Juventus has chained penalties and three-pointers this season, but it still has ways: it has sent a letter to Real Madrid and FC Barcelona to inform of its resignation from the European Super League. All that would be missing, on the eve of a possible sanction by UEFA on Barça for the Negreira case, is for Real Madrid to do the same with Barça (instead of a letter, a lunch with a hug would also do for Florentino Pérez’s departure) .
As during the times of the privatization of the energy heritage of the USSR, the Superliga was “sold” as an inescapable progress. Faced with the aging, vicious and corrupt elephant of UEFA, the big European clubs were united in the manner of Spartacus and his colleagues, oppressed willing that no one would ever again suck their blood and steal what is yours Those who doubted the invention were characterized as retrograde, unable to read the future and clinging to the ancien régime (how badly does the Champions League work? It doesn’t seem like a success).
The Superliga had a judicial hook: to stop the proliferation of state clubs (such as PSG or Manchester City) and to prop up the popular clubs (Barça or Real Madrid), those who continue to be – more in theory than anything else – their partners. Of the town This struggle resulted in a mutiny on board the founding fathers of the Superliga, with the climate in favor of transversal endeavor raised by the dates and everything related to the World Cup in Qatar (in the end, the drama has been rather less than the anticipated and all the national championships have ended with the usual intensity).
The instant opposition of the UK and French governments to the Super League was like putting oil in a lamp. There the project ended and the total disbandment began, except for the two Spanish Quixotes (it is not essential to say who played Sancho Panza). Why did the European governments stick a spoon in a “minor” issue with force and speed? The national federations and UEFA are the last wall against a globalization of football that speaks more Arabic, Mandarin or US English than German, French or Spanish. Even if they sell themselves to the highest bidder from time to time – see the Spanish Super League in Saudi Arabia – they never do it completely. If the Superliga – a private structure – had curdled, how long would it have taken some Gulf country, some Asian investment fund, to buy it and move the routine Barça-PSG or Real Madrid-City to Saudi Arabia, Qatar or China? Or to play semi-finals and final away from Europe? Or to invent playoffs in the NBA to stretch a model that, incidentally, prevented the secondary clubs from the dream of competing in the Champions League for merits on the grass?
