Paris (AFP)
Forty-eight hours and then goes: after threatening Monday to upset the established order of European football, the promoters of the Super League can only note the failure of their controversial project after the withdrawal of six English clubs. .. while waiting for the next withdrawals.
By a turnaround as thunderous as its irruption in the landscape had been, this private competition, imagined by big clubs to supplant the Champions League, the historic European competition since 1955, found itself on Tuesday emptied of part of its substance.
The fault of the successive withdrawals Tuesday of six of its twelve founding clubs, all English: Manchester City first, then Arsenal, Liverpool, Tottenham and Manchester United and finally Chelsea.
"We made a mistake and we apologize for it," Arsenal wrote in a statement, summing up in one sentence what supporters, authorities and governments have been struggling to point out for the past two days.
These clubs thought they would convince the football world by offering more high-stakes matches, and were aiming for colossal income by securing a permanent ticket in an event almost inaccessible to other European teams, with 15 of the 20 members automatically qualified.
But the rebels met with a general outcry, which ended up bearing fruit in England.
- Popular football victory -
The creators of the Super League have reacted to this Brexit of the English clubs by announcing that they will "reconsider the most appropriate steps to reshape the project", which is akin to a suspension of the project.
While waiting to know what will happen to this very poorly engaged Super League, this incredible episode now places European football in the face of the immense dissensions which animate it, between rich clubs eager for profits and necessary maintenance of a form of equity and sporting uncertainty.
Will dissidents be punished for considering such a revolution?
The reform of the Champions League by 2024, adopted on Monday, will it be maintained when it did not seem to satisfy them enough, while being criticized by some supporters as being difficult to read?
These are all questions that the European Football Union (UEFA) will have to grapple with, although it has given way in recent years in the face of the biggest players.
In any case, it looks like a victory for popular football against the big bosses and shareholders, symbolized for example by the few hundred fans of English clubs who expressed their disapproval on Tuesday evening near the Stamford Bridge stadium in Chelsea, in London, in failure to do so in the forums due to the pandemic.
It is also a success, more relative, for the authorities of football, whose threats of reprisals ended up dissuading certain rebel clubs, these "snakes", "guided only by greed", of the very words of the president of the 'UEFA Aleksander Ceferin.
He did not hesitate to brandish the exclusion of these clubs, and their players, from all national and international competitions, a threat then taken up by Gianni Infantino, the boss of the International Federation (Fifa).
- "It's not sport" -
The Super League, led by Real Madrid boss Florentino Pérez, seemed to have anticipated these threats.
She even won a first legal victory on Tuesday by obtaining from a commercial court in Madrid a decision likely to temporarily freeze any sanction concerning her.
But opposite, the mistrust was too general, like the press releases from major broadcasters indicating that they would refuse to support the project via lucrative television rights contracts.
The meeting scheduled for Friday of the UEFA Executive Committee was also able to cool some inclinations since the body planned to examine the exclusion of the three "mutinous" clubs still competing in the last four of the current edition of the League of champions (City, Chelsea and Real).
But it is within the world of football itself that the opposition has been most virulent.
The players of Liverpool, a rebellious club, have issued a joint statement to affirm their rejection.
This opinion joined that of Pep Guardiola, star coach of Manchester City, another dissident club.
For the Catalan, "it is not sport if success is guaranteed or if losing does not matter."
The English clubs out, now remain three Spaniards and three Italians, but still no German or French, two major nations that may have missed the Super League to present a common front.
"Any proposal without the support of UEFA (...) does not solve the problems" of football, said Nasser Al-Khelaïfi, boss of Paris SG, excluding joining the rebels.
The solution may not go through the Super League.
It's up to European football to invent another one, from Wednesday.
© 2021 AFP