Board 8 > Fellow English Premier League fans.

(+) Yeah! (+)

Rough day today.

I guess this includes fans of the other six asshole clubs who are proposing what would basically ruin football.

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burn them all

my team has a shot of winning the league if that happens

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My team just secured promotion to the Premier League. Do I count as well?

But yeah this is some bullshit and I really liked Gary Neville's take on it.

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I look forward to the idea crashing and burning, the owners being expelled from football and the clubs picking themselves back up over the next 15-20 years.

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If this was the catalyst to Stan Kroenke's removal from Arsenal, I'd be able to stomach it. Won't be holding my breath though.

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Spurs also got rid of Mourinho.

I get that the teams want more money and want to have more "hype" matches, but what's their rational for "we think fans will like this"?

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Peace___Frog posted...

Spurs also got rid of Mourinho.

I get that the teams want more money and want to have more "hype" matches, but what's their rational for "we think fans will like this"?

studies seem to show that younger fans are less attached to clubs and more interested in seeing the big stars and teams they've heard of. as a non-fan, I totally see the appeal there.

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I hope Americans continue to not care about the sport so that this venture falls apart.

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voltch posted...

I hope Americans continue to not care about the sport so that this venture falls apart.

I gotcha, bro

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Peace___Frog posted...

Spurs also got rid of Mourinho.

I get that the teams want more money and want to have more "hype" matches, but what's their rational for "we think fans will like this"?

Mourinho really is a genius. He manages to somehow escape with his sacking being but a footnote on today's news. With a thirty million payout on top of it. AND he still somehow ends up looking like the good guy. Special indeed.

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A few thoughts that I've posted elsewhere:

I would honestly love to see teams such as Tranmere, FCUtd, Oldham, Wimbledon, Leyton Orient, Charlton and the likes gain more local supporters as a result of this. So much more character to the lot of those clubs than the soulless husks that are going to the ESL and a new influx of fans would help a lot of them immensely.

My club would get a massive boost from this if they are expelled from the EPL - we'd almost certainly be promoted, and we'd be a relatively big club too - we'd have gotten CL or EL regularly when we were in the prem without the top 6 around, and we have a massive international fan base right now given our historical size - biggest currently in the championship on some social media sites. It'd also potentially make the EPL and EFL more interesting overall, but it'd probably lead to a fair bit of downsizing with clubs that remain - partially a good thing since it might make them more financially sustainable and stop clubs going into tons of debt in the hopes of promotion, but on the flip side it might just concentrate money even further in the hands of a few clubs, which would just make things miserable as sin. Regardless, I'm not going to watch any super league games and I can't see it being all that popular in countries where the best teams come from, but the money from elsewhere might make it a success.

Regarding the matter of players being excluded from international competition, I don't see it happening this time around. I think it's an empty threat and the PFA will sue the pants off FIFA, UEFA and any other body which does that while current contracts are active. I imagine there'll be a grace period through current contracts, and either the super league will flop or it'll be normalised enough that players will be allowed to play for international teams. Regardless of any of that, I hope all these teams are expelled from their national competitions: it'd be deserved.

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Why is the Super League bad?

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voltch posted...

I hope Americans continue to not care about the sport so that this venture falls apart.

Honestly, depending on how the situation develops, this probably could lead to a massive exodus of players/owners/coaches/etc from European Football to the US and possibly form a major international American soccer association that would try to compete with the Champions/Premier leagues if the right investors get involved.

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SockoressKnight posted...

Why is the Super League bad?

It completely spits in the face of competition and qualifying for European ties based on merit. It is a group of 12 big clubs saying "we deserve to be here just because" and they'll face no threat of missing out because they're grandfathered in as founding clubs. It completely shits on smaller clubs that have done things the right way and gotten themselves into the top four mix like Leicester City and West Ham and basically says "So what, you're not a big club, you don't get to get in."

It's soulless corporate greed instead of football allowing to be football.

It's garbage and it needs to be met with resounding universal backlash.

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Hopefully and probably it does not happen. It's absolutely ridiculous.

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SockoressKnight posted...

Why is the Super League bad?

It locks the vast majority of teams out of ever making as much money as those teams regardless of how well they do. It also prevents those big teams from ever suffering a natural major decline (for example, Arsenal have been slowly trending worse and worse and are looking likely to be overtaken in terms of success by the likes of Leicester more and more regularly in future, and Man Utd, Milan, Tottenham and Arsenal haven't won their leagues in a decade). No matter what you do, you will almost certainly never win the new "biggest" competition, when teams like Leicester, Montpellier and Bordeaux have won in recent-ish memory despite being so much smaller. That fairytale story will no longer be possible.

It bases membership primarily on how much money teams have, as well as their current marketability, not even their success. There's teams in the second and third divisions which have won major trophies more recently than Spurs, for example.

It kills the local game even more, and makes it so that local fans are shafted for the very richest who can afford to travel even further than they already can, and likely devalues the many local economies which rely a lot on football outside of these massive clubs. It further kills the working class aspect of football and makes being a supporter even more inaccessible to the majority of people.

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And to do it at a time where smaller clubs across the country and the continent are struggling to pay all their players/employees and stay afloat, instead of coming together as the giants of the game to try and do the right thing, this is what they've done. Come up with a way to shut out EVERYONE ELSE and keep as much profits as possible.

Every second I spend thinking about this I get more livid.

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ExThaNemesis posted...

and West Ham

aw yeah my lads

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paulg235 posted...

Honestly, depending on how the situation develops, this probably could lead to a massive exodus of players/owners/coaches/etc from European Football to the US and possibly form a major international American soccer association that would try to compete with the Champions/Premier leagues if the right investors get involved.

That's almost certainly not gonna happen for a long time. There's so many historically massive European clubs who won't join or won't be able to join the Super League, Europe cares far more about football than America, and if a player can't go to the Super League, they're far more likely to join a team like Valencia, Ajax or Marseille than go to America. America would need to actually start caring about the sport before it would happen on any large scale.

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Sheep007 posted...

It kills the local game even more, and makes it so that local fans are shafted for the very richest who can afford to travel even further than they already can, and likely devalues the many local economies which rely a lot on football outside of these massive clubs. It further kills the working class aspect of football and makes being a supporter even more inaccessible to the majority of people.

This too.

These clubs, massive as they are, were started by poor and working class people FOR poor and working class people. It's ripping the hearts and souls out of the clubs for money. It's no longer Arsenal Football Club it's Arsenal Football Corporation.

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Peace___Frog posted...

what's their rational for "we think fans will like this"?

They don't care that the fans hate it. The pandemic has shown they can play games without fans just fine and the Chinese market will continue to pay through the nose.

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I've been saying for almost a decade now that Arsenal fans are too fucking complacent and well behaved. That smug fuck Kroenke has been allowed to waltz in and out of our ground like he built the place without constant harassment or even annoyance.

He should FEAR FOR HIS LIFE coming around the Emirates, such should our vitriol be. His limousine should be surrounded. He should be pelted with garbage. He shouldn't be able to set foot in London without the word getting out and people coming around to harass him and his family back into whatever safehole they can crawl to.

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Local fans, Governments and all that really hate this idea.
It's just billionaires saying they don't care, gotta protect my margins.

As long as enough Chinese/Indian/Americans make up the numbers to build lucrative TV deals, then having 100% of a slightly smaller pie is better than what they currently get which was still enough for them to become so outsized compared to the rest of the teams in their league.

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GildedFool posted...

They don't care that the fans hate it. The pandemic has shown they can play games without fans just fine and the Chinese market will continue to pay through the nose.

I understand that but I'm asking more with respect to the PR they're using to pretend.

Sheep007 posted...

No matter what you do, you will almost certainly never win the new "biggest" competition, when teams like Leicester, Montpellier and Bordeaux have won in recent-ish memory despite being so much smaller. That fairytale story will no longer be possible.

I really think this is one of the best things that the current league has to it. The Leicester storyline a few years back brought coworkers of mine who previously didn't care at all about premier league into watching the games regularly.

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They don't care about the PR hit

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voltch posted...

They don't care about the PR hit

This exactly.

The only thing that will make them care is if they're uncomfortable. And AFRAID.

For their lives, even. I'm serious. If some "unfortunate accident" happened to Kroenke next time he was in London I would be first in line to help pay whoever made it happen's legal fees.

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I'll just echo all the comments already here about how terrible an idea it is. This is a pure money grab for those clubs involved, plain and simple.

Part of what drew me to watching soccer a decade ago was the bizarre structure of the whole thing, with promotion/relegation and the European competitions (Champions League/Europa League). It was so egalitarian, at least on the surface. This proposal destroys that.

Sheep007 posted...

I hope all these teams are expelled from their national competitions: it'd be deserved.

100% As a fan of Manchester City, I think I would stop watching should this ESL plan proceed.

The worst part is...I'm not sure their plan actually is doomed to failure. On a certain level all they're doing is creating a new (or maybe I should say official) "top of the pyramid".

In a historical context, does anyone know if there is any similarities between this and the creation of the English Premier League back in the early 1990s?


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Peace___Frog posted...

GildedFool posted...
They don't care that the fans hate it. The pandemic has shown they can play games without fans just fine and the Chinese market will continue to pay through the nose.
I understand that but I'm asking more with respect to the PR they're using to pretend.

people can say they hate it til they're blue in the face but they will end up watching manchester united vs real madrid over wolves vs. burnley 100% of the time.

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joke league joke sport

I'll stick with my superior NFL which values things like competitive play and history over silly things like money

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The EPL's formation was of course a moneygrab, but this is like if Newcastle/Leeds/Aston Villa had their places secured and could never get relegated because of their size.

This kinda just feels like the richest guys optimising how to make money from sports.

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Welcome to capitalism.

ExThaNemesis posted...

This too.

These clubs, massive as they are, were started by poor and working class people FOR poor and working class people. It's ripping the hearts and souls out of the clubs for money. It's no longer Arsenal Football Club it's Arsenal Football Corporation.

It's been happening for years in the UK, particularly since the Prem came about and teams like Blackburn and Chelsea started buying their way to titles. The vast majority of these people don't have a clue about the sport and it's made all the more miserable by the fact a working class pasttime which is pretty much the biggest positive in life for a lot of communities is becoming even more financially motivated and exclusionary. It's made even more obnoxious by the fact a lot of these businesspeople below the top end of football aren't even making as much money as they could by working to improve these clubs. It's a hobby for them and they come in, sell off assets or ruin what's already in place, destroy pillars of the local community and lose money while doing so, before selling out to an equally corrupt businessperson in a few years. To use your Arsenal example, remember when they fired the dude in the goddamn dinosaur costume who'd been working for the club and with local kids for 20-odd years rather than finding some way of reducing 50k from their near half-million turnover? These people are just utter clowns.

Peace___Frog posted...

I really think this is one of the best things that the current league has to it. The Leicester storyline a few years back brought coworkers of mine who previously didn't care at all about premier league into watching the games regularly.

I think it's the best thing about sport in general. My team has, in my relatively short lifetime, gone from being in the third division, to being five minutes away from going into non-league and disappearing (may I add, due in part to corrupt business practices), before getting promoted in less than a decade from there to the very top division, beating two of the biggest clubs in the world twice in the same season, winning a major trophy and thrashing top European teams, before getting relegated again (funnily enough, in large part due to being sold out illegally to a hedge fund with no clue what they were doing). Being in the premier league, making that money, creating jobs and bringing some life back to the local area was such a big deal for almost everyone in such a poor part of the UK. This will make those left-behind areas even more excluded than they already were, and won't even improve the quality of life in the areas of the Super League teams all that much, given all of the travelling and the obvious focus on markets outside of those local ones (and the fact that few locals will be able to afford the inevitably even more exorbitant prices).

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ExThaNemesis posted...

And to do it at a time where smaller clubs across the country and the continent are struggling to pay all their players/employees and stay afloat, instead of coming together as the giants of the game to try and do the right thing, this is what they've done. Come up with a way to shut out EVERYONE ELSE and keep as much profits as possible.

Every second I spend thinking about this I get more livid.

Arsenal literally had to let go of Gunnersaurus to make ends meet, all while they had this in the works.

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It's ridiculous and I'll be done with Spurs as soon as it's confirmed. A breaking point.
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XIII_rocks posted...

It's ridiculous and I'll be done with Spurs as soon as it's confirmed. A breaking point.

Likewise with Arsenal.

I don't know if I can pick a new Premier League club, but Borussia Dortmund have always been a joy to watch for me personally.

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I guess I picked a bad time to start getting interested in the premier league huh

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Can we just highlight how ridiculous it is that Arsenal and Spurs are claiming to be part of the Big 6 English teams? Nonsense.

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Even as a fan of a team that will be included I am absolutely disgusted by this plan and if it goes ahead then I am out as a fan.

It is absolutely vital that football operates on a merit based system. This move is clearly not about what's best for the game or the fans and is 100% down to owners wanting to earn the most money possible and mitigate the monetary downfalls from failure to perform on the field. This is probably especially prevalent in the EPL where 6 teams into 4 spots does not go even before you have teams like Leicester outperforming the big teams. I'd imagine the Spanish teams are also in because of ballooning debt during COVID from overspending and have no backup plan for when shit hit the fan.

Any sporting event where teams qualify on name value alone instead of merit removes all the integrity from the game and makes a mockery of the system.

ShatteredElysium posted...

Any sporting event where teams qualify on name value alone instead of merit removes all the integrity from the game and makes a mockery of the system.

what do you think of combat sports?

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Lightning Strikes posted...

Can we just highlight how ridiculous it is that Arsenal and Spurs are claiming to be part of the Big 6 English teams? Nonsense.

It's absurd and laughable from both clubs, honestly.

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Steiner posted...

what do you think of combat sports?

I used to be a big boxing fan and I used to watch UFC a lot 10+ years ago. I'm not a huge fan of big name fights unless it's on merit. My biggest gripe with boxing was that they would avoid the best fights because of the politics involved and to protect their boxer taking a loss and subsequent loss of future earnings. In recent years I don't watch it unless I'm drinking with friends and they want to watch it. I haven't gone out of my way to watch a boxing match or UFC fight in probably a decade.

Sidenote but even though it's scripted it was my biggest pet peeve in wrestling where all the regular workers were pushed aside for big name X and part timers. It was undeserved and was purely about the money and casual fans. I hated how Lesnar was used in particular

Also worth pointing out that a meritocracy and promotion/relegation decided over a long series of games is woven into the fabric of the sport, whereas most combat sports are largely built around creating specific fights.

I'm not sure I agree with "any sporting event" part of Shattered's post, as you can pick the odd hole in such a wide statement, but where football is concerned it is absolutely unacceptable and antithetical to how it works
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In fairness I did specify teams too. When you're dealing with individual sports then you're less likely to be dealing with owners maximizing profit and 50-100+ years of history

There's very few individual sports set up like team sports league structures. And with stuff like combat sports where the individual is putting their body/career on the line with shortened careers, it's a lot harder to be critical of them taking the money fight.

Speaking as someone who doesn't at all care about soccer, having a consolidated league with a subset of the best teams sounds like a great idea. It's impossible to follow european soccer because there's so many goddamn leagues/teams

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BlAcK TuRtLe posted...

Speaking as someone who doesn't at all care about soccer, having a consolidated league with a subset of the best teams sounds like a great idea. It's impossible to follow european soccer because there's so many goddamn leagues/teams

What you describe already exists, it's called the champions league.

This proposal, in contrast, is the most moneyed clubs locking themselves into the top tier of football, removing all merit or sporting jeopardy from the equation and ensuring that fairytale stories like the Leicester league win from a few years back can never happen again. If this was how football had always worked, maybe one could make a case for it - closed shop leagues can work, as proven by the NBA etc. But it's throwing away everything football has been built on for over 100 years - pyramidal league systems, everyman accessibility, and local cultures, traditions and rivalries - for a quick buck. It's incredibly distasteful and could well put me off the sport for good.

The problem is, the people behind this don't care about the local fan culture at all - if they can replace 10 suddenly disenfranchised and disconnected local fans with 15 casual viewers like yourself from across the world who previously found things too complex (no shade intended), that's all positive for them.

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I love how people point that meritocracy will be destroyed when the top four teams in Europe at the moment are three teams created with oil money and Florentino Perez

Football has been all about money for many many years now

UEFA/FIFA are just mad they aren't getting any of it. They don't care about fans, they don't care about the sport

firefdr posted...

I love how people point that meritocracy will be destroyed when the top four teams in Europe at the moment are three teams created with oil money and Florentino Perez

Football has been all about money for many many years now

UEFA/FIFA are just mad they aren't getting any of it. They don't care about fans, they don't care about the sport

For the record, I think the whole thing about meritocracy is true. But I would also add that this league completely removes the chance for a smaller team to have an amazing season and get those brilliant moments which the sport is all about. No more Leicester winning the top division, because whoever does win the top division that they can get in will have any triumph devalued by the fact that the "biggest" teams aren't there and the competition is so much worse.

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I'm a bit amused at how butthurt so many people are over this. Not the fans, the fans have the right to be upset if they want. I mean the other high level officials in football that aren't part of the twelve teams. Aleksander Ceferin has devolved into nothing more than a pile of salt.

They rushed their new Champions League reforms to try to appease these 12 teams and a handful of others, and failed miserably. These teams don't want a few extra games a year against teams that will likely be from tiny markets. They also don't like the fact that they could miss out on the extra Champions league earning entirely, especially the six from the overcrowded (under represented) EPL. For a lot of these twelve teams it's like they went to their boss and said they needed a raise to make ends meet and their boss offered them all the overtime the wanted as long as they'd take half pay for any extra hours worked.

FIFA threatening to ban players from national competitions is just them wanting to take their ball home, and it could backfire on them badly. A lot of players are tired... as in playing too many games already, and the new proposal just has them playing more games for what? A lot of these players might lose prestige in their home nations for it, but they'd have far less travel fatigue (especially the ones from outside Europe) and playing fewer games per year could really only help them perform better in the ones they do play. And the players from outside of Europe, their fans may feel let down by the players or sabotaged by FIFA depending on how the story gets spun. These players didn't choose not to play for their National teams, after all, they're on contract and can't just leave Man U or Barcelona just because FIFA is threatening to ban them from internationals.

The whining and crying and the threats from EUFA and FIFA aren't going to stop this or cause it to fail. If they want to stop it, they need to negotiate a better deal with the teams involved. If they want it to fail well... it won't. There is just too much money wrapped up in these twelve teams from international markets for it to fail. So EUFA can either negotiate a better deal or see how much they and the rest of the teams lose from not having 12 (or more) of the most popular teams in the world playing with them.

If FIFA and EUFA don't try to take their ball home I don't see how this hurts the game over all. You'd still have these teams in their home leagues, and wunderkind stories Leicester could still happen. All the money in the world didn't keep them from beating Arsenal/Spurs/Man U/City/Liverpool/Chelsea, so this super league almost certainly isn't going to hurt national leagues any more than the CL already does. What this would change is the top level of worldwide broadcast games, pitting the teams that most people want to see against each other, and again if EUFA negotiates a better deal then these "super league" teams may be willing to share a chunk of that change with smaller market teams.

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man my twitter is setting itself on dang fire over this and I have yet to see anybody who likes it

all this about merit is kinda going over my head though since MLB doesn't have relegation

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Sheep007 posted...

For the record, I think the whole thing about meritocracy is true. But I would also add that this league completely removes the chance for a smaller team to have an amazing season and get those brilliant moments which the sport is all about. No more Leicester winning the top division, because whoever does win the top division that they can get in will have any triumph devalued by the fact that the "biggest" teams aren't there and the competition is so much worse.

The twelve teams in question don't have to leave any of their respective leagues, unless EUFA/FIFA forces them to. This league is meant to supplant the CL, not the EPL/La Liga/Serie A or any other national league.

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