I think so, Bored. I mean Kroenke is supposedly one of the big players behind this move and he doesn't even come to Arsenal games, bar the odd cup final.

Good ebening Socrates. I agree football sold out a long time ago so in a way it is a natural progression along the road of profit maximisation. But I still find it jarring to think that a handful of rich owners could set up their own league with no relegation/promotion whilst simultaneously destroying the footbaling culture of the country.

I can’t see this European super league happening. This seems like it’s a power play by those clubs to be used as a bargaining position for better terms in current competitions.
It wouldn’t surprise me to see the big teams in our league start talking about a more structured tv money deal here. The tv deal is split very evenly in the premier league, no matter if you’re top or bottom. I can imagine the teams with the most fans and the most watched on tv try to broker deals for more of the share of the pot as they are the biggest draw. Or even push for their own tv deal.

I agree but the horse has bolted and its too late to shut the stable door. The gravy train is in full flow.

Why not, Rich, its the next logical step, as Bored said, in maximising profits.

Well 5th place Villareal beat 9th place Levante
5-1 today.

Yep. Greed intensified. Something to boast about between rich, elite club owners to pass the time. Why bother having fans attending live matches, when all the TV revenue has to do is scoop up subscriptions worldwide. Doing that now anyway. Especially if/when more matches are play
ed abroad. All this does is narrows the playing field by removing the less endowed clubs. A playground sport only for the super wealthy. Like a high stakes poker game.

I understand what you are saying. Would you be happy if Arsenal were no longer in the EPL and every week you were just looking at what team we were playing in Europe. There may become issues about which grounds are available to be used. Not every team across Europe actually own their own ground. Players would likely be banned from their national teams as well. While that might not mean much to some European players, national games and the World Cup are a big deal to a lot of players around the world. Just say it happened. Having now been released, penalties could be enforced immediately and Arsenal could well be involved in some lengthy legal battles. Plus how do you think our current team would fare in games in a super league next season.

Apparently 9th placed Arsenal drew with 20th placed Fulham today as well but it has been lost because today the club proved how far we are from any values that I can recognise and appreciate.

If you didn’t see it live, I’d recommend watching on BBC iplayer tonight’s MOTD2 (on the Premier League highlights) and the MOTD listed as a separate programme on the FA Cup highlights but to all intents and purposes the same show. At the end of each part of it (MOTD2 on the Premier League and MOTD on the FA Cup) the presenter Mark Chapman and pundits Danny Murphy and Dion Dublin all speak very well about the super league proposals.

If this goes ahead then I will no longer follow Arsenal which I'm viewing as a positive right now.

Unfortunately the proposal includes a relegation / promotion aspect as well so Arsenal could easily drop out of it and find it just as tough to get back in. You're right about Sky, BT and UEFA's indignation and motivations though and this is a play by rich owners to get their hands on more of the money.

Elneny is full of energy. Good to close players down. He has the stamina to chase and chase and chase. Other than that, the expectations from a good offensive midfield player is beyond him. Good squad player.

If it happens the winner will be grass roots football. Watched my grandson over the weekend under 9s I think and he was brilliant but his team mates played like kids, heads down no passing.

I know where I'll be spending weekends in future. I vote no to this form of super league

So Stan is at the forefront of this Super League? https://dailycannon.com/2021/04/european-super-league-arsenal/ Not shocked at all, in fact, no would should. Stan looked at the potential numbers (revenue) and my guess is this was his plan all along down the line. He's a very careful, canny investor. He looks long term.

The TV revenues from the U.S. alone could be astronomical. There are T.V. contracts in America just for the Super Bowl alone, a one time event, is about $2 billion dollars.

I got this from the net:
"The largest domestic TV deal is the Premier League, which has agreed a deal from 2019-2022 of an estimated £5bn for the three years for 200 live matches per season."

This is what the NFL is getting. A sport that is only popular in America.
"CBS, ESPN/ABC, Fox, and NBC agreed to pay $89.5 billion over the next 11 years for the rights to air pro football game"

Kroenke is looking at this potential league and thinking, his cut alone would be massive. The guy knows nothing about football and I gurantee you, willing to bet anything, that outside of Real Madrid and Barcelona he only heard of Bayern Munich, Juve, PSG and any other major continental club from trying to form this league. No doubt whatsoever at all that when he bought Arsenal he had no idea who they were.

I know how I sounded when we had the debate of him or Usmanov were going on. I knew no one on here would fully understand. I had said a long time the last thing you want are Americans involved in football. We'll muck it up like we did our own professional sports. Make rules changes purely for monetary reasons and not for sporting reasons to make it better. Defense has pretty been banned from the NBA and NFL. Look at the scores today compared to 30 or 40 years ago. You can't do certain things these days. In basketball if you look menacingly at someone its a foul (overstating but I'm not too far off from the truth).The Super Bowl is no longer a pure sporting event. Its no different than the Oscars, Grammies, or any other entertainment event. Its a show. The talking point after some Super Bowls isn't who won or lost but the adverts. Yes, the friggin' adverts. Andy Green would confirm this I think. I remember one season, an Apple ad was talked about way more than the actual game.

My guess of what will happen? Time outs. The game will be much longer. Possibly up to 3 hours. The average NFL game when was a kid was 2 hours. Maybe a few minutes over but you could pretty much count on 2 hours. Now? Its near 3 hours. There are actually 'tv time outs' in pro games. TV effen time outs? What the hell is that?

With Americans controlling 3 of the biggest clubs in England, its probably too late to save it. I know what we do well. Monetizing. We can make money off stuff that would get laughed at. Who do you think found a way for people to make thousands with cat videos? Do you know why we even say the national anthem at NFL games? The U.S. military paid big money to the NFL to do it. When you are constantly waging wars overseas (we learned that from the Romans), its tough to get the poor urban blacks, poor latinos in barrios of east La and poor whites from Alabama to keep dying for Raytheon to sell guns. You need to glamorize 'serving your country' a bit by tying it to the 'All American sport'.

I loved the purity of football when I started watching it. American pro sports were polluted. I've seen football in England and in Europe slowly degenerate. It's sad. I felt like a kid again discovering football, specifically English football. The passion of the fans. The same passion I had for the Sixers. My day, even week was ruined if we lost to the Boston Celtics. I felt the same way losing to Man Utd. American friends would chastize me. "Why don't you love your own sports?" I said "My sports stopped loving me". The stories of life on the terraces, traveling to Yorkshire, Lancashire or even within London were pure and similar to American sports growing up.

It's changing now. Rich sugar daddies buying titles, buying history. Sad, sad if this all takes the course I think we are on. It will seem exciting at first but I guarantee you, if Kroenke, Glazer and John Henry (Liverpool) have their way you'll be seeing iPhone, Cadburys and HSBC adverts every 10 minutes when play has stopped. 3 hours later, you'll get your result, average goals scored will be 8 to 10 a game. Perhaps even very few draws as they may introduce shoot outs like the NHL after extra time.

So, which one is Arsenal in this 'Super League'?

I understand that, but I think the backlash from authorities and fans will be big enough to stop it. Talk of the authorities banning players from the national team and excluding them from their domestic league. So the super league clubs are left with just the super league fixtures each season. Fans will vote with their feet and we’ve seen what a lack of fans does to a clubs finances. It is now a case of who blinks first, the clubs who have formed this super league or the authorities who have threatened the ban for them in domestic leagues.

They may very well throw big money at players wages. But for all players at these clubs? What happens to such as the academies? If an academy player doesn’t make it into the first team then is he barred from going to a non-breakaway club?

On your second point: I think UEFA has been shooting itself in the foot by bloating European football, creating a system where the balance between domestic and European competitions is so out of kilter, that domestic leagues, like the domestic cups before them, are in danger of becoming second tier qualifying competitions. Once that happens, there is going to be pressure from the big clubs to change the rules to ensure their qualification, and from there it is a natural step to breaking away from the domestic leagues altogether. So no, I don't think that increasing CL qualification to the top 6 would be a good move.

On your first point: I think that is probably the main reason that it is unlikely to happen. There are huge vested interest in the status quo. The EPL for example is still a vast money spinner with a huge following around the world. It will be a huge dislocation and a big risk for clubs to shift from that. However, this is a big warning: we really need to avoid a situation where clubs start treating 6th place as almost as important as winning the league, and play weakened teams in the league in order to focus on champions league games.

I think it will get done eventually. Maybe not now, but these people are patient and play the long game. There are a great many things the rich want and eventually bide their time. The government as well. For example. The removal 'net neutrality'. Google and others wanted it gone for years. The public in America said hell no. Eventually they bid their time, waited, found the right Congress and President to do it and it got done. The same will happen. Step 1 throw it out there and gauge the reaction. Step 2,Then take note of the reasons the opposition has given and work on a narrative that neutralizes it. Step 3, There will be an event, something in the future that will let it happen.

It will happen, sooner than any of you think it will. There is simply too much money to make for it to go away simply because of outcry from some fans. The tv revenue from America alone will make it a no brainer. Then the Chinese market, Euro market, the rest of the world? It's going to happen. That kind of money to be made never, ever loses these days. They'll line up the right politicians, whatever they have to, and it will get done. Count on it.

Hi Rich,

The big clubs are powerful enough to find a way around it. They might even propose a superleague where the initial 12 teams play each other 4 times a season, thus creating a league with both midweek and weekend fixtures. At this juncture anything could happen.

I suspect fans of the clubs involved might profess faux outrage whilst secretly embracing the idea of playing the big clubs in europe every week.

Of course, as others have mentioned, how long would fans be happy if their team could never actually win anything because the likes of Madrid, Barca, City etc are just too strong and have all he very best players. However, it might be argued that lesser teams like Arsenal and Milan, say, might receive so much of a financial boost from the new league that they would be able to produce competitive teams again.

Uefa won't ban players from internationals because their world cups and euros would be devalued.

If I am honest, I would probably prefer to pay to watch a superleague where every game involves big clubs than the PL where I don't watch two thirds of the games anyway. Who wants to watch Burnley v WBA when you can watch two big sides play each other. As it is I mainly only watch PL games involving at least one of the big six anyway.

How quickly the excitement of a superleague would wear off it we kept getting thumped every week is another matter.

Clearly, the breakaway league would have to develop/adopt lower tiers and a feeder system. Imagine Arsenal ending up a the joke team that always ends up last in the league.

The situation between it and FIFA would presumably be resolved one way or another. Might end up like boxing, with competing federations? In any case, I imagine there would be a bonanza for marketers and lawyers, and it would be the death knell for the system of local support and tradition.

Horrific wildfires in Cape Town.

Hi Decaf,

The PL is a moneyspinner but its the players and clubs that make it so, if the big clubs walk away from the PL it becomes a non-event and subscriptions would plummet.

The big clubs have so much power they can do whatever they want, unless goverments actually intervene and then it becomes a legal minefield.

A superleague is an obvious step. As one of the pundits pointed out, Man U's owners would prefer to see them playing the likes of Madrid, Juve, Barca several times a season with all the worldwide tv rights money that would bring in.

Shocking scenes.

Arsenal have released a startement backing the European League

https://www.arsenal.com/news/european-s ... -announced

That's what happened with the failed Rugby League super league. It wasn't the same because you had clubs flying to the other side of the world but ... 1. Fans weren't that interested in watching Cronulla Sharks vs Wigan as there was no history or regional rivalry, 2 there was next to zero away support for travelling clubs and 3. The English clubs werent as competitive and were frequently getting demolished so the novelty wore off and it became stale very quickly.

I can easily see the same things happening with this football version.

Hi Granty,

I agree that the travelling support is an issue but is that not the case with the CL anyway?

How competitive it would actually be in reality is another issue but I think the potentially ludicrous sums of money involved will persuade the big clubs to give it a go.

Saw a smaller version of that when there a couple of years ago. Scary sight.

Me too and my mates in London I have spoken to feel the same way. They'll not apply for season tickets and go and support he local team.

Football is part and parcel of the heritage of England. I cannot understand how authorities have allowed clubs that have interwoven in the fabric of English life for over a hundred years to be the play things of foreign billionaires. The Tories could bring in a rule that corporates could hold no more than 49% as they do in Germany. You wouldn't sell and opera house or museum to an American billionaire so why a football team. This break away has been coming for a while and needs to be squashed.

Our daughter used to live in one of the streets that is being evacuated. We've got fires burning in our area of the Eastern Cape too.

The older I get, the less I feel that the mostly great weather we have down here makes putting up with all the scary stuff worth it.

Give me miserable English weather, and even Boris and breakaway leagues, any day.

Weren’t Arsenal treating fourth place as almost as important as winning the league for ages? If that becomes sixth place things are getting worse, but it’s surely a principle that was already in place.

A few weeks back Top Gun said words to the effect that the only Premier League owner worse than Kroenke was Mike Ashley at Newcastle. I don’t recall his exact wording, whether it was as I said in my first sentence or something like the division’s only owner that he’d rather keep Arsenal’s than swap is Newcastle’s. With regards the meaning of what he said, it was something along those lines.

I actually agreed with Top Gun at the time. But now, I’m not so sure. Perhaps Ashley if he owned Arsenal would also be pushing for the super league? But we don’t know that. Newcastle aren’t, but they won’t have been invited to so I accept it’s possible Ashley, had he owned Arsenal, might have. But I’ll repeat my earlier observation, we don’t know.

However, what we do know is that Stan is pushing very hard for it. For me, that’s enough to make me change my mind from the time Top Gun did his post. Yes, I’m pretty sure that if I had the choice of Stan Kroenke or Mike Ashley being Arsenal’s owner, I would now choose Ashley.

What makes the CL and to a far lesser extent the Europa cup around quarter final / semi final time is seeing good, often iconic clubs in their own countries play each other. Juve vs Man Utd doesn't happen each season. They can go several years without playing each other so when they do its exciting. As an example. The proposed Super League is basically transforming those 'special' European nights into a league.

I think in the beginning it would be exciting to see them all play each other but after it got normalized it wouldn't be. Especially if some of the clubs have a bad season. If this proposed league fails it will likely be because of the product on the pitch. There will be global excitement having back to back games weekly of PSG vs. Juve, Man Utd vs Barcelona, Chelsea vs. Real Madrid or even Arsenal vs. Bayern Munich but the shiny new toy will lose its gleam after a while. They'll have to plan it and market it very carefully. My guess it will include some 'cup' as well as a league title and so, a possible 'double'.

Were I to advise them, I'd tell them not to make it a league in the traditional sense but have it every 2 or 4 years possibly.

There are way too many games now as it is if you include international friendlies and the Euros and world cup qualifiers. There is a saturation point.

One type of competition that would make a lot of money and garner some interest probably is an England XI from all the clubs vs a Spain XI and perhaps a German XI vs an Italian XI. The all EPL team basically vs the all la Liga? Seeing RM and Barcelona players on the same side against an EPL side with City, Man Utd and Liverpool players.

My view is that it would have all the excitement of a pre-season friendly.

It’s an idea from a time gone by. There did used to be matches involving representative sides from the Football League, Scottish League and Irish League.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Football_League_XI

Close your eyes. Now imagine 1/8/21 the start of the super league. Our team, as it is, maybe with a few new players and some that have headed back to the EPL because they want to play in the WC. How competitive do you think we will be. Are you feeling excited?

Now go to the bookies and try to back Arsenal to finish last.

Remember the Anglo Italian games that happened in the 70’s

Thrilling weren’t they?

They were if you were a Swindon fan.

No but neither are a lot of the games in Europe nowadays. Mind you never saw a game: just read some reports.

*%^@*** hell Boris Johnson and Keir Starmer actually agree on the super league.

It’s just got no chance of happening

The real interesting thing on the super league is going to be watching the managers being asked to comment on it and watching them squirm as they have to navigate their viewpoint that they don’t agree with it whilst trying to not talk themselves out of a job.

Might get quite a few “no comments”