By Tony Attwood
You won’t read about this in the English media of course… but it is making waves in most other countries where the media is less beholden to the football authorities and freer to write about football as it is perceived, rather than as the authorities want us to believe it is.
So the news is breaking across Europe (but not the UK, at least not big time) that Uefa is at long last being investigated for its anti-competitive stance, particularly in relation to the way it worked to prohibit the launch of the Super League. This now questions once and for all how Uefa, and by implication Fifa, can have the absolute and total power to define what competitions can take place and when.
However, in the UK the management of the story of the investigations into and challenges to Fifa and Uefa have always been that there is no support for any change, and that Uefa and Fifa are seen as doing a good job, even though they now have the issue of Manchester City’s legal cases against the League to occupy their thoughts.
As things stand Uefa and Fifa have no powers to stop a Super League from being created, but they don’t like it because the SL would be outside of Fifa and Uefa and so would challenge the absolute power of those bodies. Such retention of power however is exactly the opposite of the fundamentals of openness and competition upon which most of Europe bases its rules, although Fifa and Uefa have always argued that such regulations don’t apply to them because “sport is different.”
And of course, the fact is that it makes sense to have one controlling body for a sport in each country and maybe each continent even, so that clubs and countries can play each other. But the fundamental rules in Europe are, that although this is ok, there cannot be regulations that prohibit countries from setting up their own competitions without Uefa or Fifa approval. And that is what happened with Super League.
Now the reason why this is so important can be seen in the Manchester City case, where the club is threatening to sue, sue and keep suing the rest of the League if it doesn’t get its own way. And since ManC have far more money than the rest of the league put together, they can of course do this until everyone else gives in, or unless the rest of the League form their own competitions without ManC.
As things stand if the rest of the League formed an English Super League deliberately without ManC, ManC could ask Uefa to ban the creation of the League as being unauthorised. And this I think this is what is holding up the resolution of the current issues between the League and ManC. If Uefa approved the English Super League created through invitation, but without inviting clubs funded on the ManC model, Manchester City could demand that Fifa should order the clubs to stop, and tell players that if they played for any club via an unrecognised competition, they would be banned for life from playing professional football elsewhere.
Of course the media didn’t really cover all this when on 31 May 2021, the Super League filed a complaint to the European Union Court of Justice against Uefa and Fifa and their attempts to stop the competition. But that’s what is going on.
The Swiss Department of Justice ruled that Uefa should not issue sanctions against clubs that were involved in the Super League project and in December 2023 the European Court of Justice ruled that Fifa and Uefa rules banning clubs from joining a Super League were unlawful (most UK papers seemed to miss that story).
As we all remember the six English clubs invited into the project, including Arsenal, withdrew when they were told that the FA and Premier League were against the project. The media launched a major campaign against the proposal which many groups also supported. The clubs then withdrew pending the court proceedings which are now starting.
What didn’t make the headlines in the UK however was that in May last year, the Spanish courts ruled that Fifa and Uefa had each abused their dominant market position agreeing with the ruling of the Court of Justice of the European Union. The UK is not subject to the rules of the Court of Justice of the EU, but football in England is subject to the rules of Uefa. That is the same situation for some other countries, but they always fall in line with Fifa and Uefa rules.
Of course, Uefa could set up its own Super League and English clubs could refuse to join and instead play in the existing competitions which would not have the big clubs from Europe in them as they would be in the Super League. And indeed England has done its own “standalone” approach in the past. I’m not sure how long it would last however as many club finances are predicated on being in Europe and besides most PL clubs are not owned by English companies.
The press did not cover it because very few people are interested
You see this is where I find it so hard to follow your logiic Andrew. You say that very few people are interested, but you still read my commeents, suggesting that you have an interset in something that other people are not interested in. That does seem a little perverse to me, deliberately to be reading something that you are not interested in, in order to tell me that the media has not covered a story because people are not interested.
But then again maybe people are not interested because they don’t know about it because the press don’t cover it. That remains a possibility.