Super League - now that's not fair play

It looks like Manchester City have been caught cheating the Financial Fair Play (FFP) regulations. Der Spiegel says they inflated various sponsorship deals to balance the books, "manipulating contracts" - or to put it more bluntly laundering Sheik Mansoor's money - through fronts like the Abu Dhabi tourism authority. It must be said the size of the various sponsorship deals always looked dodgy. City needed to do it not just to buy players but to pay off the hapless Roberto Mancini when they sacked him. Hapless because Mancini struggled to even find a way to beat Everton. "There is no answer to the problem of Everton" he once said, possibly after the Toffees beat his team home and away in 2010-11, though he did somehow manage to finally win the Premier League the next season, even if he didn't last much longer. Possibly it had something to do with spending around £200M net on players?

I'm no fan of FFP, which was never designed to make the competition "fair". On the contrary, it was designed to pull up the drawbridge so the most wealthy clubs could never be matched. It has been spectacularly successful in Germany, where Bayern Munich has won the Bundesliga 6 times in a row and 8 times out of the last 10. And in Italy where Juventus has won Serie A seven times in a row. So, when FFP was being introduced, City knew they had to push hard to break into the top echelon of the Premier League, before they found it was unattainable.

And who is complaining the most about Man City? The egregious Uli Hoeness, who complained that "Abu Dhabi only has to open up the oil spigots to afford expensive players". That would be the Uli Hoeness who, in addition to being president of Bayern Munich, was jailed for three and a half years after admitting evading €28.5 million in taxes. No lessons in propriety needed from you, Uli.

Besides being a fundamentally bizarre concept - fining clubs that get into too much debt  - FFP crushes the dreams of fans that their club might find a wealthy owner and make a breakthrough. Even the Leicester fairy tale needed investment. FFP, if it operated as intended, would just guarantee that the biggest clubs stay the biggest clubs, forever.

But even that isn't enough for the elite clubs. They are always greedy for more. Or, in the case of Juve and Bayern, they realise that their fans will get bored. So it was no surprise to read that a group clubs are holding discussions about forming a "super league" of 16 with 11 founders, including 5 English clubs, inviting 5 "guests" to make up the numbers. Guests because they can be relegated, or at least disinvited, whereas the others would have 20 year franchises.

If this feels a bit like deja vu, then it is of course. The then "big five" threatened to breakaway from the Football League in the late 80s. Youngsters might not identify the five correctly: Liverpool, Manchester United and Arsenal yes, but the other two? Everton and Spurs. The FA decided they liked the idea, partly because they had their own issues with the Football League but probably also because they would get something out of it. So they formed the FA Premier League, allowing the top division to ditch the remainder of the Football League, though at least retaining promotion and relegation. The essentially simultaneous arrival of satellite TV turned it into what it is now - yes, a grotesque money go round but at least it's a very competitive. So much so that the original big 5 have not dominated it. OK Man United won the Premier League 13 times in 21 seasons to 2013 but they haven't won it in the last 5 seasons and no club has retained the title since 2009. Arsenal haven't won it since  their "Invincibles" of 2004. And Liverpool and Everton? Nix. Six different clubs have won it. The English game must be in much better shape than any other league in the world.

Whether all the clubs that have been mentioned are actually in cahoots over the European super league isn't clear: for example, newspapers say Chelsea remain committed to the Premier League. Of course, it may just be a lever for these clubs to take an even bigger share of the cake. They always forget that you need a full set of clubs to make a league and want to keep what they see as their "own" revenues from TV rights for example. I have long thought that this is anti-competitive and all such revenues should be shared equally, much as they are in the NFL.

Nevertheless, I have long said that, if a group of clubs want to go off and form a euro-league, let them. (Actually my language is much riper than that, it would only take you one guess I'm sure). And I still take that view. But if the football authorities want to block it they have the power. Every club has to be affiliated to its national football association, or a regional sub-body. In England this goes for clubs from the Premier League to your local park pitch. Of course, you can organise an unauthorised competition, but anyone who plays in it will get banned from playing in authorised football for a long time. This very rule squashed an under 18s Sunday league I started playing in as a schoolboy, not realising it was unauthorised, in the 1960s. And so the FA can ban anyone playing in an unauthorised super league from playing for England, as can all the other countries. Indeed, FIFA has said today that it would ban any such players from playing in the World Cup.

Martin Samuel made much the same point in his column on Tuesday*. He went further, saying the FA could threaten any clubs who went to play in a super league with a ten year ban from re-applying for membership. And then they would have to start off at the bottom of the football pyramid. Samuel is right: the risk of your big fixture being FC United ought to deter Manchester United.

But also, as he says and I have said for several years, super league games wouldn't be interesting enough to hold the attention of football fans in general. I haven't subscribed to Champions League matches for several years now, not because my club isn't in it but because I can't justify the cost for the odd game that I fancy watching. United v Barcelona, yet again, is a yawn.

I think the business model for a super league is therefore flawed. Yes, there are a lot of Man United and Liverpool fans. But, at the moment, when they play each other a lot of fans of other Premier League clubs want to watch on TV. If the game was a fixture in a league their own club wasn't playing in I think a lot of them would lose interest. So a super league can only work if revenues from around the world were much higher.  So guess what? Samuel correctly says the problem with a super league is that it wouldn't be like a permanent Champions League. Games would inevitably be hawked around the world for ever more money. And franchises could move - why does Manchester or London need two teams for example? Samuel thinks a super league, even if it was launched, could collapse. Quite possibly. Whatever, the super league is another European dream I don't buy into.

So call their bluff. Or, alternatively, encourage them to go by making the share of TV revenues completely equal between Premier League clubs. We can do without them.

I nearly said we'd be better off without them. But I doubt that is the case. If the Super League concept is as flawed as Martin Samuel thinks it is, then revenues would decline. Both for the clubs in it and possibly for the remaining Premier League clubs as well. So it probably wouldn't do much good for the business case for Everton's stadium right now.....


*If our greedy, pampered clubs want to join a super league, call their bluff. Daily Mail 6 November 2018