© AFP
The Super League, the maligned closed competition that some European top clubs wanted to set up in 2021, would think of a restart in a new format. According to the French sports newspaper L’Equipe, this competition would not work with regular participants and entry would have to be earned, as in the Champions League. According to them, fifty clubs have been consulted about this in recent months, including Belgian teams.
Wim Conings
A22, the company behind the Super League, would have learned from the fuss that arose after a first attempt was made in April 2021 to get a closed super league off the ground. Then more than half of the clubs withdrew after not only the European football association UEFA, which organizes the competitive Champions League, but also supporters of the clubs involved and even British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Prince William spoke out against the plan.
According to L’Equipe, A22 would have contacted “some fifty clubs from twelve different countries, including the Netherlands, Portugal, Belgium, Denmark and Scotland, in recent months. The aim is also to seduce clubs from the ‘middle class’.” The teams would have been asked about which format they thought would work best for the Super League. For example, the initiators would like to create goodwill for their project and no longer want to give the feeling that it is being forced on them.
It is striking that the new concept of the Super League would no longer be a closed, but an open competition, following the example of the Champions League. This means that not every year necessarily the same clubs would participate more. That idea would have been positively received by the surveyed clubs. They would also like to work with a Financial Fair Play that is even stricter than the conditions of the European football association UEFA. Clubs would only be allowed to spend fifty-five percent of their budget on salaries.
