"The crisis in the Super League cannot lead to a return to normalcy"

The managing director of the Football Supporters Europe (FSE) association, Ronan Evain, is satisfied with the failure of the Super League under popular pressure. But for him, European football still has a lot of problems

Now that there is nothing, or not much, left of Florentino Pérez's Super League, it is time for the distribution of the medals in the winning camp.

We have already spoken of Nasser Al-Khelaïfi, but the diplomatic victory of the boss of Paris Saint-Germain would never have been possible without the support of the football people, especially in England, where supporters, coaches and players have stepped up to the plate. to make the club presidents swallow their crazy project.

Something to celebrate, but not in excess, according to the general manager of the Football Supporters Europe (FSE) association, Ronan Evain.

For him, the fight for fairer football has only just begun.

The ball is, according to him, in the court of UEFA.

Can we speak of a popular victory after the failure of the Super League?

There is a shared feeling.

Yes, on the one hand it's a victory, we can't say the opposite, because the supporters mobilized, took to the streets [in England mainly], they mobilized the politicians to fight against a radical change in the sport.

So obviously it's a victory, also in the sense that we saw a unity on a subject that touches on the governance of football: political unity, we saw players and coaches stepping up to the plate, we saw the media , broadcasters too.

It means that there is still an idea of the common good and the need to protect football.

But, there is a but "…

But it is also a defeat in the sense that it is the confirmation of a process initiated a long time ago, 15-20 years ago, which is the consolidation of the power of these big clubs.

There are people who say today that they saw the blow coming but I am not convinced.

Seeing them try to get out of the way when they had just obtained the reform of the C1, which was however tailored to their needs, that was impossible to predict.

Precisely because they had obtained more or less what they wanted.

But it can't be denied that a movement has successfully thwarted the plans of some football pundits, has it?

I am happy to see that the collective action worked but also worried because what has just happened confirms all the fundamental problems of the structuring of European football: the distortion of competitions, the concentration of money and power in the hands of a very limited number of clubs and the absence of a real regulator at European level. What all of this shows is that we need a strong UEFA that plays its role of regulator, that we need the federations also to play their role of counter-power, because all this was lacking in European football for the past 30 years. Football is going through an unprecedented crisis which cannot lead to a return to normalcy because it has exposed the flaws in the system.

What about conspiracy theory, the idea that the Super League was a way to put pressure on UEFA?

As Rocard said, “we must always prefer the hypothesis of bullshit to that of conspiracy.

Bullshit is common.

The plot demands a rare mind.

This is exactly what is happening.

The people behind the Super League are, in my opinion, incapable of hatching such an elaborate plot.

Florentino Perez and Agnelli can't even manage their clubs, they can't generate profits, how could they develop a 50-cushion billiard shot to take control of European football?

I don't believe it for a second.

How did we get there?

Because it is a project which was carried out by two people completely disconnected from realities, Perez and Agnelli, and by American companies (in particular the one which owns Milan, Manchester United and Liverpool) which do not have the slightest knowledge of the how sport works in Europe and really believed they were going to blow our minds. They worked with public relations firms that had a vested interest in making it happen and who gave them crazy polls on the massive support of European supporters for their project.

They should also have sensed the arrival of the politician in this matter.

And there were other clubs which, for their part, must have suspected that it would not pass with the supporters, I am thinking in particular of Barça, but who went there because they are in financial trouble.

The image deficit that results from this is so great that it is unimaginable that it is a conspiracy.

What should this crisis lead to?

We need a strong internal regulator, which must be UEFA, to stop ceding ground to the big clubs by leaving them all or part of the control of the competitions. Then, we need an adaptation of the European regulations which can protect sport in general and football in particular. What we have seen is not a simple commercial dispute between two Internet giants. No, it is our way of life that is at stake, our culture, our community.

If we allow the top of the basket to be privatized, we endanger the entire pyramid.

It has to become a political problem for there to be political responses to what just happened.

If European law today does not allow this answer, well it must be adapted.

We protect culture, rightly, from vultures such as those who tried to blow up football yesterday, we must also protect sport in the same way.

What should be the response of European football vis-à-vis the clubs which have attempted this poker move?

The Liverpool owner has done anything, but is it up to the players or the supporters, who have nothing to do with all of this, to pay the price for this madness? It seems complicated to me. Let us think about what we want as a redistribution model that benefits all players in this sport. We need to focus on a competition that is based solely on sporting merit and, as far as possible, a system where the clubs are on an equal footing at the start of the competition. And so that we stop with this over-concentration of powers in a few hands. The number of countries represented in C1 is constantly decreasing, in favor of clubs from three, four, five countries… and it is this distortion to which we must respond.

Has the time come to move forward on important subjects which explain more the disenchantment of the fans, the falls of the television audiences, that the duration of the matches or other crazy ideas heard in recent hours in the mouths of some?

What is happening is also the end of a very vertical, paternalistic model on the part of football and clubs.

What has just happened shows that this approach no longer works, that today European civil society is structured in such a way that it can influence the course of things, whether it is the players, the clubs, the supporters, the leagues, all participate in this discussion.

But it must be open to everyone.

We are fortunate to have had a long-standing reflection on the good governance of sport in Europe by a whole slew of academics, let's listen to what they have to say in order to start a real reflection on all these pressing questions.

Today we have to ask ourselves what we want for European football and what we are doing to ensure that it has a positive influence on our societies.

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