“You experienced your Waterloo today,” leaders of the rebel Super League were told during a private meeting Tuesday with senior European football officials.
Backers of the Super League were reminded of the football establishment’s full-throated opposition to the rebel competition during talks at UEFA headquarters in Nyon, Switzerland.
“In football you need to realize when the game is lost, and your game is lost forever,” former Bayern Munich legend Karl-Heinz Rummenigge blasted, according to four senior industry officials with direct knowledge of the meeting who spoke to POLITICO on condition of anonymity.
A dozen of Europe’s leading clubs launched the proposed Super League in April 2021, but the project collapsed after several clubs pulled out following two days of vociferous opposition from fans, high-profile players and coaches, other clubs and politicians.
During the meeting, the message from European football’s leadership was clear: We’re still steadfastly against your plan.
Three of European football’s giants — Real Madrid, FC Barcelona and Juventus — are still fighting for the project in court, and on December 15 the Court of Justice of the European Union will deliver a nonbinding opinion on a Super League complaint that UEFA runs an illegal monopoly in European football.
In attendance at UEFA HQ, on the banks of Lake Geneva, were Bernd Reichart, Anas Laghrari and John Hahn from A22, the company behind the Super League. Facing them were UEFA President Aleksander Čeferin, Paris Saint-Germain and European Club Association boss Nasser al-Khelaifi, La Liga President Javier Tebas and more than 20 other senior officials from the ECA, continental leagues, fan groups and footballers’ association FIFPRO.
Čeferin accused the Super League officials of sounding like a “broken record” about European football’s problems without providing any solutions, while at one point Reichart said people should stop “preaching” at him.
For two-and-a-half hours, the discussion — which veered between “forced politeness” and hostility, according to officials present — revolved around who exactly A22 was representing, whether they were speaking on behalf of Super League holdout clubs and if they were bringing a new format to the table.
With A22’s explanations deemed unsatisfactory, Čeferin’s remarks were followed by contributions from around European football that were in turn polite and utterly scathing.
Tebas, the outspoken Spanish football boss, called the Super League officials “liars” and said they were being “instrumentalized” by Real Madrid supremo Florentino Pérez. PSG’s Al-Khelaifi — a sworn enemy of Tebas on other football issues — united with his nemesis to say that “football is not a legal contract, but a social contract. You have to respect the fans.”
“After all this time, you still don’t get it,” al-Khelaifi added.
American tycoon Dan Friedkin, president of A.S. Roma, said that he’d invested in the Italian club because of the European football pyramid, “where the peril of losing is as great as the glory of winning.”
But it was the fan groups, more so even than the senior executives, who really voiced their fury in the meeting.
“The fan groups absolutely lynched them,” said another football official present during the meeting. “They said they don’t give a damn about football supporters.”
Speaking to POLITICO, Ronan Evain from Football Supporters Europe put it more diplomatically: “For us it was a one-off, I don’t think we’ll ever meet them again.”
In a statement released after the meeting, A22’s Reichart, who has been pushing for more dialogue with football stakeholders, said, “It was good to meet with UEFA and we are happy they accepted our invitation to have an open exchange. This is an important signal to clubs and fans across Europe that we need discussion and that it is welcome, even when it is difficult,” adding, “Our takeaway from the meeting was that the status quo is satisfactory to UEFA.”
But the Super League continues to face an uphill struggle to make its case to the people who matter.
“We have 35 people sitting in the room and I have the impression that 32 are not necessarily in favor of you or they don’t have an interest in talking to you,” said Rummenigge, the former Bayern player and executive. “You experienced your Waterloo today.”
