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Secret talks have taken place between Europe’s leading football clubs and Brussels politicians that could lead to a breakaway super league.
Sources involved in the discussions, held at the PSV Eindhoven-Arsenal Champions League match in February, state that a breakaway is the “ultimate threat” that could be exercised if Uefa and Fifa “run wild” in their governance of the game.
The talks were prompted by clubs’ concerns over the findings of the Independent European Sport Review, a report commissioned by the sports minister, Richard Caborn, during the UK’s presidency of the European Union last year. The review set in train a process that will come to an end when the commissioner Jan Figel, who attended the Eindhoven meeting, delivers a white paper for sport to the European Commission later this year.
It is not known exactly what form such a league would take. However, the Guardian revealed 12 months ago a G14 strategy document drawing up a mechanism for a breakaway. That “Vision Europe” document envisaged “a detachment of the top professional level from all remaining levels underneath, if this was agreed upon by the clubs”.
Those clubs would, according to that blueprint, then seek to run their own competition. This could effectively mean that the top clubs in each country would no longer compete in their home leagues.
For now there remains a strong commitment among the clubs to the Champions League and to domestic football. However, they are seeking to retain control over their own commercial activities and feel the politicians who joined them in Eindhoven have been sympathetic to their position.
One insider present at the talks said that the politicians were “particularly comfortable with having people around the table who their work will directly affect”.
There is real concern about the independent sport review’s demands for players to be released for international football without entitlement to compensation, the rule that suggests clubs would have to field a majority of home-grown players and a clause demanding collective selling of television rights and the sharing of revenue with smaller clubs.
This final issue will be analysed by Figel and the EC in their white-paper deliberations.
Matt Scott
