European Super League: how Asia’s next generation of fans may help the 12 rebel clubs achieve their goals
- The forces behind the breakaway league do not care about tradition and history and they will target fans from outside Britain who feel the same
- Fans cried foul when the European Cup was replaced by the Uefa Champions League but few modern fans pine for the old days of a straight knockout format
The argument was fierce. The rabid Manchester United fan from Singapore was mocking the “old” European Cup format, in which only the league champions of each country were eligible to compete in a straight knockout competition with two-legged rounds and a one-off final.
“Look at the kind of teams who won, Aston Villa, Nottingham Forest. What kind of teams are they?”
This was in 2002, only nine years after the Uefa Champions League – with more clubs eligible to enter and boasting group round-robin games before a knockout phase – replaced the European Cup.
Football’s agents of change do not target the current, informed generation of fans when demolishing tradition and history. They look towards the next swathe of loyalists who are emotionally detached from the past.
Our Singapore friend will, like the many Champions League traditionalists of the past 30 years, be horrified by the news that the so-called “big six” English Premier League clubs (yes, Spurs are there, snigger, snigger) are hoping to join three giants from Spain and Italy to form a breakaway European Super League.
Even though he has supported the club since peer pressure forced him to, he may now in his anger vow never, ever to watch a single ESL (Singaporeans love abbreviations) game because they “don’t care about fans, only about the money”.
His whining is pointless. Does he not know that the forces of change are done with him? He, and millions like him who probably support the likes of United, Liverpool, Chelsea, Arsenal, City and Spurs, have served their purpose in giving the Champions League credibility and helping to raise the profile of these clubs to the extent that they now consider themselves powerful enough to be bigger than the game itself.
No, the new change-mongers are looking at his children, maybe even his grandchildren. Adolescent fans who, possibly in 10-20 years’ time, will mock the existing Champions League with remarks like “look at the kind of teams who won, Porto, Dortmund, Ajax. What kind of teams are they?”
The ESL organisers would be happy to spend five to 10 years riding out this initial wave of abhorrence, which admittedly is many times more vicious than it was 30 years ago when the Champions League consigned the European Cup to history.
Television pundits in England such as Gary Neville, Rio Ferdinand and Roy Keane, as well as Danny Murphy, Dion Dublin and others, have used words such as “disgusting”, “greed” and phrases such as “They don’t care about the fans or history of the game”.
They are wrong, of course. They do care about the fans very much because, without the fans, there are no viewers and no money to be made. It’s just that now, they only care about the fans who – like them and the clubs they support – have no affection whatsoever for the history of the game. And just like our Singaporean Manchester United supporter, they exist in their hundreds of millions – in Asia and elsewhere.
The Premier League lost US$700 million in China last year after terminating its contract with Suning’s PPTV as the Covid-19 pandemic caused a three-month break in the 2019-20 season, while broadcasters in a few other Asian markets, including Hong Kong, also asked for rebates.
Still, reports say Asia accounts for US$553 million of the US$1.66 billion the league receives from overseas broadcast rights.
North America is also a growing market where the fans possess a similar mentality in which a guaranteed Liverpool vs Barcelona match-up every season is much more palatable than visits from Southampton, Burnley and Crystal Palace.
Our Singaporean fan, and those like him, can laugh at the likes of Villa and Forest because he was still in diapers when Ron Saunders’ 1981 team fought an epic battle with Bobby Robson’s brilliant Ipswich Town side before clinching the title and then going on to win the European Cup on Peter Withe’s tap-in.
He was not watching football when the legendary Brian Clough assembled a talented and hardworking Forest squad who, for a few years, shoulder-barged Liverpool out of the way for a Division One title and two European Cup crowns.
These fans and their progeny won’t care about the romance of the FA Cup, when Sunderland defeated mighty Leeds United, when Ricky Villa mesmerised the Manchester City defence, when Trevor Brooking used his head to score the winner for West Ham or when Coventry beat Spurs in one of the most entertaining finals of all time.
The soul of English football resides in England, its four divisions and its non-league clubs. But the spirit is dying. Outside Britain, where only a handful of clubs truly matter, it hardly exists. Future fans in Asia and other parts of the world will not care about the “old” Champions League should the ESL become a reality.
And as long as they exist in their hundreds of millions, the men and women behind such concepts will continue to dismantle tradition and history – and get away with it – for the sake of greed.
