European Premier League: Liverpool and Manchester United in talks for FIFA-backed tournament
Liverpool and Manchester United are in talks about a bombshell plot involving Europe's biggest football clubs to join a new FIFA-backed tournament that would reshape the sport's global landscape.
Sky News has learned that financiers are assembling a $6 billion (£4.6 billion) funding package to assist the creation of what could become known as the European Premier League.
More than a dozen teams from England, France, Germany, Italy and Spain are in negotiations about becoming founder members of the competition.
As many as five English clubs could sign up to join it, with a provisional start date said to have been discussed as early as 2022.
Sources said that FIFA, football's world governing body, had been involved in developing the new format, which is expected to comprise up to 18 teams, and involve fixtures played during the regular European season.
The top-placed teams in the league would then play in a knockout format to conclude the tournament, with prize money for the winners expected to be worth hundreds of millions of pounds each year.
One football industry figure said that a formal announcement about the plans was possible as soon as the end of this month, although on Tuesday a number of key details - including the full list of participating clubs - had yet to be finalised and the plans could still fall apart.
The source described it as "potentially the most important development in world club football for decades".
Arsenal, Chelsea, Man City and Tottenham candidates to join
According to insiders, a handful of English sides have been approached about joining the league, with the other candidates comprising Arsenal, Chelsea, Manchester City and Tottenham Hotspur.
It is not thought that any of the English clubs have yet signed legally binding terms to join, and it was unclear which member of the so-called 'big six' would miss out if only five are ultimately involved.
The news will drop a fresh bombshell into the fracturing landscape of English football, which has spent recent weeks at loggerheads over proposals - engineered by Liverpool and Manchester United - to hand more power to the biggest clubs while providing a coronavirus bailout for teams below the top flight.
The news will drop a fresh bombshell into the fracturing landscape of English football, which has spent recent weeks at loggerheads over proposals - engineered by Liverpool and Manchester United - to hand more power to the biggest clubs while providing a coronavirus bailout for teams below the top flight.
The plan, denounced as "a backroom deal" by government ministers, was rapidly abandoned last week.
If the latest plans bear fruit, they would effectively constitute the European super league that has been subject to on-off discussions for many years.
The giant Wall Street bank JP Morgan is in talks to provide $6 billion of debt financing to help launch the European Premier League, with the proceeds repayable from future broadcast income generated by the tournament, according to a football executive.
Other banks are expected to join the financing of the new project, which would become one of the world's richest annual team sports competitions if it gets off the ground.
Each of the founding teams is expected to earn fees paid hundreds of millions of pounds to participate, with clubs such as Manchester United and Real Madrid receiving the biggest sums for joining.
They added that the European Premier League was likely to feature either 16 or 18 teams - meaning a likely minimum of 30 matches for each club, based on a format of round-robin home and away fixtures - although that is said to be among the details being finalised ahead of a formal announcement.
If the discussions are successfully concluded, the European Premier League would effectively usurp UEFA's Champions League competition, which has been a mainstay of the continent's football calendar for decades.
It was unclear whether the new tournament had the backing of UEFA, the European governing body, although some insiders claimed that it did not.
If it did have UEFA's support, it is likely to be unveiled as an enhanced version of the Champions' League and an example of unprecedented cooperation between two governing bodies which have historically found themselves in opposition on key issues affecting football's global governance.
However, football insiders said that if UEFA was not involved, the new tournament would represent an "incendiary" move from FIFA that would undermine the European governing body's principal annual revenue-generating tournament.
In that scenario, there could be a string of legal challenges to prevent it from getting off the ground, given the complexity of existing tournament agreements involving Europe's top clubs.
One source cast doubt on the prospect of a successful launch of the European Premier League without UEFA's backing, particularly before 2024, when the existing Champions' League structure is expected to be revamped.
Neither FIFA nor UEFA would comment.
Other clubs which are said to have been invited to take part in the new league include Barcelona and Atletico Madrid, according to Vozpopuli, a Spanish publication.
Real Madrid has been one of the principal architects of the European Premier League's creation, with a plan to get the new competition launched as rapidly as possible.
Paris Saint-Germain, Juventus and Bayern Munich are also likely to have been approached.
Key Capital Partners, a Spanish finance house, and Florentino Perez, the veteran Real Madrid president, are also understood to have been driving forces behind the latest project.
Mr Perez and Gianni Infantino, the FIFA president, were reported last year to have held talks about reforming elements of the club game.
The latest version of the European Premier League project is understood to have been in gestation for well over a year.
Providence Equity Partners, a global private equity firm which owns companies in Britain such as Ambassador Theatre Group, is understood to have held talks about becoming a shareholder in the new league, but football sources cast doubt on whether it was still involved.
Talk of a European Super League has been a ubiquitous feature of football politics for many years, but has invariably faded amid trenchant opposition from national football associations, politicians and supporter groups.
An earlier iteration of the current project was reported by German news outlets to have been drawn up almost exactly two years ago, and featured 11 'founder' teams with a number of 'guest' teams.
As part of that blueprint, the founder clubs could not be relegated for 20 years, although the remaining teams would be subject to being replaced depending upon their league position at the end of each season.
A version of those rules is expected to form part of the new league, according to insiders, with a possible cap on agents' fees also said to have been one of the ideas under discussion.
Such an American-style approach to European football would reflect the sport's shifting power-base following an influx of US-based owners into the English game during the last 20 years.
Manchester United, whose largest shareholder remains the Glazer family, is listed in New York; Arsenal is owned by a US-based businessman; and Liverpool's parent company, Fenway Sports Group, is in the process of being taken public through a Special Purpose Acquisition Company.
Despite being named in leaked documents about the proposed league, Bayern Munich, the current Champions' League holders and German Bundesliga champions, denied any involvement in the plans in 2018.
According to people close to the latest plans, the European Premier League would not be a breakaway in the sense of ending clubs' involvement in their domestic leagues.
Nevertheless, its creation would have profound implications for the value of domestic broadcasting and sponsorship rights across Europe, at a time when the finances of the entire football pyramid have been hit hard by the Covid-19 crisis.
English Premier League clubs have complained that they are collectively losing more than £100m every month, while many EFL clubs have warned that they will not be able to survive much longer without fans in attendance, unless they receive emergency support.
Earlier this month, the EFL rejected a £50m grant proposed by the Premier League.
Sources said the result of the new format, if it gets off the ground, would be to give England's wealthiest clubs greater leverage in future negotiations with the Premier League and with broadcasters and sponsors.
They added that the possibility of outright club defections from domestic leagues was not on the new tournament's "short-term agenda".
Nevertheless, a decision to join the new European tournament will leave its participants exposed to the suggestion that they were enriching themselves at the expense of domestic rivals, exacerbating the already-vast financial gulf between teams at the top and bottom of the Premier League.
That risks particular damage to clubs' reputations during an economic crisis which has resulted in the UK's unemployment rate increasing and millions of people becoming concerned about their livelihoods.
One person close to the project said there would need to be "very substantial" solidarity payments built into the European Premier League structure to demonstrate that its creation would benefit the wider game.
Even that, though, is unlikely to be sufficient to appease critics of the biggest clubs, who have long-sought to find ways of preventing 'smaller' sides breaking their stranglehold on the domestic leagues - as Leicester City, did, for example, in 2016, when it won the Premier League.
Central to the new league would be the question of whether its fixtures are played in the existing slots allocated to Champions' League matches, or whether the prize of drawing vast live audiences in Asia and the US, as well as Europe, means there is an attempt to play them throughout the day at weekends.
It emerged [this month] that Liverpool and Manchester United were leading a quest to reform the Premier League by cutting the number of teams from 20 to 18 and giving the so-called 'big six' and other long-standing shareholders in the top flight enhanced voting rights that would effectively hand them outright control.
The League Cup, currently sponsored by Carabao, and the Community Shield, would also have been expunged from the calendar or played without the involvement of clubs taking part in European competitions.
Their plot was immediately denounced by the Premier League and the government, leading to a statement from all 20 clubs that they would reject Project Big Picture.
Gary Neville, the former Manchester United and England defender, said the extent of the divisions about how to reform and financially protect the game meant that an independent football regulator should be established.
The prospective involvement of some of the top flight's elite clubs in a European super league format would help to explain their desire to curb the number of domestic fixtures to which they are committed.
Ministers have applied pressure to the Premier League to formulate a financial rescue package for lower league clubs, but those talks have been far from straightforward, with some top-flight executives complaining that they are being held to a different standard to wealthy companies in any other industry.
One football insider also raised the prospect of legal challenges to the new league from excluded rival clubs, although one club source said they were confident that they were able to strike a deal that could not be overturned.
The Champions League's existing format is said to be locked in place until 2024, with an expansion possible after that, although its name, and existence, would be cast into doubt if the continent's elite clubs decided to abandon it.
The coronavirus pandemic has accelerated the potential shake-up of football.
In Italy, CVC Capital Partners, the former owner of Formula One motor racing, is in exclusive talks alongside fellow investment firm Advent International to take a stake in the commercial rights to the country's Serie A league.
A number of alternative structures have been proposed in England to inject funds into the financially struggling lower leagues, including a plan tabled by TPG Capital, a private equity firm, to acquire an equity stake in the EFL.
Liverpool, Manchester United, JP Morgan and Providence all declined to comment, while Key Capital Partners could not be reached for comment.
"As part of that blueprint, the founder clubs could not be relegated for 20 years, although the remaining teams would be subject to being replaced depending upon their league position at the end of each season."
"More than a dozen teams from England, France, Germany, Italy and Spain are in negotiations about becoming founder members of the competition.
As many as five English clubs could sign up to join it, with a provisional start date said to have been discussed as early as 2022.
Sources said that FIFA, football's world governing body, had been involved in developing the new format, which is expected to comprise up to 18 teams, and involve fixtures played during the regular European season."
If it's going to be an 18-team set-up that doesn't leave much room for some of the other nations.
So, as well as Man Utd and Liverpool looking to shaft the other clubs in England with their plans they're also wanting to f*** over the smaller European footballing nations by not allowing them an opportunity.
The sooner these leeches piss off and leave the rest of us to get back to proper football competitions the better.
So glad I support Charlton. We may be shit, but at least we're not involved in these stupid plans that would ruin football. Can't these so called big clubs just fuck off and leave us to it?
So glad I support Charlton. We may be shit, but at least we're not involved in these stupid plans that would ruin football. Can't these so called big clubs just fuck off and leave us to it?
No because whilst they want their cake, they're too scared that the Sport will survive or do even better without them
Would be great if they left the English League and got told that if they want to return then they have to start at the bottom, wont happen though
The FA need to give them an ultimatum, they can join this League but cant be part of any organisation here in England... Its a shame too that FIFA are on board with it, if not then they should equally put their foot down and state that any players involved wont be allowed to take part in any International games
Liverpool vs Barcelona might become pretty boring to watch if we're treated to it once a month.
Do they have to hang around the Premium Loog if they're going to do this, where does this leave the Champions League if they're effectively creating a more exclusive version of that competition.
What teams would make up the original 18? A few historically big names will miss out
Man United Liverpool
Arsenal
Man City Chelsea Spurs
PSG
Lyon
Marseille
Monaco
Real Madrid Barcelona Athletico Madrid
Valencia
Sevilla
Juventus
Inter
AC Milan
Napoli
Roma
Lazio
Bayern Munich
Dortmund
Leverkusen
RB Leipzig
That's 25 teams, some like Leipzig aren't historically big but would want a slice of the pie now, others like Valencia and Monaco aren't big names per se right now but have history (Valencia being a part of the G-14) and this isn't including teams like the Portugal big 3, Ajax and PSV and other such teams.
I like the irony of "we want to save the smaller teams in the football league" message of the Big Picture horseshit, and as soon as that's kicked to the curb they just fuck off and decide to reignite the Europe wide Super League setup instead, absolute scumbags
So glad I support Charlton. We may be shit, but at least we're not involved in these stupid plans that would ruin football. Can't these so called big clubs just fuck off and leave us to it?
No because whilst they want their cake, they're too scared that the Sport will survive or do even better without them
Would be great if they left the English League and got told that if they want to return then they have to start at the bottom, wont happen though
I rarely watch the PL anyway tbf so doesn't really bother me what they get up to. Much prefer lower leagues
You can understand why the likes of Man U would be interested in a closed shop competition, as unlike with Juventus, Bayern, PSG, Barca and Real, top 4 competition in England is far tougher. No other country has a Big 6, let along the number of other clubs who can also realistically compete for the top 4
But it's this fight to be in the top 4 which is one of the strengths of the Premier League, without it all that would matter would be the winners and the bottom 3, how boring would that be?
I like the irony of "we want to save the smaller teams in the football league" message of the Big Picture horseshit, and as soon as that's kicked to the curb they just fuck off and decide to reignite the Europe wide Super League setup instead, absolute scumbags
The whole thing is just the American investors hating the risk that not getting into Europe entails and they hate having to spend so much money each year to guarantee it.
They will do anything that means they get more control or more guaranteed revenue
I understand why the clubs want a European League. What I don't get is that they can't all be at the top of the European League. What will happen to Chelsea, say, if they consistently end up near the bottom of, what is likely to be, a very strong league. Will the crowds start to drift away if they have, say, five consecutive years at the bottom? Someone has to come bottom. It's likely that the top players will just want to play for the top five or six sides. Madness.
What teams would make up the original 18? A few historically big names will miss out
Man United Liverpool
Arsenal
Man City Chelsea Spurs
PSG
Lyon
Marseille
Monaco
Real Madrid Barcelona Athletico Madrid
Valencia
Sevilla
Juventus
Inter
AC Milan
Napoli
Roma
Lazio
Bayern Munich
Dortmund
Leverkusen
RB Leipzig
That's 25 teams, some like Leipzig aren't historically big but would want a slice of the pie now, others like Valencia and Monaco aren't big names per se right now but have history (Valencia being a part of the G-14) and this isn't including teams like the Portugal big 3, Ajax and PSV and other such teams.
I like the irony of "we want to save the smaller teams in the football league" message of the Big Picture horseshit, and as soon as that's kicked to the curb they just fuck off and decide to reignite the Europe wide Super League setup instead, absolute scumbags
Don't believe they moved to this after the big picture was curbed.
Today's news was all clearly part of the big picture play.
Parry and his mates were just trying to make the transition smoother
UEFA are supposedly against this. Not sure if they can do much to stop them though assuming the respective FAs give them the go ahead for the clubs to join the league
UEFA are supposedly against this. Not sure if they can do much to stop them though assuming the respective FAs give them the go ahead
EUFA FIFA the FA and all other acronyms will be powerless to stop a 'top club breakaway' .. it's in their best interests if not to support a Euro League at least to 'approve' its formation (IF of course it comes to be)
This feels a bit like the Packer breakaway in cricket, but at a club level rather than a player level. Except the cricketers in the 1970s were poorly paid and these clubs are already filthy rich
Comments
They would of course remain the English Premier League by the looks of things
European Premier League: Liverpool and Manchester United in talks for FIFA-backed tournament
Liverpool and Manchester United are in talks about a bombshell plot involving Europe's biggest football clubs to join a new FIFA-backed tournament that would reshape the sport's global landscape.Sky News has learned that financiers are assembling a $6 billion (£4.6 billion) funding package to assist the creation of what could become known as the European Premier League.
More than a dozen teams from England, France, Germany, Italy and Spain are in negotiations about becoming founder members of the competition.
As many as five English clubs could sign up to join it, with a provisional start date said to have been discussed as early as 2022.
Sources said that FIFA, football's world governing body, had been involved in developing the new format, which is expected to comprise up to 18 teams, and involve fixtures played during the regular European season.
The top-placed teams in the league would then play in a knockout format to conclude the tournament, with prize money for the winners expected to be worth hundreds of millions of pounds each year.
One football industry figure said that a formal announcement about the plans was possible as soon as the end of this month, although on Tuesday a number of key details - including the full list of participating clubs - had yet to be finalised and the plans could still fall apart.
The source described it as "potentially the most important development in world club football for decades".
Arsenal, Chelsea, Man City and Tottenham candidates to join
According to insiders, a handful of English sides have been approached about joining the league, with the other candidates comprising Arsenal, Chelsea, Manchester City and Tottenham Hotspur.It is not thought that any of the English clubs have yet signed legally binding terms to join, and it was unclear which member of the so-called 'big six' would miss out if only five are ultimately involved.
The news will drop a fresh bombshell into the fracturing landscape of English football, which has spent recent weeks at loggerheads over proposals - engineered by Liverpool and Manchester United - to hand more power to the biggest clubs while providing a coronavirus bailout for teams below the top flight.
The news will drop a fresh bombshell into the fracturing landscape of English football, which has spent recent weeks at loggerheads over proposals - engineered by Liverpool and Manchester United - to hand more power to the biggest clubs while providing a coronavirus bailout for teams below the top flight.
The plan, denounced as "a backroom deal" by government ministers, was rapidly abandoned last week.
If the latest plans bear fruit, they would effectively constitute the European super league that has been subject to on-off discussions for many years.
The giant Wall Street bank JP Morgan is in talks to provide $6 billion of debt financing to help launch the European Premier League, with the proceeds repayable from future broadcast income generated by the tournament, according to a football executive.
Other banks are expected to join the financing of the new project, which would become one of the world's richest annual team sports competitions if it gets off the ground.
Each of the founding teams is expected to earn fees paid hundreds of millions of pounds to participate, with clubs such as Manchester United and Real Madrid receiving the biggest sums for joining.
They added that the European Premier League was likely to feature either 16 or 18 teams - meaning a likely minimum of 30 matches for each club, based on a format of round-robin home and away fixtures - although that is said to be among the details being finalised ahead of a formal announcement.
If the discussions are successfully concluded, the European Premier League would effectively usurp UEFA's Champions League competition, which has been a mainstay of the continent's football calendar for decades.
It was unclear whether the new tournament had the backing of UEFA, the European governing body, although some insiders claimed that it did not.
If it did have UEFA's support, it is likely to be unveiled as an enhanced version of the Champions' League and an example of unprecedented cooperation between two governing bodies which have historically found themselves in opposition on key issues affecting football's global governance.
However, football insiders said that if UEFA was not involved, the new tournament would represent an "incendiary" move from FIFA that would undermine the European governing body's principal annual revenue-generating tournament.
In that scenario, there could be a string of legal challenges to prevent it from getting off the ground, given the complexity of existing tournament agreements involving Europe's top clubs.
One source cast doubt on the prospect of a successful launch of the European Premier League without UEFA's backing, particularly before 2024, when the existing Champions' League structure is expected to be revamped.
Neither FIFA nor UEFA would comment.
Other clubs which are said to have been invited to take part in the new league include Barcelona and Atletico Madrid, according to Vozpopuli, a Spanish publication.
Real Madrid has been one of the principal architects of the European Premier League's creation, with a plan to get the new competition launched as rapidly as possible.
Paris Saint-Germain, Juventus and Bayern Munich are also likely to have been approached.
Key Capital Partners, a Spanish finance house, and Florentino Perez, the veteran Real Madrid president, are also understood to have been driving forces behind the latest project.
Mr Perez and Gianni Infantino, the FIFA president, were reported last year to have held talks about reforming elements of the club game.
The latest version of the European Premier League project is understood to have been in gestation for well over a year.
Providence Equity Partners, a global private equity firm which owns companies in Britain such as Ambassador Theatre Group, is understood to have held talks about becoming a shareholder in the new league, but football sources cast doubt on whether it was still involved.
Talk of a European Super League has been a ubiquitous feature of football politics for many years, but has invariably faded amid trenchant opposition from national football associations, politicians and supporter groups.
An earlier iteration of the current project was reported by German news outlets to have been drawn up almost exactly two years ago, and featured 11 'founder' teams with a number of 'guest' teams.
As part of that blueprint, the founder clubs could not be relegated for 20 years, although the remaining teams would be subject to being replaced depending upon their league position at the end of each season.
A version of those rules is expected to form part of the new league, according to insiders, with a possible cap on agents' fees also said to have been one of the ideas under discussion.
Such an American-style approach to European football would reflect the sport's shifting power-base following an influx of US-based owners into the English game during the last 20 years.
Manchester United, whose largest shareholder remains the Glazer family, is listed in New York; Arsenal is owned by a US-based businessman; and Liverpool's parent company, Fenway Sports Group, is in the process of being taken public through a Special Purpose Acquisition Company.
Despite being named in leaked documents about the proposed league, Bayern Munich, the current Champions' League holders and German Bundesliga champions, denied any involvement in the plans in 2018.
According to people close to the latest plans, the European Premier League would not be a breakaway in the sense of ending clubs' involvement in their domestic leagues.
Nevertheless, its creation would have profound implications for the value of domestic broadcasting and sponsorship rights across Europe, at a time when the finances of the entire football pyramid have been hit hard by the Covid-19 crisis.
English Premier League clubs have complained that they are collectively losing more than £100m every month, while many EFL clubs have warned that they will not be able to survive much longer without fans in attendance, unless they receive emergency support.
Earlier this month, the EFL rejected a £50m grant proposed by the Premier League.
Sources said the result of the new format, if it gets off the ground, would be to give England's wealthiest clubs greater leverage in future negotiations with the Premier League and with broadcasters and sponsors.
They added that the possibility of outright club defections from domestic leagues was not on the new tournament's "short-term agenda".
Nevertheless, a decision to join the new European tournament will leave its participants exposed to the suggestion that they were enriching themselves at the expense of domestic rivals, exacerbating the already-vast financial gulf between teams at the top and bottom of the Premier League.
That risks particular damage to clubs' reputations during an economic crisis which has resulted in the UK's unemployment rate increasing and millions of people becoming concerned about their livelihoods.
One person close to the project said there would need to be "very substantial" solidarity payments built into the European Premier League structure to demonstrate that its creation would benefit the wider game.
Even that, though, is unlikely to be sufficient to appease critics of the biggest clubs, who have long-sought to find ways of preventing 'smaller' sides breaking their stranglehold on the domestic leagues - as Leicester City, did, for example, in 2016, when it won the Premier League.
Central to the new league would be the question of whether its fixtures are played in the existing slots allocated to Champions' League matches, or whether the prize of drawing vast live audiences in Asia and the US, as well as Europe, means there is an attempt to play them throughout the day at weekends.
It emerged [this month] that Liverpool and Manchester United were leading a quest to reform the Premier League by cutting the number of teams from 20 to 18 and giving the so-called 'big six' and other long-standing shareholders in the top flight enhanced voting rights that would effectively hand them outright control.
The League Cup, currently sponsored by Carabao, and the Community Shield, would also have been expunged from the calendar or played without the involvement of clubs taking part in European competitions.
Their plot was immediately denounced by the Premier League and the government, leading to a statement from all 20 clubs that they would reject Project Big Picture.
Gary Neville, the former Manchester United and England defender, said the extent of the divisions about how to reform and financially protect the game meant that an independent football regulator should be established.
The prospective involvement of some of the top flight's elite clubs in a European super league format would help to explain their desire to curb the number of domestic fixtures to which they are committed.
Ministers have applied pressure to the Premier League to formulate a financial rescue package for lower league clubs, but those talks have been far from straightforward, with some top-flight executives complaining that they are being held to a different standard to wealthy companies in any other industry.
One football insider also raised the prospect of legal challenges to the new league from excluded rival clubs, although one club source said they were confident that they were able to strike a deal that could not be overturned.
The Champions League's existing format is said to be locked in place until 2024, with an expansion possible after that, although its name, and existence, would be cast into doubt if the continent's elite clubs decided to abandon it.
The coronavirus pandemic has accelerated the potential shake-up of football.
In Italy, CVC Capital Partners, the former owner of Formula One motor racing, is in exclusive talks alongside fellow investment firm Advent International to take a stake in the commercial rights to the country's Serie A league.
A number of alternative structures have been proposed in England to inject funds into the financially struggling lower leagues, including a plan tabled by TPG Capital, a private equity firm, to acquire an equity stake in the EFL.
Liverpool, Manchester United, JP Morgan and Providence all declined to comment, while Key Capital Partners could not be reached for comment.
Cake & eat it springs to mind
As many as five English clubs could sign up to join it, with a provisional start date said to have been discussed as early as 2022.
Sources said that FIFA, football's world governing body, had been involved in developing the new format, which is expected to comprise up to 18 teams, and involve fixtures played during the regular European season."
If it's going to be an 18-team set-up that doesn't leave much room for some of the other nations.
So, as well as Man Utd and Liverpool looking to shaft the other clubs in England with their plans they're also wanting to f*** over the smaller European footballing nations by not allowing them an opportunity.
The sooner these leeches piss off and leave the rest of us to get back to proper football competitions the better.
Would be great if they left the English League and got told that if they want to return then they have to start at the bottom, wont happen though
The FA need to give them an ultimatum, they can join this League but cant be part of any organisation here in England... Its a shame too that FIFA are on board with it, if not then they should equally put their foot down and state that any players involved wont be allowed to take part in any International games
Do they have to hang around the Premium Loog if they're going to do this, where does this leave the Champions League if they're effectively creating a more exclusive version of that competition.
Liverpool
Chelsea
Spurs
PSG
Real Madrid
Barcelona
Athletico Madrid
Juventus
Bayern Munich
That's 25 teams, some like Leipzig aren't historically big but would want a slice of the pie now, others like Valencia and Monaco aren't big names per se right now but have history (Valencia being a part of the G-14) and this isn't including teams like the Portugal big 3, Ajax and PSV and other such teams.
I like the irony of "we want to save the smaller teams in the football league" message of the Big Picture horseshit, and as soon as that's kicked to the curb they just fuck off and decide to reignite the Europe wide Super League setup instead, absolute scumbags
The rest of the Premier League should then vote to expel those clubs who go.
But it's this fight to be in the top 4 which is one of the strengths of the Premier League, without it all that would matter would be the winners and the bottom 3, how boring would that be?
They will do anything that means they get more control or more guaranteed revenue
Today's news was all clearly part of the big picture play.
Parry and his mates were just trying to make the transition smoother
No staying in English football competitions. Because then they are going to have an absolute mass of extra money from this Euro shite.
Let the real clubs stay in national football and battle it out. Go and play in your little fantasy league.
But it won't happen - will it?