annoyed with football as a glitzer commercial world without any values and that's why they don't watch it anymore.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

I don't think establishing a closed shop system like in America would be truly possible in European football, just, period. Even without tradition and fan outrage, there's just too many moving parts, and the American franchise systems have been honed over several generations to solve problems that would be brand new to a football format, and the American leagues didn't have the disadvantage of having to unpick over a century of developing of the pyramid system to achieve it either.

The American closed leagues are able to work because of a few factors. Chief among them is the system of parity enforcement that is designed to ensure that there aren't teams that are completely left behind and in the position of having nothing to play for, season after season after season (jokes about the Cleveland Browns and Buffalo Sabres incoming, I know). There are rules in place to prevent a complete steamrollering of the league, and even if a team creates a dynasty, they have to make tough decisions en route about who they keep and who they jettison because of the salary cap implications, plus the weakest teams' uncompetitiveness is, in theory at least, mitigated by their ability to essentially take first dibs on the rookies coming into the league through the draft system. If they draft badly then that's on them, but they have the chance. Yes, tanking is a very real problem in that system.

A European Super League would not be able to do that. Or even close, really. Teams with generations of spewing out ginormous contracts to attract the best players are not going to voluntarily cap it when there are big money-spinning players outside of their league who are not capped in spending - Bayern Munich and PSG are the obvious ones, but it's hard to not see people like CSKA or Zenit, or the Chinese Super League, Qatari Stars League or Saudi and Emirati leagues really throwing money at players if the ESL is handcuffed by a salary cap. And, let's face it, Florentino Pérez is the architect here, and his main motivation is that he can't afford to buy Kylian Mbappé at the moment and that makes him sad so he needs to engineer a way by which he can. And a draft will be impossible to implement. At what age do you have it? Which players are eligible to be drafted? Several of these teams have storied and historic academies - Barcelona and Liverpool in particular - and they're not going to want to have to concede players out of these to other teams or leagues, but at the same time other teams playing in other leagues, especially if the absence of the big money teams heading to the ESL means a hit to their income, are going to resist any attempts to make their players "draft-eligible" to ESL teams unless they get a humongous level of compensation. That's before we get to teams like Chivas and Athletic Bilbao who have restrictive selection policies and simply couldn't afford to lose players out of their academy for nothing. Plus with movement of people between nations, Schengen and EU legislation, there is a good chance that draft rights such as those held in American sports would be unenforceable in Europe thanks to the Bosman ruling.

The American system also only works because the 'big four' leagues are all the absolute pinnacle of the sport, unequivocally (despite a brief flurry from the KHL, that has now sunk back down to something akin to the AHL in level), and all of the other systems are built entirely around preparing and developing people for those top leagues. NFL doesn't draft until post-college, and then you either go pro in the NFL, or you scrabble around for opportunities in Canada, arena football or hope something like the WLAF or the XFL is set up again. The others have entire league systems constructed entirely of affiliate teams, for whom their results are less important than preparing players for the top leagues. That just wouldn't be at all possible in European football.

But if you have teams who are losing games but in no jeopardy of losing their spot, you can't cap spending of the biggest teams... and you can't compensate teams struggling in the present with the promise of a brighter future, then you can't ensure competitiveness of the league, and the big will continue to eat the small like they currently do, only by this point there will be an ever smaller number of 'big' teams sharing the spoils and 'small' will be teams like Arsenal and Milan rather than teams like Ludogorets Razgrad and AEK Athens.

 

[djpbaltimore]

I don't think establishing a closed shop system like in America would be truly possible in European football, just, period. ...The American closed leagues are able to work because of a few factors. Chief among them is the system of parity enforcement that is designed to ensure that there aren't teams that are completely left behind ..... plus the weakest teams' uncompetitiveness is, in theory at least, mitigated by their ability to essentially take first dibs on the rookies coming into the league through the draft system. If they draft badly then that's on them, but they have the chance. Yes, tanking is a very real problem in that system....the big will continue to eat the small like they currently do, only by this point there will be an ever smaller number of 'big' teams sharing the spoils and 'small' will be teams like Arsenal and Milan rather than teams like Ludogorets Razgrad and AEK Athens.

I agree 100%. Even the proposed Superleague had the appearance of an open shop (for 5 of the 20 spots).

The draft point is a good one, but that is just part of the story. Not only can smaller teams get the best talent, the leagues have set up mechanisms for them to keep that talent for most of the player's prime years. It is very easy for MLB teams to keep a young player for 7 seasons or the NFL to keep a young player for 5 (with the option of more with things like franchise tags). It is way too easy for the big clubs in Europe to swoop in and replenish their teams with young talent from their putative title rivals. Leicester City was an amazing story, but I think it was pretty flukey, relying on uncovering two of the biggest diamonds in the rough in recent times (Mahrez and Kante), who then got transferred to Man City and Chelsea. Any smaller club that gets momentum can be kneecapped before they really have a chance to play together and win trophies because of the transfer system. Southhampton made it as high as 6th before losing Mane and Van Dijk to Liverpool. Ferguson's later teams perfected that art, poaching younger guys like Wayne Rooney, Ashley Young, and Antonio Valencia from smaller clubs who gladly took the transfer fees. They also showed the hierarchy within the hierarchy poaching Berbatov, Carrick, and Van Persie from 'big' teams like Arsenal and Spurs. Man City has basically replaced them at the top in both the table and transfer strategy, picking up young talent like Stones, Sterling, Walker. I think Arsenal wanted the Superleague because they realize that they have been a small club for a while, so want to cash in on their history before they become Everton.

Of course, Bayern has also done this with Lewandowski, Gnabry, Sule... etc. Look at the young talent that Dortmund has assembled. In the American franchise system, they would probably win a lot of titles with a core of Haaland, Sancho, Bellingham. Instead, they get raided as soon as they start to realize their potential. The one caveat to the whole comparison is that the transfer system is probably better for the players in terms of compensation. The looming threat of the big clubs pressures everyone to pay young superstars a more fair value. So there are trade-offs.

 

[BlueRoads]

I do think though, there is more to football than just assembling the best players - and there are many great players, since the pool of talents is so big. Barcelona put together the most crazy team in recent times - I remember when Dembélé still played at Dortmund, Griezmann at Atletico, de Jong at Ajax... how I loved each of them... then they all came together at Barcelona with my totally favourite player, and it was weird, and until recently it didn't work out at all. It's still not great, although these are the most wonderful players I can think of. They just bought, bought, bought, without thinking, without a plan. (And mostly front of course.)
I think they still don't have a team psychologist.
They passed on several opportunities to get a really good coach. They didn't make any effort to build and educate a good coach. In fact, none of the big clubs do.
Most of these clubs are in many ways led in an amateurish way, which is hard to understand considering the money involved.
My point is: There's more to a good club than spending big money on players. Not that it doesn't have a huge, huge effect, how much money you can spend on them, but it's not everything. When good (young) players are taken from clubs, it's often not just the player himself who's missing, but the system needs to change again, automatisms that have been developed, are broken. That's an additional strain.

I really don't think there are only players for 15 great clubs who can be world class. There are occasional super-super talents, like Messi and Mbappé, but even they are not that far away from other talents. Whether someone makes it or doesn't is often a question of, well, details and luck. Some are given more chances than others. Some land with a coach who likes them. Most important is whether they land at a club/ coach with a system where they are needed right then. If this crazyness of "finding the next Messi/ Mbappé" would end, like these guys just fall from heaven, and there would be more care to develop players who are not yet at that level, that could also help in achieving better competition in my opinion.

There are coaches who can seriously make players better. There should be more of those in top spots.