European Super League to rival the NFL

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2011/jul/27/european-clubs-breakaway-fifa-uefa

I know that it will probably not happen but it would surely be cool if the European teams form the European Super League. Here is my idea for a European Super League.

40 brand new teams will be placed in Europe's largest cities and at most there will be two teams in a city. This almost guarantees huge attendances every year. The 40 teams will be divided into four divisions of ten based on their geographic location.

No relegation/promotion.
Usually newly-promoted teams immediately go back down to the lower division so they do not add any value to the league. Also, clubs that are relegated lose a lot of money and this contributes to large disparity in finances between the big clubs and the smaller clubs.
100% revenue sharing. This will obviously ensure all teams are equal.

Salary cap.
It's obvious that the big clubs are currently hogging most of the star players and this prevents the other teams from being competitive. A salary cap will fix this. The ESL is guaranteed to be the richest competition in the world so there will be no way other leagues can pay their players more.

Draft.
Any player that wants to play in the ESL will have to enter the draft and teams will select the players they want in reverse order of how they finished in the previous season, similar to the NFL Draft. Teams that did poorly in the previous season might be more competitive.

Season Structure.
Teams play twice against teams in their own division, once against all teams from two other division for a total of 38 games. The reason teams won't play every other team is to prevent monotonicity. Three teams from each division qualify for the playoffs, with the top four teams each receiving byes for the first round of the playoffs. The higher ranked team in a match will be the host except for the final which will be played in a venue chosen beforehand.

I can foresee a few problems. People, in general, do not like change and getting them to accept the idea will be tough. New rivalries will have to be formed and larger cities with no soccer culture will be have a team in place of smaller places that eat, breathe soccer. A team can possibly consist solely of international players and I don't think the fans and especially governments will appreciate that. Since the competition will be more competitive, bandwagon fans like me will struggle to find a team to support.

No matter what format the ESL takes it would be the most popular league in the world and one of the richest (if not the richest) in all of sport. This format would be much more entertaining.

""[Financially] there is a lot of unfulfilled potential in football as it stands."" This made me throw up in my mouth a bit. Plenty of the hardest football fans I know are getting sick with this obsession with money, statements like this just push them further away from the game.


Honestly, if your idea was implemented, it could destroy the game. It would a slap in the face of the football culture of many cities, and of the effect of football in general. This type of league could never create rivalries to compete with rivalries like the Old Firm Derby, Milan Derby and so on; derbies which has their roots not in football but in society. If something like what you proposed, was implemented; I'd stop watching European football. Something like that would kill the romance of football...

It could be happen but if it does there is no way in hell it would have a salary cap or draft. As to the the derbies, pretty sure it wouldn't affect the milan derby, both sides would be in the european super league if it ever happens.

First off... sorry for answering so late.

Second... HELL NO! If there was to be a ESL, then it would have to be along the lines of a normal league season. That way the big clubs would need to have one squad for Europe and a separate one (with maybe a few crossovers) for the domestic championship. This could end up benefiting football as more players would be given chances in the larger clubs, but it would lead to an oversaturation of football (which to be fair, is already happening).

I like the setup as it is now. This ESL sounds interesting from arm-chair fan's point of view though.
I'm all for competition, diversity and 'fairness' in football so I think instead of investing time in these grand schemes designed to make rich corporations richer and put more footie on the telly, rather spend time and money improving the existing leagues? Things like the squad rules and looming buying within your means rule (?) are designed to start leveling the playing fields. But I see many clubs 'working around' these restrictions though.
The day football is driven purely by financial goals will be sad one. And things like the ESL make it sound like it's already on a one-way route in that direction.

MartyMarts said:

I like the setup as it is now. This ESL sounds interesting from arm-chair fan's point of view though.
I'm all for competition, diversity and 'fairness' in football so I think instead of investing time in these grand schemes designed to make rich corporations richer and put more footie on the telly, rather spend time and money improving the existing leagues? Things like the squad rules and looming buying within your means rule (?) are designed to start leveling the playing fields. But I see many clubs 'working around' these restrictions though.
The day football is driven purely by financial goals will be sad one. And things like the ESL make it sound like it's already on a one-way route in that direction.

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Evey great winning team has been fueled by someones money. To think otherwise is naive.

smokey said:

Evey great winning team has been fueled by someones money. To think otherwise is naive.

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That's the 2nd time you've used that word in response to one of my posts in a relatively short space of time. Anyway... moving along.

Are you referring to 'Evey great winning team' in general or what? Who was fueling Liverpool's success during the 70s? <- a few years before my time, maybe you will remember.
Bankrolling successful teams to some varying degree is not a new concept but the extent to which it is currently going, take Man City for example, seems to be almost like cheating. Think about it. How does anyone 'keep up with Jones' when they have a budget of some sort and the Jones Family don't even need a budget, just blank cheques. Simply and maybe even naive concepts I'm talking about here. But yeah, I suppose all successful teams have been doing this since the beginning of time anyway.

My point is that if it's all continues in this vain, we might as well all start supporting Man City now. And then in a few years we can have a super, awesome League of football greatness where we have Man City versus 11 other players that didn't cut the Man City grade.

MartyMarts said:

That's the 2nd time you've used that word in response to one of my posts in a relatively short space of time. Anyway... moving along.

Are you referring to 'Evey great winning team' in general or what? Who was fueling Liverpool's success during the 70s?
Bankrolling successful teams to some varying degree is not a new concept but the extent to which it is currently going, take Man City for example, seems to be almost like cheating. Think about it. How does anyone 'keep up with Jones' when they have a budget of some sort and the Jones Family don't even need a budget, just blank cheques. Simply and maybe even naive concepts I'm talking about here. But yeah, I suppose all successful teams have been doing this since the beginning of time anyway.

My point is that if it's all continues in this vain, we might as well all start supporting Man City now. And then in a few years we can have a super, awesome League of football greatness where we have Man City versus 11 other players that didn't cut the Man City grade.

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Milan - 80s/90s
Inter - 2000s
Real Madrid - not exactly a single owner pouring money, but they did spend a huge amount of cash that was gained from commercial and european ventuires. a system that Santiago Bernabeu pioneered.
Blackburn - early 90s
Parma (as an example of a badly run football club)
Portsmouth (another example of a badly run footy club)

Football has always been about money - it's a professional sport. It's really that simple.

Oh and as far as Liverpool's owners are concerned...

He became Chairman on 18 September 1991. He owned 17,850 shares in Liverpool F.C. which represented 51% of the club. His uncle, Sir John Moores, was chairman of Everton, never Liverpool FC, where he was only a small shareholder. John Moores created Littlewoods and made the Moores family one of the wealthiest in the UK. Littlewoods was sold in 2002 for £750m.[2] The family owned their stake in the club for over 50 years.[3] However David Moores increasingly sought external investment to help the club develop a new ground, and ended up selling it in 2007 to American investors George Gillet and Tom Hicks in preference to Sheikh Mohammed and DIC.

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While there was none of the massive investment that is happening nowadays - do not for one second think that Shankly could have done anything without a little support from the chairman ie: majority shareholder ie: English rich folk

Definitely exceptions when you look at clubs that built their success over many, many years through various means (i.e. gate receipts, sponsorships, revenue generated through winning various cups and so on and so forth). I'm pretty sure football clubs were not formed by billionaires in the 19th century with the intent to make huge sums of profit in the 21st century :erm:

The point I was trying to make is that this almost exponential revolution that seems to be happening now is kind of making a farce of things (imo). Many clubs have an illustrious history, massive fan base built over time, you know - the 'big club' tag fitting somewhere in their history will look on and know their future is somewhat bleak. Unless some consortium or random billionaire takes an interest. There's currently lots of currently mediocre that are owned by billionaires. Been that way for years but now it seems like it's a real life Football Manager game going on that only these rich folks are playing.

Take Malaga in La Liga. Just last year the club was bought by some rich Qatari folks for 30 something million Euros. A year later Malaga are spending that kind of money on players :wtf: Similar thing seems to be happening at PSG I think. Great for Malaga and La Liga (and even most fans) as in a few seasons we might have a team to challenge the two big guns at the top and make life interesting? However, the small fish that were battling it out with Malaga to avoid relegation/mid table dominance or whatever are suddenly now severely hamstrung.

I'm just saying. . .

MartyMarts said:

Definitely exceptions when you look at clubs that built their success over many, many years through various means (i.e. gate receipts, sponsorships, revenue generated through winning various cups and so on and so forth). I'm pretty sure football clubs were not formed by billionaires in the 19th century with the intent to make huge sums of profit in the 21st century :erm:

The point I was trying to make is that this almost exponential revolution that seems to be happening now is kind of making a farce of things (imo). Many clubs have an illustrious history, massive fan base built over time, you know - the 'big club' tag fitting somewhere in their history will look on and know their future is somewhat bleak. Unless some consortium or random billionaire takes an interest. There's currently lots of currently mediocre that are owned by billionaires. Been that way for years but now it seems like it's a real life Football Manager game going on that only these rich folks are playing.

Take Malaga in La Liga. Just last year the club was bought by some rich Qatari folks for 30 something million Euros. A year later Malaga are spending that kind of money on players :wtf: Similar thing seems to be happening at PSG I think. Great for Malaga and La Liga (and even most fans) as in a few seasons we might have a team to challenge the two big guns at the top and make life interesting? However, the small fish that were battling it out with Malaga to avoid relegation/mid table dominance or whatever are suddenly now severely hamstrung.

I'm just saying. . .

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1. Of course not, but the professionalism of football was greeted with as big an outcry as the current "revolution" is.

2. Farce in what way? So ManUtd earned their millions... do you really think anyone except Arsenal would have been able to challenge them if it hadn't been for Abramovich. I'm sure you would have loved that - but me... not so much. Oh yeah - and United dominated even more once they were listed and public fund were used to finance them. the huge commercial deals in the 50s that were pioneered by SB at Real were also unfair. Football, a bit like life itself, moves on. You either adapt or die. Simple.

3. No they are not - Malaga is more a threat to the bigger clubs than those facing relegation. They will still be facing relegation but the top clubs will have another challenger for the ECL spots etc.

4. So am I.

smokey said:

1. Of course not, but the professionalism of football was greeted with as big an outcry as the current "revolution" is.

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I can't say. I wasn't there It was just a guess. My point was that up until not too long ago, it was the successful clubs that built on their success. Not just getting massive cash injections each season. Players wanted to play for successful clubs and/or ones that had tradition/history. Not just the ones that offered the most money. But I agree, times change and what not.

smokey said:

2. Farce in what way? So ManUtd earned their millions... do you really think anyone except Arsenal would have been able to challenge them if it hadn't been for Abramovich. I'm sure you would have loved that - but me... not so much. Oh yeah - and United dominated even more once they were listed and public fund were used to finance them. the huge commercial deals in the 50s that were pioneered by SB at Real were also unfair. Football, a bit like life itself, moves on. You either adapt or die. Simple.

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Yes Man U earned their millions and Ferguson adapted and certainly 'did not die' when Chelsea came to the fore. He might even do the same wrt Man City? And YES, if it were not for Abramhovic, Arsenal probably would have been (still be?) the only real threat to United. Chelsea have proved that you can buy success in the EPL. But I'm sure many Chelsea fans would consider the clubs success so much sweeter if it wasn't bankrolled by a Russian businessman - that's besides the point though. All I'm saying is that these days it's seems possible to buy a random football club, pump tons of money into it and almost immediately it's a big club with big ambitions, buying the world's best players etc. etc. Hence it appears to be a farce imo. The super rich playing Real Football Manager? Owners deciding what players the club should buy?

smokey said:

3. No they are not - Malaga is more a threat to the bigger clubs than those facing relegation. They will still be facing relegation but the top clubs will have another challenger for the ECL spots etc.

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True but by 'default' one of the smaller/poorer clubs automatically suffers. i.e. one of Malaga's rivals, from being part of a 10 team mini-league (mid table ambitions, relegation dogfights or whatever which included Malaga) to being a 9 team mini-league. The odds on getting relegated (or whatever) automatically goes up. So the chance at taking points OFF your previous rival Malaga becomes a thing of the past. Kind of like how say Aston Villa, Spurs, Everton and maybe even Liverpool used to see Man City as a rival for one of the European spots two (?) seasons ago and now these clubs are all automatically one place lower down the league table. (hopefully this makes sense?)

smokey said:

4. So am I.

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Um... ok.

Just thought I'd quickly add this (stolen from F365's mailbox page):

Somebody Hasn't Caught The Optimistic Bug
There is one inescapable conclusion to be drawn from Sunday's slaughter of N.London's finest by the money men of Manchester, genuine competitive football died a death that day. It's no longer about who has the best manager, best player or system it's now all about who has the deepest pockets and the cynicism to take advantage of them and that to me is not a sport, it's akin to shooting clay pigeons with an assault rifle.

How wrong can it be to allow three or four clubs to Hoover up all the available talent by overpaying for them in both transfer fee and salary? For how long will the football-watching public in this country accept this? I can see many people with a genuine and longstanding love of the game growing increasingly disenchanted and disenfranchised with it all, from the media desperation to create a (self-fulfilling) story where there is none (market saturation in the media has a lot to answer for, and yes I get the irony of writing to a football website about this issue) to the insane amounts of money on offer to players. This should not be what football is about but it's become almost a trial of attrition, a club like Spurs who want to better themselves essentially have to play financial Russian roulette against clubs like Utd, City and Chelsea, the problem is that seven of the eight chambers are loaded and when the fatal shot is inevitably fired (by your own hand) the 'financial bully boys' pick over the corpse, strengthening themselves further and increasing their grip on the top rung.

Is this really what football fans want? Is it even what the media want? When do we say 'enough is enough' or will we all be happy to see the same teams again and again increase their spending and increase the gulf between haves and the have nots, is that competitive sports or is it just self-aggrandising? I personally think that Sunday's football was not something to behold but something to bemoan, it was nothing short of the death of competitive top-flight football in this country and I for one, a season ticket holder at one of the country's top clubs for 25 years will mourn its passing. It's time to take a look at the sporting model provided by the good ol' US of A, the most capitalist country in the world has a nearly socialist structure to its top sports to ensure that competition remains and that no one 'franchise' can form a long-standing hegemony, thereby maintaining the public's interest.
Darth Vader, THFC RIP

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A sensible Spurs fan... who would've thought

MartyMarts said:

Just thought I'd quickly add this (stolen from F365's mailbox page


A sensible Spurs fan... who would've thought

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Sad fact its only the fans on wrong end of this that are complaining. Dein had Usmanov lined up to do exactly what happend at CFC and MCFC. Would gunners have been in complaining if this had happend.

RexxGrim said:

Sad fact its only the fans on wrong end of this that are complaining. Dein had Usmanov lined up to do exactly what happend at CFC and MCFC. Would gunners have been in complaining if this had happend.

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No you wouldn't.

On to that idiotic Spurs supporter... he has to ask himself this question: Why the **** didn't they use their money better when they had greater buying power than Man City? Do they really think that the transfer binge that they went on a few years ago was financed from their sterling record or their brilliantly competitive history? That stupid ****er is just miffed because Roman took one look at his piece of **** club, spelt the rot and ****ed off to West London.

This will never happen. Who are you going to place in Manchester to displace United? Who are you going to place in Madrid to replace Real Madrid? The existing clubs will put this down before it ever took off. The kind of money these clubs make in TV revenue and in shirt sales in Asia will ensure that they WILL NOT allow any form of upstart league to replace them.

Just face it, competitive football is dying at the top of all European leagues and some leagues are being left behind as well. Are you all aware of the fact that the Italian Serie A is facing huge financial difficulties? The biggest transfers were sales out of Italy. The largest transfer in was Palermo’s 16 million Euro swoop for Napoli's Edinson Cavani and guess what, Palermo is bank-rolled by a wealthy businessman. Top Serie A clubs now spend a fraction of what Spanish & English clubs spend. The UEFA Champions League will be won by a Spanish or English club for the next few years. And ask yourselves, what ever happened to Bayern Munchen and Ajax Amsterdam, two feared European clubs of yesteryear? The answer is simple; they cannot compete financially with the clubs from Spain and England, and fell behind Italy over a decade ago.

I remember when Ipswich Town were promoted to the English Premier League for the 2000/01 Premier League season and missed out on a Champions League spot by 3 points. This will never happen again. In England, there are 3 representatives of the various ''levels'' of football; the Premier League, The Football League (npower Championship, npower League One & npower League Two) and the Football Conference (Conference National & Conference North/South). Now, the Football League bemoans the fact that the gulf between the Premier League and their clubs is no longer surmountable without massive cash investments and too many clubs that have been in the Premier League end up facing huge financial obstacles if they are relegated and have spent big trying to be competitive. The likes of Charlton Athletic (League One), Bradford City (League Two), Sheffield United (recently relegated to League One), Portsmouth (Championship) and Southampton (newly promoted to the Championship) are just a few that ended up in dire financial situations after being relegated. Leeds United - although that was just stupid - are a great example of what can happen if a club has ambitions yet no sufficient financial backing. Newcastle were saved the administrators curse after being relegated because after Man United they are the biggest club in England - yes, in terms of fan support - and their owner allowed them to maintain Premier League wages to insure a swift return.

The Premier League in itself is a rich league, so promotion alone brings a huge uphill battle to survive in terms of finding the finances to be competitive. The last time all 3 promoted teams stayed up was in 2001/02, when Fulham, Blackburn Rovers & Bolton Wanderers all survived. It is said that the promotion play-off final to determine the final team promoted to the Premier League is worth 30-40 million pounds, making it the most lucrative single football match in the world for the winner and that includes the UEFA Champions League final. Then to crack Europe is another story all together and it will not be done without a sugar daddy now. QPR will likely out perform fellow new boys Swansea City and Norwich City. Why? QPR were bought outright by Tony Fernandes - owner of Asia's largest budget airline, Air Asia, and owner of the Lotus-Renault F1 team - and he has already shown what he will do by signing Joey Barton, a marquee high wage earner.

so basically 40 teams in the whole of Europe will mean 1200 pro football players in the whole of Europe by my calculation there are at least 1800 pro footballers in England alone,teams have various coaching staff ,medical professionals and ground staff working for them, creating this European Super league will create a massive employment crisis in Europe