The words that spring to mind when looking back at events in football over the last seven days are nearly all unprintable. A few of them may even be unspeakable.
Like everyone else I was shocked and stunned when the European Super League news broke last Sunday. And, like every other football fan, I was overjoyed when this greedy, evil attempt at a coup collapsed like a despicable house of cards just a few days later.
I’m not going to go through the events in any sort of detail as I’m pretty sure you all know how the drama unfolded. But I will tell you this: this whole sorry saga has only served to highlight how English football desperately needs reform and regulation.
The way clubs are run needs to change. The way money filters down from the top to the bottom of the pyramid needs to change. The way clubs are allowed to get into debt needs to change.
But, more than any of that, the way clubs are owned need to change.
We can no longer allow institutions like football clubs – because that’s what they are, institutions at the heart of communities – to be run by distant, remote, uncaring millionaires and billionaires with profit as the only motivating factor in their decision-making.
A situation like the one that just unfolded has been threatening to happen for years, pretty much ever since the likes of John Henry, Stan Kroenke and the Glazer family took over at Liverpool, Arsenal and United. Clueless, shallow Americans with as much respect for history and tradition as a bucket of frogs.
They didn’t buy their respective clubs because they wanted good seats to the games or to have a few pints with the fans – they bought the clubs because of the potential to line their own pockets.
Simple as that.
But what is the greatest barrier to generating money in the football world? Being reliant on performances. Win the league, win the Champions League, win domestic cups and the money flows. Have a poor season and revenue drops massively.
Hence the European Super League, with a logo designed by an eight-year-old on Microsoft Word. A closed club for the elite where the fear of missing out on the riches would be eliminated by the fact that participation is guaranteed.
Dressing it up as an attempt to save football, as ring-leader Florentino Perez did, was almost as vomit-inducing as the grovelling apologies we have heard from the sinful six English clubs since they realised they had made a mistake of cosmic proportions.
This sport belongs to the fans. The clubs only exist because of the fans. Now is the time to put the power back into their hands
If any one of them was standing in front of me in flames and I was desperate for a pee, I would walk off to find a bathroom.
This poorly planned scheme was about ensuring those 12 clubs – billions of euros in debt between them – get to keep most of the money at the top of the sport for themselves. Forever.
That it would probably have led to the collapse of the entire football pyramid meant nothing to them. That their plan was effectively killing the hopes and dreams of everyone who follows one of the other thousands of teams in Europe was irrelevant.
It was just about them and their money.
To make matters worse, they were cooking up this devious scheme behind the backs of everyone else involved in football while simultaneously working with UEFA on its reform of the Champions League. Pure, evil, two-faced deceit which makes anyone involved in the ESL impossible to trust ever again.
Ironically, this whole debacle has had one positive effect on European football – those 12 clubs no longer hold the power and influence they had before. The threat of forming a breakaway league was
always their biggest bargaining chip when it came to squeezing more money out of the Premier League, Serie A, La Liga or UEFA.
Give us more money or we’re off, was their standard approach to every negotiation. Well, their bluff has been called. They tried to do what they have been threatening to do for years and it failed. Miserably. Within 48 hours. And that failure has significantly reduced their collective ability to hold football to ransom.
Oh, what joy it was watching their devious plan collapse under the weight of global outrage.
But I digress.
The point I was going to make a little earlier before I got side-tracked is that this whole ugly debacle needs to be the catalyst for change in the English game.
Firstly, English football’s ownership rules must change. They need to adopt a different model – something like Germany’s Bundesliga where all clubs are 51 per cent owned by fans. The presence of proper fans on the boards of clubs, wielding decision-blocking voting rights, would go a long way towards ensuring this type of nightmare is not revisited.
It won’t be an easy change and it will take some time to implement. But it is a change I think is entirely necessary for the future of football, not just in England but ideally around the whole of Europe. Even though fan ownership didn’t stop financially desperate Real Madrid and Barcelona signing up for the ESL, it still makes a lot of sense in the long term.
This sport belongs to the fans. The clubs only exist because of the fans. Now is the time to put the power back into their hands and take it away from people who don’t deserve the honour of being football club owners.
The second thing that needs to happen is that English government (and others around Europe should do something similar) need to put laws in place making it illegal for clubs to take part in competitions other than those organised by the FA, the Premier League, the Football League, UEFA and FIFA. Not rules, but laws.
Sure, this would put off the Henrys and the Glazers from owning the big clubs. But that is exactly what we need right now – to see the back of these despicable excuses for human beings. And, after the public humiliation they have suffered over the past few days, don’t be surprised if some of them are now looking to cash in and get out.
Overall, it’s been a traumatic week and a desperately sad one in many ways.
Hopefully, however, it will lead to a proper shake-up which will make the concept of football belonging to the fans legally enshrined.
Just to finish on a lighter note, my favourite description of the whole ESL thing came via Peter Crouch who retweeted this little gem: “This European Super League is like planning a lad’s night out before anyone asks their wives if it’s alright.”
Perfectly put.
email: james@quizando.com
twitter: @maltablade