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European Super League: Is it time for fan ownership of football?

Thursday, 22 April 2021 11:34 GMT

Soccer Football - Premier League - Chelsea v Brighton & Hove Albion - Stamford Bridge, London, Britain - April 20, 2021 Chelsea fans protest the planned European Super League outside the stadium before the match. It was announced twelve of Europe's top football clubs will launch a breakaway REUTERS/Frank Augstein EDITORIAL USE ONLY. No use with unauthorized audio, video, data, fixture lists, club/league logos or 'live' services. Online in-match use limited to 75 images, no video emulation. No use in betting, games or single club /league/player publications. Please contact your account representative for further details.

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* Any views expressed in this opinion piece are those of the author and not of Thomson Reuters Foundation.

The failed 'Super League’ experiment has damaged the credibility of football’s elite. But it may provide an opportunity for fan-ownership models to democratise the beautiful game

Jamie Ranger is a writer and PhD candidate in Politics at the University of Oxford.

The Super League arrived half-baked with a sour taste. Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea, Manchester City and Tottenham Hotspur from England; Real Madrid, Barcelona and Atletico Madrid from Spain; and Juventus, AC Milan and Inter Milan from Italy, announced their intention to break from UEFA’s Champion’s League and start a new European competition resembling American franchise sports.

Blindsiding FIFA, UEFA, the governing bodies of their respective domestic leagues and national governments, the Super League as presented was a closed shop: the founder clubs would be permanent members of the competition, unable to be relegated or removed, and as such, guaranteed consistent, disproportionate renumeration without the risk of financial penalties for sporting failure.

The proposals were swiftly castigated from all corners: former players, pundits, chairmen and fans were vocal in their outrage, demanding immediate action to punish the ‘breakaway rebels’.

After Liverpool captain Jordan Henderson organised an emergency meeting with the captains of the other ‘Big Six’clubs, the players released a collective statement of opposition, and within forty-eight hours, the self-appointed super clubs were rushing out statements, each an apparent hostage to fortune, egged on by one another and under the influence of FOMO (fear of missing out).

A clip from an old interview with Leeds manager Marcelo Bielsa circulated on social media in which he distinguished between the spectator and the fan: the spectator approaches the game expecting beauty and excitement, and if they don’t find it, they go elsewhere. By contrast, the fan watches a game because they are a fan; aesthetic pleasure or a favourable outcome is merely a bonus.

The relationship between a football club and its fans is one of mutual highs and lows: bafflingly from a commercial lens, the fan initially appears to be a customer that consistently purchases a product regardless of its quality.

The relationship between the roaring stands and the players on the pitch is symbolically closer to political representation than a market transaction; it resembles a representative meritocracy, where the players are talented proxies for those in the seats who wish they were good enough to contribute.

It’s why it makes sense to say ‘we won the game’ when I talk about Manchester United, just as one might slip into ‘we’ when talking about their country (depending on the extent of one’s affection). The owners underestimated the “stakeholder culture”: they saw the fans coming through the turnstiles through thick and thin as hyper-loyal consumers, rather than members of a shared community gradually disempowered by commercialisation.

The intuitive interpretation is to suggest a clash of corporate cultures, an abortive attempt at the Americanisation of something European, but there is nothing uniquely American about greed: Juventus has been in the Agnelli family for generations, yet its chairman Andrea Agnelli was an outspoken advocate of the breakaway league.

Although the Super League did not get as far as the inevitable legal battles, European football cannot pretend this did not happen, that family legacies and personal relationships have been risked for naught, that sporting institutions older than many European countries have lost their aura, that the owners of world-renowned football clubs gathered in secret to undermine the most popular sport on the planet.

It may be the case that we are learning that a football club is not designed to be governed as a profit-making enterprise, that to be an owner is akin to being an institutional custodian, looking after the club for the generation to come. Many football fans see the untimely and hasty demise of the breakaway league as a victorious battle in a more protracted war for football’s soul.

If ‘The Super League’ has irrevocably damaged the credibility of football’s elite, their public capitulation may provide an overdue opportunity for a renewed focus on fan-ownership models and wider grassroots participation in an effort to democratise the beautiful game.

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