LThe press release fell at past midnight, Monday, April 19, 2021. Europe was already asleep, or seeking sleep. But Europe is no longer really the concern of the twelve secessionists behind the football Superleague project.
“So don’t they care about their home market? “, Tariq Panja wondered on Twitter, the journalist of New York Times author, Sunday, of ” scoop »That football has been waiting for or dreading since the mid-1990s.
The “home market”? Supporters, a story that began in 1954, sporting merit, but also incurable nostalgics regretting the time – already over – when Steaua Bucharest raised the cup “with big ears” … So many things that the twelve European secessionist clubs do not already see more.
This closed league, called to win instead of the current Champions League, is never more than the ultimate stadium of globalized European football, which favors the time zone of Beijing or Los Angeles over that of Nyon, Swiss headquarters of UEFA.
President of Real Madrid, Florentino Pérez does not say anything else. You just have to know how to read Castilian between the lines: “Football is the only global sport and the only one with 4 billion fans and our responsibility, as big clubs, is to meet the expectations of the fans. ”
With its “4 billion fans”, the king of the Spanish construction industry is convinced that he will always find customers to fill his Santiago-Bernarbeu stadium, which will soon be refurbished. In a world where the Covid-19 will perhaps let these big European clubs once again become “sports Disneylands”, it does not matter whether the customer supporter comes by bus from Alarcon, or from Jakarta in a Boeing 747.
A mutual understanding, already accepted and validated by UEFA
Subscribers can always threaten to burn their cards, old glories, like Englishman Gary Neville, treat their old club “Impostors” and heads of state scold the secessionists, they only see the envelope of 3.5 billion euros promised by the American investment bank JP Morgan, partner of the project.
They are these foreign owners who sometimes roll up a scarf from their dearly acquired club to create local color. Manchester United, Liverpool and AC Milan have flown the United States flag for years. Abu Dhabi pulled Manchester City out of the rut in 2008. A Chinese group took over from the Moratti family at Inter Milan after a short Indonesian interlude.
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