As football continues its greed-induced descent into anarchy, something urgently needs to be done to save the sport from destroying itself.

Just a couple of weeks after the despicable power-grab known as Project Big Picture was sprung on fans, it has been revealed that England’s major teams are in discussions to form a European Super League.

It’s not the first time this idea has been suggested but it is the first time, at least that I am aware of, that the plan has been promised €5 billion in bank funding to get it off the ground.

And, when you are dealing with club owners who are driven only by an insatiable, ravenous, hunger for money, that is the sort of figure that turns ideas into reality.

According to reports, this league would be made up of 18 teams from England, Italy, France, Germany and Spain, and it would replace the current Champions League.

All of sudden the plans outlined in Project Big Picture – namely killing the League Cup and reducing the Premier League to 18 teams – make a whole lot more sense. It wasn’t about reducing the number of games for the big teams and looking after the health of the players. It was about freeing up space to fit a money-spinning Super League into the schedule.

From what we understand so far, the teams taking part in this new league – and I am pretty sure you don’t need me to list the names as it is all the usual suspects – wouldn’t be leaving their domestic competitions. So essentially this will be a replacement for the Champions League.

The irony is that, as a concept, I am not entirely against the idea of a Super League replacing the Champions League. When I first heard about it, I actually thought it might be interesting, if it is done right. Maybe four groups of 10 with the top two in each progressing to the quarter-finals, or something like that.

But then I read the small print: the plan is that all the teams would go into one huge league which would create plenty of insanely dull and pointless mid-table games.

Worse than that, though, it was also revealed that the 18 founding teams would be there for 20 years without threat of relegation or elimination. Year after year, irrelevant of performance, these founders would be guaranteed their spot at the cash trough.

And, at that point, I realised this isn’t an idea aimed at freshening up football, it is nothing more than a way for the rich to get richer without fear of missing out on qualification. As simple as that.

An incestuous, closed shop aimed at allowing the biggest teams on the continent to hoover up more money and essentially drive yet another nail into the coffins of smaller teams.

Not only would the majority of teams in the Premier League start each season knowing the title was out of reach, they would have little or no chance of forcing their way into Europe’s prime competition either. Absolutely nothing to play for, match after match, year after year.

This isn’t an idea aimed at freshening up football, it is nothing more than a way for the rich to get richer

Rumour has it that Manchester United and Liverpool are the driving force behind this new project, and that only serves to confirm, if any confirmation were needed, that these billionaire club owners care not one iota for football.

Football is merely a means to end for them, a way to increase revenue streams and boost their bulging bank accounts. Especially the American owners, who, it now transpires, are little more than a collection of Bond villains.

They know nothing of the history of the game, the traditions behind it, the rivalries built up over the decades, the way generations of families have been brought with their football club at the heart of the community.

To these crass, plastic, shallow, avarice-driven individuals (and families, of course, in the Gazers case), football is just a cash cow to be genetically engineered until it is squirting money out of udders all over its deformed body.

Well, enough is enough.

It is now abundantly obvious that football is incapable of governing itself. Higher powers need to step in and take over the whole sorry mess and sort it out once and for all.

When money became football’s dominant driving force with the creation of the Premier League in 1992, it felt like football had taken a dangerous turn.

The path that was embarked on then has led us to the point we are at now – where a select few billionaires are trying to control a sport that actually isn’t theirs to control: it belongs to the people, the billions of people, for whom it is much more than money.

It’s time the billions took it back from the billionaires. Revolution anyone?

Exiling Ozil seems very harsh

Personally, I have never considered Mesut Ozil to be an absolute superstar.

A good player, yes, and occasionally a very good one. But not the ball-playing genius he has often been made out to be. And certainly not worth the rumoured €350,000-a-week contract he is on at the Emirates.

Despite that, I am absolutely staggered at the way Arsenal are treating him right now. Leaving him out of their Europa League squad was one thing – but leaving him out of their Premier League squad as well, that was shocking and disrespectful.

This means that, for the rest of the season, Ozil, a World Cup winner with 92 caps to his name, let’s not forget, will only be able to play for Arsenal’s youth team.

And, at 32, one of the few things he certainly isn’t is a youth.

The German is in the final year of his Arsenal contract and I am guessing the club can’t wait for it to run out now that the manager has decided he really, really doesn’t like him.

But surely, even if it has all gone sour, there must be a better, cheaper and more honourable way for club and player to draw a line under their seven-year relationship.

It all feels rather messy and degrading for a player who is more than likely not worth the money he is getting paid but certainly doesn’t deserve treating like a leper.

On hearing the news that he had been omitted, Ozil said he was sad that loyalty seems to count for little.

After all, he signed a new Arsenal contract a couple of years ago when other clubs were interested.

And he is right. So often it is players who jump ship in search of greener and more lucrative pastures. In this case, it is the ship that has left him behind.

A very unfortunate series of events.

james@findit.com.mt
Twitter: @maltablade