The European Super League is here and it's called the Premier League
But probably not for the reason you think.
When the Super League was put forward by Europe’s top clubs it was clear what the aim was - to solidify the historically big sides’ finances and reputations for years to come.
Reasoning such as ‘young people aren’t interested in football anymore’ and ‘why do the best teams not play each other more’ were put forward by people like Florentino Perez and Andrea Agnelli and shot down just as fast.
People saw through the charade; it was a power play to create a footballing monopoly and it failed spectacularly. The ‘threat to the global game’ flickered out as quickly as it sparked alight.
But as Master Oogway said in the original Kung Fu Panda: ‘One often meets his destiny on the road he takes to avoid it.’
The Premier League over the last decade has become a broadcasting behemoth and the money involved has hit astronomic heights with no sign of stopping.
The Athletic reported that between 2022 and 2025 the Premier League’s International rights will bring in £5.05bn, while UK broadcast rights will be worth £5bn.
They also stated that overseas rights have risen by 30 per cent over the last package, which brought in £3.89 billion between 2019 and 2022, while the overall total package has risen by 16% to £10.5bn.
And as the saying goes ‘Money goes where money is’. The league’s commercial rights have risen from £88m to £430m during the same period, while several clubs have seen outside investment or changes in ownership.
You can also see the trend in Deloitte’s Football Money League for 2023, where 11 of the top 20 are teams from the Premier League.
And while this happens other leagues such as Serie A, La Liga and the Bundesliga have been left behind.
Of course, your average fan doesn’t see this or if they do, they don’t care (bar knowing which channels have picked up the rights so they know who they need to subscribe to). What they do pay attention to, however, is how much money clubs spend in the transfer market.
I think January 2023 has been the point where many fans have realised across the globe just how far ahead the Premier League is compared to the rest of the world.
And for many, the reason alarm bells have gone off is because of Chelsea.
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January was always considered ‘a difficult month to do business in’, but no one told the Premier League that. According to Deloitte, English clubs spent a combined £815m on transfers last month as they looked to strengthen ahead of the second half of the season.
By comparison, the rest of the Top 5 Leagues combined spent £220m. What’s even more worrying is that number is less than Chelsea’s spending on its own, as the London club dropped over £280m on new signings (after spending around £278m in the summer).
New owner Todd Boehly wanted to make a statement and he has done just that; whether his investment pays off on the field we shall see. But I think what was the biggest red flag for many fans was how they went about securing the deals, rather than how much they paid.
Players like Enzo Fernandez had ‘don’t come and get me’ prices which were meant to dissuade mid-season deals, but Chelsea rocked up to the negotiating table willing to pay whatever Benfica asked for, albeit in structured deals over several years, and they did it on deadline day.
Clubs said their highest price and Boehly didn’t even blink.
However, what if I told you that even though Chelsea have drawn attention to the problem, they are not the prime example of the Premier League morphing into the Super League?
The London club are in a rather privileged position. They are already an established ‘elite’ club and have just got a rich new consortium backing them, while their debt to their previous owner Roman Abramovich was completely written off.
Factor in that they were well below their FFP threshold due to how they had approached the transfer market in past years and they took advantage of FFP by amortising each purchase with a long contract, and a clearer picture begins to form.
Yes, their expenditure is still at an almost laughable level, but it looks more like an anomaly than the rule.1
So look at this like Die Hard with a Vengeance, Chelsea are the bomb that went off on the subway and has everyone panicked, but who are the clubs looking to move in and rob the National Reserve in the chaos?
Well for that we need to look towards the bottom of the table.
There was a time when top players would not go anywhere near a relegation battle, and by that logic, the six points between 13th and bottom of the table should have put the fear of god into any prospective signings. But when you look at their spending:
You’ve just got to feel sorry for Everton at this point. That Anthony Gordon money will sit nicely in the board’s pockets as they head hurtling towards the Championship.
On the other hand, five of the eight teams listed here had a net spend more than La Liga’s and Serie A’s total spends (both leagues spent £25m on transfers cumulatively) despite their struggles on the pitch.
If that doesn’t put it into perspective for you, consider the following.
Nottingham Forest have brought in 29 players this season, including three times Champion League winner Keylor Navas from PSG; Southampton activated the €30m release clause of Braga’s Vitinha while former European champions Marseille were haggling over the price (the Portuguese forward eventually moved to France after OM moved some finances around to facilitate the deal).
This is the reality the likes of Juventus, Barcelona, Real Madrid and the traditional Top Six were worried about.
Not that the already existing big clubs in the Premier League would go further ahead, but that one day they’d be sitting in the negotiating room trying to sway a player into joining their great and historic club and in would walk someone like Bournemouth with a stronger hand.
Prestige gets you so far, but money talks. As Carl Anka likes to say, the Premier League can put payments on their metal credit cards while the rest of the world is fishing around for spare change.
Not to say the guy accused of alleged financial mismanagement has a point here, but Agnelli warned of this future during his farewell speech from Juventus:
"European football needs a new system. Otherwise, it risks a decrease in favour of a single dominant league which within a few years will attract all the talent of European football within its league, completely marginalising the other leagues and the others are already marginalised."
Of course, some would argue that Juventus are only in the position they are in because they are trying to find a way to financially compete with what other clubs are offering. That situation being that they are under investigation for allegedly fudging accounts to get around FFP.
The thing is, if you’re a fan of a Premier League club, then this probably doesn’t sound like a concern to you. Football is more fun when it’s competitive and the lion’s share of your games come in the domestic league.
And if we’re being honest part of the reason other leagues are so far behind is due to their own shortcomings when it comes to marketing their product (here’s looking at you Javier Tebas).2
But to play devil’s advocate, it is a worrying trend.
Football is a game for all, and a single league monopoly undermines that. Also for fans of the Champions League, a migration of top talent to one single league would disrupt that competition along with the Europa League and UEFA Conference League.
Whether this trend reignites plans for a European Super League with a reworked set of rules is yet to be seen. The recent ruling by a Madrid court that ESL clubs can not be punished by UEFA or FIFA for their plans may be enough to set the wheels in motion once again (though they will likely wait for the final verdict from the European Court of Justice later this year).
Ego is a big thing and I doubt that these clubs will accept that the Super League as an artificial concept failed and therefore go down without a fight.
But as it stands it is not the spending of those at the top that should worry the rest of the world, it is how the ones at the bottom of the Premier League are starting to pull away from those outside the bubble.3
It should also be noted that multiple reports have stated that if Chelsea fail to qualify for the CL this season they could fail FFP.
The Calciopoli scandal in Serie A is also often credited with killing interest in Italian football and stopping them from becoming a similar powerhouse to the Premier League.
This post is more about the problem than the solution, but other leagues do need to look at how they market their product if they are to catch up any time soon (though the question is whether it’s too late).
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