The Daily - The Super League That Wasn’t

Episode Date: April 23, 2021

This episode contains strong language. On Sunday, 12 elite soccer teams in Europe announced the formation of a super league. The plan was backed by vast amounts of money, but it flew in the face of an idea central to soccer’s identity: You have to earn your place.Fans reacted with blind fury and protest. Players and managers spoke out. Figures like Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain and Prince William expressed disapproval. Within 48 hours, the idea was dead.Amid the rubble, a question was left: What does the future hold for the world’s biggest sport?Guest: Rory Smith, chief soccer correspondent for The New York Times. Sign up here to get The Daily in your inbox each morning. And for an exclusive look at how the biggest stories on our show come together, subscribe to our newsletter. Background reading: Frantic phone calls, clandestine meetings and high-stakes threats: The inside story of how a billion-dollar European super league was born, scorned and swept away in less than a week.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. 

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today, the top-secret creation and stunningly fast implosion of the billion-dollar European Super League and what it may tell us about the future of the world's biggest sport. Astead Herndon spoke with our colleague, chief soccer reporter, Rory Smith. It's Friday, April 23rd. Rory, how are you?

I'm very well. How are you? I am excited for this conversation, Rory, partly because I've been following your work for a long time. And also, I just think it's going to be a great introduction for folks who may not be familiar with it. We should start off by saying throughout this whole thing, I'm going to call it soccer. You're going to call it football. But I know that you can see I know you can see past that and love me anyway. So I'll call it soccer because I'm so used to writing in time style that I now use it interchangeably,

which really annoys most of my friends. But that whole thing is like a weird European pretension because we called it soccer until the 1970s. It was interchangeable until the 1970s. I had no idea. Really? Yeah. My dad calls it soccer

because he's obviously old. You know, I think that this has been a week that I know in soccer universe has been the biggest week in a very long time. It seems as if we should start from the very, very beginning. Can you just explain to us how the structures of European soccer and from a basic level, how does the sport work? So the bedrock of all soccer competitions are the domestic national leads. So you have the premier lead in England, La Liga in Spain, Serie A in Italy, the Bundesliga in Germany, and equivalents in every single country, not just in Europe, but around the world, effectively. They are the drivers of the game, the engine of the game in a way. That is where, you know, on a week by week basis, generations of fans have laughed and cried and

danced and commiserated. That's where the popularity of the game is really rooted in a very European sense. And then on top of that, you have the Champions League, which is a pan-continental competition Europe-wide, which includes not just the champions, as the name would suggest, but the teams who finish in second, third, and fourth of the domestic leagues every season. So you kind of have this twin track for the elite clubs. They're trying to win the domestic league as well as the champions league most years. And for fans, you kind of get two shots at glory, I guess. So for the best teams, there are two competitions happening at the same time. There's a domestic leagues where they're playing against other teams

within their own country. And then there's the elite competition where they're playing against other teams across the European continent. Yeah. And I guess that in a logical sense, if you kind of conceive of soccer as an entertainment business, the Champions League would be the one that you would care about the most. But that doesn't necessarily hold true because fans are incredibly attached to their domestic leagues. You know, you're talking about competitions that have, in the case of England, 130 years of history that date back beyond people's grandparents and great-grandparents to another generation still. I'm a Liverpool fan. I was cursed to be a Liverpool fan by my family cursed to be a Liverpool fan

by my family, who, as I was growing up, made it very clear that I have literally no choice about it. And the key thing is that fans really feel their team is part of them. So I'm a Tottenham Hotspur fan, an underachieving team in London. And part of what drew me to them was the passion of the local fans that you're talking about. That 130 years of history and rivalry. Do you think that it's the strength of those local rivalries that has made the fan connection to the game so intense? I think it's the history, but it's also the nature of the clubs themselves, which are social and cultural and community institutions. A lot of them grew out of church teams initially. They were initially founded to give wayward Victorian boys something to do in the absence

of any other options in 19th century England. A lot of them are rooted around industrial communities or working men's clubs or social groups, particularly around heavy industry. So Manchester United possibly the most famous club in the world were founded by workers on the railway Arsenal in London were founded by people at the Woolwich armaments factory it was very specific roots in very specific communities the clubs and that I think is what people see when they see their club that even now when soccer is this huge global entertainment complex, to a lot of people, their club is their place, it's their home, and it's their community.

The way you're talking about soccer feels so local. But we know that soccer is also this global business, as you mentioned. When and how did that transition start happening? Well, soccer has always been international. It's always been the world's game. It was exported around the planet, essentially by the English in the late 19th century. But the growth of the game, I guess, has two or three major leaps. Soccer was pretty much the same from maybe the 1880s until the mid 1970s. The shorts were a little bit shorter, the haircuts had changed, and there'd been one or two kind of tweaks to the rules. But it was a recognisable endeavour. And then in the 1970s, things start to change a little bit. So first of all, sponsorship arrives, you start to see the first teams who have logos emblazoned on their jerseys

selling tyres or cars or electronic goods. And then you end up with... The eyes of the world will be focused on Tottenham against Coventry today. Increased involvement of television as a way of reaching more communities, more fans. And TV pictures of this oldest of all football cup competitions will be beamed to every corner of the globe. And then at the start of the 1990s, we get Sotter's Big Bang. Which is, in 1992, what was the English First Division, the top league in England, is rebranded as the Premier League. What was the European Cup is rebranded as the Champions League. And soccer enters its modern age.

That brings with it vastly inflated broadcasting deals. Vodafone are to step in as United's major sponsors. It brings with it vastly inflated broadcasting deals. Vodafone are to step in as United's major sponsors. It brings with it a glut of sponsorship. An amazing £30 million invested in the club over the next four years. And you start to see the first kind of celebrity players. It's another classic from young David Beckham. So you have David Beckham. Please big it up for the main couple in England, Posh and Becks!

CHEERING He becomes this kind of icon not only of soccer but of fashion and pop culture. What's your favourite item of clothing? Favourite item of clothing? I don't know, it varies. You know, I've got a loose shirt that I haven't worn yet. You have a Brazilian striker called Ronaldo. Ronaldo, Tirol! Goal! Goal! new shirt that I haven't worn yet. You have a Brazilian striker called Ronaldo who becomes the poster boy for Nike.

Almost overnight, soccer starts to realise its own power, its own popularity, and you start to see the first shoots of a sport that's starting to think globally rather than just about its local or at most national context. You know, I think about these moments in terms of my own life. Now, I started playing FIFA, the soccer video game, as my entry point to the sport. And I think a lot of Americans, we were part of that growth and expansion of

soccer's reach. You called it soccer realizing its own power. But are you really saying that soccer realized the money it could make? Probably, yeah. Power is maybe a euphemism for money. I don't think the growth of soccer was driven by philanthropy or a love for the game or desire to evangelize. I think it was the result of the Leeds and the clubs, particularly in England, realizing that there was money to be made on new frontiers. So if that's the 90s, what comes next in the 2000s? The same thing, but really souped up and hyper accelerated. And soccer effectively

becomes completely unmoored from its previous reality. So there's kind of three stages, I guess. In 2003, Roman Abramovich, a Russian oligarch, one of the beneficiaries of the privatization of Russian resources after communism, buys Chelsea, an English team. And when he arrives, he spends money in the transfer market, the space where players are bought from other teams, in a way that we hadn't really seen before. It was fairly unprecedented. And that heralds the age of super money within soccer. NFL. They buy Manchester United, the most famous club in England, arguably the most important club in the world. And pretty soon afterwards, Liverpool takes on American ownership. Arsenal takes on American ownership. Half a dozen other clubs in England over the next 10 or 15 years will be acquired by American owners. And on continental Europe, you have the grand old houses. You have

Real Madrid, Barcelona, Juventus in Italy, Bayern Munich in Germany, who are all trying to compete with the money washing into the Premier League, trying to keep up. And then in 2008, Manchester City is taken over by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed, who is the Deputy Prime Minister of Abu Dhabi, the Gulf state, and the whole thing takes on another leap. of Abu Dhabi, the Drulf State, and the whole thing takes on another leap. Sheikh Mansour is officially the owner of Manchester City. There is some debate within soccer as to whether the club's ultimate backer is, in effect, the state of Abu Dhabi. But either way, the amount of wealth that Sheikh Mansour can call on distorts the economics of European soccer. Mansoor can call on distorts the economics of European soccer.

What does it mean functionally when a club is bought by one of these rich owners? When you have golf states, for example, being able to support some of these big teams, how does it distort the economics of the sport, as you said? It gives a club a wealth that none of its rivals can match. Because soccer works on this kind of completely unregulated free market, there is in effect no real ceiling on how much you can pay in terms of salary. There are no checks and balances in the system as there are in the United States where there's a draft system. So if you're terrible, you will get access the following year to potentially the best pick the best player of the forthcoming generation there is a way of

of ensuring a degree of competitive balance europeans don't do any of that in soccer none of that exists it is dog eat dog so what we've seen in in the last 20 years is an agglomeration of the best players in the world at just a handful of clubs that there are maybe 12 teams, give or take, who have squads that are stuffed full of international stars, paid eye-watering sums of money. They are the envy of the world. And they give these super clubs this incredible strength in depth, which enables them to compete even further. Was there a backlash or reaction from fans when these changes were happening? One of the really interesting things about the transformation in soccer in the last 30 years

has been that basically every step of the way has been cheered by fans. To a fan, the soccer team is not its owners, it's not its players, it's not its manager. There is a spiritual ownership, I guess, an emotional contract between the fans and the team, where the team is a badge, a feeling, a conversation you had with one of your parents, something you share with your friends, something that makes you who you are, that doesn't have any connection to the people who wear the shirt on the field or the people who run the club in the background. market, a big, brash, bold vision for where this new team can go. The passion that Manchester City fans feel for their team is, if anything, unchanged by the fact that it is fair to say it is now a PR exercise for Abu Dhabi. And that was true of most of the fans of all the teams who had outside investment. And it's also true of Premier League fans in general.

Everyone was so dazzled by the big money signings, by the major trophies, by the glamour of the whole exercise, that nobody ever really stopped to ask, why is this money here? What does it want? And where is this all going? So, Rory, you said that in the last few years that big money had totally changed the dynamics of soccer, that the influx of cash had really altered the game at its kind of fundamental and basic level. It seems as if there was an open question of how far that sport and its 100-year traditions and history could be pushed. And did we kind of get an answer to that this week? It seems like we did. Yeah, I think we did.

So on Sunday, we started to hear rumors that some sort of major announcement was coming. My colleague, Tarek Panja, who kind of stalked the dark and murky corridors of power in sports, called me kind of Sunday lunchtime and said that he was expecting something, that something was brewing, that chaos had kind of broken out among executives and owners. And then, just before midnight European time, he was proved right. We do want to fill you in on a story that is breaking across the football world right now. Twelve of the biggest, most important clubs in the world put out this strangely basic and undetailed statement.

It's a statement leading European football clubs announce new Super League competition. They had concocted a plan to launch what they called the Super League. Manchester City, United, Liverpool, Chelsea, Spurs, Arsenal, Real Madrid. The 12 teams that had signed up to this plan. AC Milan and Juventus included some who had traditional European ownership but also those who had American and Russian and Gulf state backing. The clubs involved, the amount of money we're talking about, this feels real.

These owners had been meeting in secret to devise this new lead in which each of their teams would be granted a permanent place in the competition. Big, big, big questions now about what is going to happen. But the elite teams already play each other consistently now in what's called the Champions League. So why is the Super League different than what the Champions League already is? Partly because of the permanence that the 12 founding members agreed to give themselves, the sense that no matter how bad they were,

how badly they performed, their place was secure. You have to qualify to be in the Champions League. You have to qualify every single year to be in the Champions League. And if you don't qualify, you miss out on all of the money and all of the glamour. That's kind of how soccer is meant to work. That sense of having to

earn your place is central to soccer's self-identity. And the other thing that was really a seismic shift with this new Super League was the sheer amount of money involved. The teams had a debt facility with JP Morgan, the investment bank, that they said would enable each team to receive a $400 million stipend just for joining. And the revenues the Super League would generate, both in terms of broadcast deals and commercial, would dwarf anything on offer, not only in the domestic leagues, but in the Champions League too. That would, in one fell swoop, effectively make the elite unchallengeable from anyone else. As someone who is a fan of the Premier League and a fan of a team that was signed up for the

Super League, I was shocked on Sunday at the announcement, seemingly because it came, as you said, out of whispers and secrecy. What was the fan reaction across Europe when the clubs made this announcement on Sunday? It's a disgrace, an absolute disgrace, disgusting. From the fans, the reaction was one of blind and outright fury. Every single club involved in agreeing this Super League is going to be put in jail! And initially, of course, that spread on social media. La morte del calcio per come lo conosciamo attualmente. As it became clear that this thing was real.

Seriously, you have got to stamp on this. This is a criminal, it's a criminal act. Then on Monday, we saw the first real protest about it. Liverpool, one of the teams involved in the plans, were playing a road game at Leeds United and hundreds of fans gathered outside Leeds' stadium, a place called Elland Road, to protest the arrival of the Liverpool team coach. To the ESL, fuck off! To the ESL, fuck off! But the outrage among the fans of the teams involved was possibly greater even than the outrage of the fans of the teams who'd been left behind. On Tuesday, when another of the teams involved, Chelsea, played a home game against Brighton, the road outside their stadium had to be closed because of the number of fans who had gathered to protest their own club's involvement in the plan for

a Super League. It seems as if what you're saying is that some of these fans, Liverpool fans, Chelsea fans, fans of these elite teams, were protesting their own team on behalf of what their actions would do for smaller teams. Absolutely. There is a degree of collective interest among soccer fans that although your primary loyalty is to the team you support, that there is also some sort of redolent loyalty to the game as a whole, to the dozens and dozens of smaller teams who never have a chance of playing in the Champions League, but theoretically

might get to the very top because it is an open competition. The 12 breakaway clubs, the problem they had was that their place in the Super League, the thing that would generate all of the money, was secure in perpetuity. That was seen as a betrayal of one of the basic principles that underpins club soccer. And I think fans of all stripes, of all clubs, including those involved, knew instinctively that this was not something they were prepared to tolerate. So when the announcement came, it was seen as a direct threat to the existence of the centuries-old traditional domestic leagues.

Yeah, and that's how it was greeted by the institutions themselves. This idea is a spit in the face of all football lovers and our society as well. UEFA, the body that organises soccer in Europe, came out with incredibly powerful rhetoric calling the executives who plotted this breakaway league

snakes and liars. For some people, solidarity doesn't exist. Unity doesn't exist. The only thing that exists is their pockets. You saw politicians get involved. Be in no doubt that we don't support it. Boris Johnson, the British Prime Minister, came out against it. How can it be right to have a situation in which you create a kind of cartel?

Prince William came out against it. And he's tweeted, now more than ever we must protect the entire footballing community. And then on Monday evening. When as players did you start to become aware of all this talk of Super League? Same as everyone else, I think, when it broke yesterday and that's the first we heard of it. The first player who plays for one of the teams involved in the plan,

a midfielder called James Milner who plays for Liverpool, he was asked for his opinion of the idea. You know, I can only say my personal opinion. I don't like it and, you know, hopefully it doesn't happen. And that opened the floodgates. It's important that we stand our ground and show that football is for the fans and try and keep it that way. Over the course of Tuesday, more and more players came out. A sport is not a sport when the success is already guaranteed. And as more and more players came out, as more and more managers spoke out,

the pressure on the owners, already facing backlash from the fans and from the authorities, became almost too intense to bear. On Tuesday night, the first whispers started to come out that Chelsea and Manchester City were starting to get cold feet.

This is developing as we speak. At around seven o'clock on Tuesday evening. We're getting unconfirmed reports at this moment. As Chelsea's players were waiting to take the field against Brighton in the Premier League. Chelsea are pulling out of the Super League. The news filtered through that Roman Abramovich, the owner of the club, had decided that it really wasn't worth the bother. The news I can bring you now is that Manchester City

do not wish to be a part of the Super League. Manchester City followed a few minutes later and by 11 o'clock the remaining four English teams had pulled out. And there are even some reports that all 12 clubs have been speaking this evening to discuss the future. And sure enough, by Tuesday night, executives who'd been involved with the plans were saying the project was dead. So in 48 hours, from the Sunday announcement to Tuesday,

this Super League, this secretly discussed, whispered about idea among some of the sport's richest teams and richest people had just totally collapsed. Yep. And so now, by the end of the week, the whole thing feels a little bit like a fever dream that kind of happened a lifetime ago, but was in fact at the start of the week and threatened for 48 hours to change the face of soccer forever. Why and how did they miscalculate this so badly? I'm tempted to say that it felt like the most absurdly egregious example of the billionaire class assuming that everybody else would just do as they're told. We know that they hadn't consulted any fans. We know that they hadn't found a broadcaster. They hadn't seemed to have any sponsors. They didn't seem to have any even tacit support amongst the authorities. What they seemed to have was a vague idea of what they would like to do and very little detail of how they might

actually do it but one of the big ironies that's lingered with me throughout the week is that the owners of these teams were undone by the exact thing that had drawn them to the sport in the first place what they're trying to monetize the reason they're attracted to the sport is because of the passion that it inspires. That fierce sense of personal identity with the team of your neighborhood or of your family, or like you said, that you have kind of bonded to from afar.

It's what made soccer this incredible global cultural phenomenon. Cristiano Ronaldo, who depending on your perspective is the first or second best player in the world, is the most followed person on Instagram. He has more followers than Beyonce. All of this comes because of this incredible kind of personal intimate connection we have with our teams and with the players who play for them.

And that's what these owners all in some way want to monetize or capitalize on. And yet it's that same passion that has completely undercut this project. and yet it's that same passion that has completely undercut this project. What happens now? Obviously the Super League has combusted in a spectacular fashion, but the problems that brought the teams to this point still exist. The increasing amount of money in the sport, the one-upmanship among the elite teams, and the big inequities between teams, the haves and the have-nots. What's the next step? That's a really good question, because I don't think anybody really knows. There is an argument now that the power dynamic in soccer has changed significantly, that for the

moment, and it may only be for a brief moment, the smaller teams have a chance to shape the game a little bit in their way. And perhaps more importantly, fans have a chance to shape the game a little bit in their way. And perhaps more importantly, fans have a chance to shape the game a little bit in a way that might suit them. And that sometimes, even when they might not think it, fans really do have a voice, because ultimately, the game does belong to them. There are still lots of inequities within soccer. There is no question that to an extent, the sports economic model does not work

and it does need to be refined. What the fans have said so far is we do not want it to be changed in the way that suits the elite. Maybe what we need to think about now is how we find a model of change that suits everybody else. Thank you, Rory. I really appreciate your time.

Lovely to talk to you. Here's what else you need to know today. India is experiencing a devastating outbreak of the coronavirus. On Thursday, the country reported more than 310,000 new infections, the most for any country on a single day since the pandemic began. Public health officials say India's government failed to prepare for a second wave and prematurely let down its guard, allowing massive public gatherings, including a Hindu festival that drew millions of pilgrims. And... Scientists tell us that this is the decisive decade.

This is the decade we must make decisions that will avoid the worst consequences of a climate crisis. During a global summit on climate change hosted by the United States, President Biden pledged that by 2030, the U.S. would cut greenhouse emissions to at least half of its 2005 levels and would double funding to developing nations to adapt to the effects of climate change. In a speech to the summit, Biden signaled a new era in American climate policy after four years of the Trump administration. This is a moral imperative, an economic imperative,

a moment of peril, but also a moment of extraordinary possibilities. A moment of peril, but also a moment of extraordinary possibilities. Today's episode was produced by Daniel Guimet, Nina Potok, and Stella Tan, with help from Chris Wood and Luke Vanderplug. It was edited by Austin Mitchell, M.J. Davis-Lynn, and Paige Cowett, and engineered by Chris Wood. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you on Monday.