European Super Leagues are back in the news as they almost always are when UEFA tournament structures are up for debate and renewal. The game goes a little something like this…
Big clubs: We’d like more money and fewer risks please
UEFA: Ermmm… but won’t that be shit?
Big clubs: If you don’t give us everything we want we’ll breakaway and form our own league
UEFA: How about we give you almost everything you want and we get to keep a little bit of the money for ourselves?
Big clubs: Deal, we didn’t really want the hassle of having to organise it ourselves anyway.
UEFA: M&^%$*(@&(ers
This time the proposal was for a 20 team European Super League with 15 core participants that couldn’t be relegated and 5 guest clubs that could be relegated. Essentially, a closed shop similar to what you get in American sports’ franchise system. It would have sucked.
Instead, now we’re looking likely to get an expanded 36 team Champions League group stage with ten matches per club played in a ‘Swiss’ system - a term borrowed from how chess tournaments can be organised - with no further clarity being offered on exactly which Swiss system will be employed. It is also very likely to suck.
The only thing you can be sure of is that there will be more money, fewer games of consequence and less chance of one of those pesky smaller clubs advancing far in the tournament.
However, the ‘Super League’ trick has been successfully used for nearly 35 years, with Silvio Berlusconi and other powerful owners threatening a breakaway in the late 1980s to ensure that the European Cup metamorphosed into the Champions League.
Someone should write a book on that:
e.g.
I wanted to see which clubs would have been part of a European Super League had one happened in the nineties.
So first I needed some objective criteria. I borrowed my inspiration from golf majors and how they allocate their placings. The re-invite previous winners from a specified time period, winners of other majors, people who have done consistently well but not quite won the tournaments and then rely on world rankings to fill out the remaining places.
No criteria will be perfect but it’s just a thought experiment so don’t overly stress about them
Any club who has won the European Cup in the past 5 seasons
Any club who has reached the European Cup semi finals twice in the past 5 seasons
Any club who has won the UEFA Cup and/or Cup Winners Cup twice in the past 5 seasons
Any club who has won the UEFA Cup and/or Cup winners Cup in the past 5 seasons and reached another European final
Any club who has won two European trophies in the past 10 years
Any club in the top five European leagues who has won their domestic league twice in the past five years.
Any club in the next five top European leagues who has won their domestic league three times in the past past five years.
Any club in a top 10 European league to have won that league in the past five years and reached the European Cup semi finals.
Any clubs not otherwise qualified as determined by UEFA team ranking
I decided to make three separate calculations for breakaway super leagues in three separate years, with the aim of hopefully showing the stupidity of creating a closed shop. My years were 1990, 1995 and 2000.
1990
Twenty clubs from thirteen different countries - two of which no longer exist.
Steaua Bucharest, FC Porto, PSV Eindhoven and AC Milan were the previous European Cup winners; and they were joined by Benfica, Real Madrid and Bayern Munich on the strength of the European Cup performances alone.
Only Liverpool make it from England due to the Heysel ban; but clubs like Barcelona, Juventus and IFK Gothenburg (not a typo) are in the Super League on the strength of winning two continental competitions in the previous decade.
In 1990, the five top rated leagues according to UEFA were Germany, Italy, Spain, Belgium and Portugal, with Maradona’s Napoli and two Belgian Clubs; Anderlecht and Club Brugge qualifying by being twice national champions. Rangers from Scotland joined on the basis of three league titles with Dynamo Kiev, Marseille and Red Star Belgrade rounding out the top twenty.
Interestingly, had we needed another team from the UEFA team ranks to complete our twenty it would have been Dundee United.
1995
The mid-nineties really was the heyday of Serie A - AC Milan, Inter Milan, Parma, Juventus and Sampdoria all qualify for the Super League, while recent UEFA Cup finalists Fiorentina, Torino and Roma all miss out.
Red Star Belgrade, Barcelona, Marseille and Ajax are recent European Cup/Champions League winners and Bayern made two European Cup semi-finals in the previous five years. They also lost to Norwich City and nearly lost to Cork City in the same period.
Manchester United and Arsenal represent England. United for winning the Premier League twice while the Gunners had been to the two Cup Winner’s Cup finals.
Porto, Anderlecht, Spartak Moscow, Besiktas and Paris Saint-Germain meet our domestic league winning criteria while the final three places are allocated by UEFA team ranking: Real Madrid (1st), Benfica (10th), Eintracht Frankfurt (13th). It had been a barren few years in european football for Real as Cruyff’s Dream Team had been so dominant domestically.
2000
For this edition I tweaked the ‘Super League’ criteria slightly because the Champions League was increasing in importance vis-a-vis other UEFA competition. In 1997-98 runners-up from the top 8 ranked UEFA leagues were allowed into the Champions League, so the qualifying criteria were amended to allow for any team who reached two Champions League quarter-finals in the period.
Ajax, Porto, Bayern Munich and Dynamo Kiev all qualified through regular trips to the last 8, joining Real Madrid, Manchester United, Juventus and Borussia Dortmund as the recent champions.
Once again Italy were well represented with five teams. Lazio replacing Sampdoria, who had been fixtures of the first two Super Leagues.
Monaco and Barcelona qualified on the strength of their domestic form as did Olympiacos, Spartak Moscow and Sparta Prague. Panathinaikos, courtesy of their 1996 Champions League semi-final appearance and a Greek championship are the 18th qualifier; two final places are given to La Liga sides on the basis of UEFA ranking.
Apart from Manchester United no Premier League side qualifies on merit.
2021
Fast forward a generation and the 15 core teams from the semi-proposed European Super League would be
Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United, Arsenal, Tottenham and Chelsea
Real Madrid, Barcelona and Atletico Madrid
Juventus, AC Milan and Inter Milan
Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund
Paris Saint Germain
Only five of these clubs would have qualified for every incarnation of the Super League during the 1990s according to my criteria - Real Madrid, Barcelona, Juventus, AC Milan and Bayern Munich.
In May 1999, when Manchester United were winning their treble Manchester City needed penalties to beat Gillingham to win the Division 2 playoff final. Had these Super League plans been drawn up in 2000, Manchester City would have been permanently frozen out.
Indeed three of the English teams now deemed so ‘core’ to European football’s success couldn’t crack at Top 20 continental club list at any time during the 1990s.
The whole nature of football is transient. Success is not guaranteed. Football’s winners now aren’t necessarily going to be winners for ever. Creating a closed shop without relegation is so antithetical to the spirit of European football that it should never be allowed to go ahead.
Especially because it seeks to freeze out clubs with fantastic European pedigree from ‘smaller’ leagues. Ajax and Porto who featured in all my theoretical Super Leagues are on the outside looking in on this latest European Super League concept because they’re not deemed financially attractive enough.
Ajax have been to the Champions League semi-finals more recently than most of the core teams of the proposed Super League. Despite the six European Cups/Champions League between Ajax and Porto (five more than Arsenal, Tottenham and Chelsea combined) they’re not welcome - no one outside the big five European leagues are.
Sadly, regardless of whether we have a Super League or merely an expanded Champions League the principle of qualifying on merit is almost certain to be eroded in the next few years.
Like many things including Happy Meal toys, Curly Wurlys and breathing next to people, European football was just better in the nineties.
I very much enjoyed this, and I think it represents a far better way of picking a 'super league' than just a bunch of big clubs self-selecting themselves. Having said that, it would be interesting to perform the exercise for 2011 and 2021. I think there's an argument for bundling all the large markets together so we might get a bit more competition in the domestic leagues, but relegation has always been the problem. I did wonder about the kind of re-election system that the Football League used to employ, or creating some kind of ground-size requirement like I think rugby had at least for a while. I say that as a long-standing follower of AFC Bournemouth. I appreciated the time in the Premier League, but with such a small ground it wasn't likely to become self-sustaining.