• Super League-UEFA Football war in the last Champions League before the change of format: "The Super League is a reaction to this"

This Thursday in Luxembourg, European football could change forever. The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) will finally issue a ruling in the case of the Super League against UEFA and from its reflections a new way of understanding continental competitions will be born. Or not. Because it is also possible that the CJEU, which has extended its final conclusion by more than six months, will say, in short, that "everything is fine as it is". Be that as it may, on December 21, 2023, the Super League will turn its dream into a reality or a nightmare and will finally know if its raison d'être is viable. It's your D-Day.

Courtroom III on the 6th floor of the European Curia will be responsible for discovering the sentence. He will do so from 9:30 a.m., twelve hours before Real Madrid's match against Alavés in Mendizorroza, the second course of a key day for the Whites' board and for its president, Florentino Pérez, the soul and main actor of the project created on April 18, 2021.

Because on paper it is the 'European Superleague Company S.L.' that denounces UEFA and FIFA, but in practice it is Madrid and the big clubs of the continent, led by the Whites, Barça and Juventus, who are fighting for the Justice to say that the two great organizations of world football, especially UEFA, they have a monopoly position in continental competitions by prohibiting the creation of new events. The decision shall be binding without the possibility of appeal. "We just need to be told that we can create a competition," sources from the Super League explain to EL MUNDO.

The preliminary reflection on the case was made by the Advocate General of the CJEU, the Greek Athanasios Rantos, who in his conclusions was in favour of UEFA and FIFA and said that the rules that make any new competition subject to prior authorisation are compatible with EU competition law. "While the European Super League Company is free to create its own independent football competition outside the UEFA and FIFA ecosystem, it cannot, in addition to creating that competition, continue to participate in football competitions organised by FIFA and UEFA without the prior authorisation of those associations," he said. Freedom, yes. Sanctions, too.

According to experts in the field, the CJEU usually follows the Advocate General's conclusions in more than 80% of cases, an argument that reassures UEFA. But during these months the Super League has announced several changes in its raison d'être that may give it a little more possibilities in the sentence. There is no longer talk of a "semi-closed" competition, but of an "open" one, with 60-80 participating clubs and organized according to sporting merits. Something that, according to sources close to UEFA, should not change the thinking of the Court, which only has to decide on the monopoly or not of its organization.

Alberto Palomar Olmeda, professor of Administrative Law at the Universidad Carlos III, sees "it is really very difficult to predict the effects of the sentence" and believes that "what is decisive is not only the meaning but also the nuances".

"If he agrees with the Spanish judge and prohibits the sports movement from taking coercive measures against those who, without abandoning their organization, think about the formation of a league on the margins, it is clear that the effects go much further than football and what will panic or crisis is the whole of the so-called pyramid system of sports organization," Designates.

  • Real Madrid
  • European Super League
  • UEFA
  • FIFA