The Super League continues to falter. Forty-eight hours after threatening to upset the established order of European football, the promoters of the Super League can only see the failure of their controversial project. The day after the withdrawal of the six English clubs, Inter Milan and Atlético de Madrid announced in turn, Wednesday April 21, their official withdrawal from the project launched only 48 hours ago. Real Madrid, Juventus Turin, FC Barcelona and AC Milan are the last founding clubs of this project not to have reacted.
But, the president of Juventus of Turin, Andrea Agnelli, estimated Wednesday that the project he co-founded could not exist without the English clubs. “To be frank and honest, no, obviously that is no longer the case”he told Reuters after being asked about the viability of the project. “I remain convinced of the beauty of this project”, he said, judging that it would have given birth to the best competition in the world.
In an interview published on Wednesday by La Repubblica but granted before the announcement of the withdrawal of English clubs, Mr. Agnelli continued to support the project: “Between our clubs, there is a blood pact, we will move forward. [Le projet] has 100% chance of success. “
“Football is no longer a game, but an industrial sector, and it needs stability”, added the one who is with his counterpart at Real Madrid, Florentino Pérez, one of the main promoters of this new competition, which was intended to supplant the Champions League.
Apologies and uncertainties
This incredible episode now places European football in the face of the immense dissensions which animate it, between rich clubs eager for profits and necessary maintenance of a form of sporting equity and uncertainty.
Will dissidents be punished for considering such a revolution? The reform of the Champions League by 2024, adopted on Monday, will it be maintained when it did not seem to satisfy them enough, while being criticized by some supporters as being difficult to read? These are all questions that the European Football Union (UEFA) will have to grapple with, although it has given way in recent years in the face of the biggest players.
It looks, in any case, to a victory, at least in part, of the supporters who mobilized, especially in England, as Tuesday night in London near the Stamford Bridge stadium in Chelsea, failing to be able to do so in the stands for cause of pandemic.
John W. Henry, owner of Liverpool, also apologized to supporters on Wednesday for the club’s participation in the project, from which he finally dissociated himself on Tuesday. “I want to apologize to all the fans and supporters of the Liverpool Fooball Club for the trouble caused during the last 48 hours”, explained the billionaire in a video broadcast on all platforms of the club.
It is also a success, more relative, for the authorities of football, whose threats of reprisals ended up dissuading certain rebel clubs, these “Snakes”, “Guided only by greed”, in the words of UEFA President Aleksander Ceferin. He did not hesitate to brandish the exclusion of these clubs and their players, from all national and international competitions, a threat then taken up by Gianni Infantino, the boss of the International Federation (FIFA).
