The First Day Of The Rest Of Our Lives

"I don't need to be kind to the armies of night that would do such injustice to you

Or bow down and be grateful and say, "Sure, take all that you see"
To the men who move only in dimly-lit halls and determine my future for me"

- Fleet Foxes, "Helplessness Blues"

Hey folks, long time no see. Been up to much? I just wanted to point out that somewhere in the dark back halls of whatever Zoom enclave these people inhabit, the chairmen of twelve European football clubs managed to concoct an idea that made both Prince William and Boris Johnson wince and say, "Lads, that's a bit elitist". In some ways, you can only admire that. 

Liverpool v Man City. In New York. Midnight kick off. Just like you dreamed. 

***

 "There's thieves among us, painting the walls

With all kinds of lies" 

- She and Him, "Thieves"

Unless you've been focusing with undue attention on The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, you've probably noticed that several giants of European football, and also the current seventh and ninth best teams in England, have had some thoughts. A Super League has been proposed with eternal places available to twelve clubs from England, Spain and Italy, with no teams from Germany or France yet and five places available to waifs and strays, presumably to ensure that all the Founders have got someone to beat. Each club will remain in their domestic leagues, doubtlessly treating them with the same reverence that they traditionally reserve for cup competitions, and sundering over a century of history in the process. I'm immediately put in mind of that time Homer Simpson designed a car for his brother and bankrupted his company. 

Look Marge, I designed a Super League!

Condemnation has been widespread, with most punditry focusing on the fact that the new league is all about money and driven entirely by greed. Well, no shit. In that sense, the last twenty four hours has been very helpful in identifying exactly who might vote for that leopards eating faces party that seems to have become so prevalent recently. 

There is nothing profound in stating that football has succumbed to greed or that nobody cares about fans anymore. This has been true for an awfully long time, and these announcements do not somehow bring this to light. If you didn't think this before yesterday you haven't been paying attention. Nor should there be any scrabbling for the moral high ground from West Ham, Leicester, Everton et al. The only reason they haven't signed up for this is because they weren't asked. Those clubs literally sat around and watched  inertly as lower league teams went to the wall, so spare me the idea that there is some kind of moral compass residing in the middle of the Premier League. A non zero threat to English football now is that whatever emerges from this wreckage is handed over to another self styled Big Six who immediately begin trying to siphon more money out of the sport. 

But life sometimes casts unusual heroes and so it is that on a Monday night the entire country is watching Leeds - Leeds! - play Liverpool and it somehow feels like a battle line has been drawn. It's Us v Them, and God bless those beautiful Yorkshire top knots for their late equaliser. 

But, when I read those who say "the game's gone", I have no idea what they mean. Have they watched the last twenty years of European football? The game hasn't gone anywhere. It's come. It's arrived on your doorstep in the shape of the Twelve Horseman of the Endless Makita Tournament, and they're not even bothering to beat around the bush anymore. The message of this power grab couldn't be any clearer if it was tattooed onto Roberto Firmino's teeth:

We can no longer afford to risk actual competition. So we're not bothering with that anymore.

That's it. There isn't any deeper meaning to this than a desperate desire to move to a model of guaranteed revenues. No more fucking about with playing actual games, or worrying about who has the best team. That's so last century, man. The pandemic has been both a disaster and a gift. It has ravaged them but it's mortally wounded us too. And so they strike now, and it has been quite a while in the making, after the years of appeasement have shockingly not worked. Fair enough, there's no historical precedent for that approach failing, after all. 

But what's really shocking about this is the bluntness with which this has all been stated. Never before have these clubs been quite so brazen about wanting to erode the pesky little notion of having to earn their revenues. Here it is in Technicolor, sponsored by Your Friendly Local PetroChemical Company and coming to a North American metropolitan hub near you soon. Watch on your iPhone, vote to tell Jurgen Klopp who to bring on next, and be sure to post an Instagram snap of where you're watching from so we can send you a t-shirt to remind you who you actually support in case you've forgotten after six years of exhibition games. 

If I may be so bold, I think it is this speaking of the unspeakable which is causing so much consternation.  What is so embarrassing to the supporters of these clubs is that this latest stunt isn't really a huge leap from what these clubs were already angling for. The betrayal here is uttering the truth that these competitions have been rigged all along, and admitting that the only issue now is that they aren't rigged enough. The only way the lie works is if Liverpool fans can go to Madrid and win the Champions League and believe that they are the Rebel Alliance and not the Empire. Well, John Henry just arrived in a Super Star Destroyer, lads, and Jurgen is finding your lack of faith disturbing. 

The Super League unveils it's new team coach designs

It has been standard for years for these clubs to murmur about the prospect of a Super League and then have to be placated by a greater share of revenues or an easier path to qualification. Consider that UEFA's proposed Swiss Style reformatting of the Champions League was going to reserve two places for big clubs who, God bless 'em, hadn't quite managed to qualify but are good fun at a barbecue and therefore really needed to attend.

Where was the outrage and upset at these egregiously stupid amendments? Where was the demand for equality and a sense of competition then? Instead of righteous anger we've just been subjected to a continued party line that "everybody agrees that things need to change" but never any suggestion of what these changes should be. More equitable revenue sharing? Bans on player hoarding? Nope - just some vague mutterings that the games are all boring before the quarter finals because the same teams always win, as though this was some great existential mystery. 

I'm delighted that Gary Neville and Jamie Carragher are speaking so eloquently against this bullshit, that James Milner was prepared to register his distaste and I welcome the statements from the representative fan groups of the self styled Big Six. Don't underestimate the courage needed to stand up like that. But let's not kid ourselves that this hasn't been apparent for years. The owners have broken the omertà and spoken the truth aloud, and suddenly a lot of fans are being forced to confront realities they had previously been able to pretend didn't exist. Are we the baddies, indeed. 

When Liverpool won the league last year I wrote a rather ungracious Twitter thread where I posited the theory that such title wins were indistinguishable from those of any other big club. That Manchester United, Manchester City and Liverpool were simply homogenous entities whose success was built upon a structure designed to reward and elevate them. Lots of Liverpool fans called me a virgin, an insult I'd not heard for a few years, and told me they were massive. And yet here we are a year later and I still can't distinguish those clubs from each other, other than that they've all signed up for an endless exhibition tournament. 

What are their protests? That the same teams will be in it all the time? That there is no threat of big teams not qualifying? That it's boring? Er, lads, stop me if you think that you've heard this one before. 

Because this is another aspect of the closed shop and the guaranteed revenues - there's not actually a need to win anymore. Early analysis of the financials of this thing are that the bulk of the money is dished out simply for being in it. James Corbett of OffThePitch.com wrote this thread a couple of months ago about the way the cash will be distributed in the brave new world, and you'll be delighted to hear that it's very much the taking part that counts. €180m for participating in the group stage (if you're a founder member) but just a further €30m if you win. Better yet, if by some miracle an interloping non founder member wins it, they get about half of what the big boys get just for being in the group stages. I suppose the one positive of this is that some men might finally get to experience what it's like to be paid like a woman.

There is a great Jerry Seinfeld bit in his stand up show when he starts speculating about horse racing. I can't do it justice so let me just repeat it for you here. 

"I’ll tell you one thing the horses definitely do not know. They do not know that if you should accidentally trip and break your leg at any point during the race we blow your brains out. I think they’re missing that little tidbit of information. I think if they knew that you’d see some mighty careful stepping coming down that home stretch. “Take it easy, take it easy.” “You win, I’ll place… whatever.” “The important thing is your health.”

This appears to be the overriding principle of the Super League. Take it easy. You win, I'll place. The important thing is paying down the debt on your stadium. There's always next year, after all. 

***

"And I could make you rue the day

But I could never make you stay" 

- The Magnetic Fields, "All My Little Words"

A fascinating aspect of this is that nobody, anywhere, appears to have asked the players what they think. It isn't just the fact that they risk being unable to represent their countries but that the Super League has the concept of a salary cap baked into it. "Revenues are decreasing, salaries are increasing. So we need to do something" says skilled mathematician Florentino Perez of Real Madrid, who signed 28 year old Eden Hazard for over €100m, paid him €400,000 a week and seems to be suggesting a bigger boy made him do it. If these lads had any fiscal sense at all they'd donate a few grand to the Tories, make friends with Matt Hancock and win themselves an NHS contract to pay down some of these debts. But no, it's got to be the death of football instead, say Florentino and Sheikh Mansour. Sigh.

Next stop, Sevilla and West Ham 

But what's really interesting is how the players will react. Salary caps are generally pretty sensible until players - who drive all the value in the sport - start to see that the revenue they are generating is going to fine upstanding citizens of the world like Joel Glazer and Paul Singer, who appear to have spent their entire adult lives preparing to play the bad guys in 101 Dalmatians. It's not that I think players have any particular sense of morality about this stuff, but I do suspect they have a very good handle on what they are worth and giving it to Disney villains isn't going to be high on their agenda. 

So, in summary, the Super League offers players a salary cap, no more international appearances and an even more watered down sense of competition than the piss weak Champions League we have right now. Hmm, nice job Joel, that coat is going to look beautiful. 

I can't help dreaming of a wild scenario where the Founders press on with their league and players start to win legal battles to extricate themselves from their contracts on some technicality. A few might take a moral stand but I suspect a number will not accept missing World Cups for their countries. 

And so, suddenly Messi goes to PSG and Ronaldo to Bayern and those Champions League TV rights still look pretty valuable. And as they come others start to follow - Kane to Roma, Ramos to Dortmund, De Bruyne to Sevilla and Son to West Ham. It's easy to laugh of course, but in 2000 the idea of a Super League containing Manchester City and Chelsea was just as fanciful as the notion of Toni Kroos playing for Porto. 

Things change, the game moves on and evolves, even as these dunces try and draw a line in history and declare themselves as important forever more. It feels as though someone somewhere needs to log on to Wikipedia and point out to these clowns that Celtic, Nottingham Forest, Marseille, Porto and Ajax have previously done something that the likes of Arsenal and Spurs have never done, namely be champions of Europe. 

***

"You see I'm just like you
If you only knew
That I'm just like you"

- Red Hot Chili Peppers, "Cabron"

In writing this piece I suspect there is a chance that fans of the Big Six might think I blame them or somehow don't empathise with their position. Let me resolve that now. For those fans I have nothing but sympathy and I hold the people who own their clubs in utter contempt. Those charlatans, those grifters, those unworthy vultures who have besmirched the names of once great institutions. I have long held the view that football fandom is little more than a quirk of geography or family. What, after all, separates Spurs and West Ham fans beyond a postcode or a particularly dominant grandfather here or there? 

And what have Spurs fans done to deserve seeing their team be used as a tool to push through such damaging and corrosive measures? Similarly, are Liverpool and Manchester United fans now any more at fault than the rest of us were when the Premier League was formed and the football pyramid abandoned? Now more than ever is the time for football fans to come together and somehow try to reclaim what is ours. Of course it's easy to throw our hands up and look at the vast array of enemy forces lined up against us, but these things always begin with a single step. 

The first and most critical action is a Europe wide promise to boycott the new league. Don't buy the subscriptions and if you have to because the TV network carries something else you want, then surely don't watch the games. It will be tempting, as the media start to warm to the idea and the PR campaign begins but the object of all fans here is to make the European viewing figures for this thing a disaster. I excuse the fans of the Big Six - what can they do but watch their teams? It's on the rest of us. 

It's easy to say that these teams should be expelled from their leagues, and I've been giddy about this in the past. I still think this is ultimately the course of action that should be followed but practically one has to consider the financial realities. David Sullivan had an asset valued at £400m on Sunday morning, and by the time he went to bed that was probably halved. He still has to pay his players in a post pandemic economy, while TV companies circle, no doubt eager to get repayments of their rights monies as the big boys depart. But, here's the thing - with these teams gone, the Premier League, La Liga and Serie A all have a chance to be something they typically never are.....interesting. Sullivan et al have a chance to design something unique and marketable here. Call me old fashioned but an English Premier League where ten teams can realistically win has to have some value to TV companies. 

And then imagine, for a moment, a group of European leagues with evenly shared revenues and evenly matched teams. Imagine a world where relegation wasn't financially catastrophic because the leagues were overseen by a set of rules not designed by men with the sensibilities of Charles Ponzi. The financial shock of these teams going is likely to be horrific in the short term, but both UEFA and FIFA have deep pockets and can tide teams over. In exchange they should bind those teams forever to their competitions and demand proper financial management and fair competition. Instead of being terrified of Nantes v Feyenoord in the Champions League final, we should aim for that because it would be evidence of a healthy competition, something not present in European football for decades, no matter what lies we have told ourselves. 

This is an incredible opportunity for our leagues. We can build interesting, unpredictable competitions and sell that to the TV companies. What's our USP? Well, it's not the same twelve teams every week forever, for a start. And if the big boys want to come back, that's fine but they are to abide by our rules or they don't come back at all. If you're interested in my suggestions, I fixed modern football back in 2018 and I'm still pretty sure that a lot of this stuff would work. In a curious way, a lot of the things that made my suggestions unfeasible before would be removed with the departure of the Super League teams. 

The most likely reality still feels to me that this backlash will force the big boys back to the table where they will negotiate a larger slice of revenues and, after taking a couple of weeks of public shaming, they will eventually persuade everyone that they should haven't to qualify for the Champions League. But make no mistake, what really ought to happen here is that this nail is smashed back into the wood with authority. It can't just be that we revert back to the current model and pretend all this didn't happen. They have to take losses now. This needs to result in a worse position than they started with. What are they going to do in response, form a Super League? They're already wobbling - we hold the advantage here. 

But, no, I sense more appeasement, and that peace will hold until some idiot president somewhere pisses away his latest UEFA cheque and starts making threats again. Not for nothing, but these dickheads can't make a profit with UEFA literally subsidising them, so it is interesting to me that JP Morgan are so happy to jump into bed and give them a credit line for this thing. I guess the belief is that with the importance of actual competition removed, there won't be the driver to overspend any more. Financial prudence through boredom, then. Lovely. 

But it really shouldn't be this way. This should be the first day of the rest of our lives. There is an opening here for a brave and principled redesign of the game that puts genuine competition at the heart of the sport, and redistributes revenues to safeguard the future of the smaller clubs who hold the pyramid up. Even if the Super League takes off and is a huge success, this is still the answer. Everything is cyclical and nothing lasts forever. Ronaldo came from Sporting Lisbon, Wayne Rooney came from Everton, Luka Modric came from Dinamo Zagreb. New legends will emerge and teams will decline and fall as they always do. There is a chance here. This is the first day of the rest of our lives, folks.