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Berlin / London (dpa) - After Manchester City, other top English clubs have turned away from the plans for a European football super league.
Champions Liverpool FC, Manchester United, Tottenham Hotspur and Arsenal FC also announced on Wednesday night that they would say goodbye to the establishment of the exclusive league.
According to reports, Chelsea FC had also taken steps accordingly.
The Spanish clubs FC Barcelona and Atlético Madrid are also expected to withdraw, media reported.
This should mean that the highly controversial project that threatened to split European club football is off the table again.
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Twelve top European clubs, including City and Chelsea, Liverpool FC, Real Madrid and Juventus Turin, announced the establishment of a billion-dollar Super League on Monday night.
This would be in direct competition with the Champions League of the European Football Union UEFA.
No club from the Bundesliga had joined the Super League.
The billion-dollar project was to be financed by a major US bank.
In England, home to half of the twelve founding clubs, Prime Minister Boris Johnson threatened severe sanctions. He announced in the "Sun" that he would show the "ridiculous" billion dollar project the red card. His sports minister Oliver Dowden presented drastic ideas in parliament to prevent the "Big Six", the top English clubs, from participating. Even Prince William - president of the national association FA - intervened.
National associations and many other clubs also massively criticized the plans.
The UEFA around its President Aleksander Ceferin had attacked the initiators of the Super League sharply and threatened with severe sanctions.
The clubs should be excluded from the Champions League, their national players were threatened with a ban for the European championship in the summer.
European club football was threatened with a mud fight in court, possibly even before the semi-finals of the current Champions League season at the beginning of May.
This danger now seems to have been averted.
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© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210420-99-284714 / 4
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