European Super League

[RefluxSemantic]

Pretty sure fans have the right to demand whatever the fuck they want

[princeofcarthage]

No you don't. What have you ever contributed to your favourite club Ajax? Stop acting like some entitled privileged person. If the club was going down would you contribute few thousand dollars to keep it afloat with no guarantee of returns or what might happen in couple years?

[Dolan]

Fans can hate it or love it, can't really have a say in what happens. You just log into tv and watch match while eating chicken strips and drinking beer. When the club collapses you don't lose anything, people whose money is invested they lose. Unfortunately for you it's just sport but for those involved its business.

A football team's success depends a lot on them feeling they have supporters, people cheering for them on a stadium. At the end of the day, the only reason they're on a pitch kicking a ball is because a large number of somebodies would be watching. There are even families who have been supporters of the same team for generations. So it's nothing like this picture you're projecting of consumers in front of a TV screen, stuffing themselves with food and entertainment. It's a lot more than that, at least for Euro football supporters.
Don't mistake American, globalised consumption of entertainment on a screen, like Netflix, with football fans' allegiance to their club. Globalised consumers wouldn't take it to the streets to celebrate Netflix content or get into street or pub fights over some Hollywood movie.

[princeofcarthage]

Fans can hate it or love it, can't really have a say in what happens. You just log into tv and watch match while eating chicken strips and drinking beer. When the club collapses you don't lose anything, people whose money is invested they lose. Unfortunately for you it's just sport but for those involved its business.

A football team's success depends a lot on them feeling they have supporters, people cheering for them on a stadium. At the end of the day, the only reason they're on a pitch kicking a ball is because a large number of somebodies would be watching. There are even families who have been supporters of the same team for generations. So it's nothing like this picture you're projecting of consumers in front of a TV screen, stuffing themselves with food and entertainment. It's a lot more than that, at least for Euro football supporters.

Yeah but it's not like you are going to stop watch football except for extremely few limited numbers. When google makes some annoying change you blast it on twitter, you piss off at Customer service or write a complaint. You don't stop using Gmail. In fact if the number of worldwide viewers they would have gained would most likely have trumped any few local supporters they would have lost. You can believe the decision they reversed was due to pure fan pressure. Pretty sure lot of inside deals, threats, political threats and stuff have happened behind closed doors.

[RefluxSemantic]

No you don't. What have you ever contributed to your favourite club Ajax? Stop acting like some entitled privileged person. If the club was going down would you contribute few thousand dollars to keep it afloat with no guarantee of returns or what might happen in couple years?

Eh, football clubs like Ajax owe their entire fucking existance to their fans? The fact that you seem to consider these sports teams to be some sort of business shows just how ignorant you are..

[Dolan]

Yeah but it's not like you are going to stop watch football except for extremely few limited numbers. When google makes some annoying change you blast it on twitter, you piss off at Customer service or write a complaint. You don't stop using Gmail. In fact if the number of worldwide viewers they would have gained would most likely have trumped any few local supporters they would have lost. You can believe the decision they reversed was due to pure fan pressure. Pretty sure lot of inside deals, threats, political threats and stuff have happened behind closed doors.

They just realised nobody except themselves, the business owners, liked this project. And without fans and supporters, no club can survive for long.
Maybe they wouldn't stop watching football, but they might stop paying for ticket plans or buying merch.
A huge chunk of clubs' revenue comes from advertising contracts, and companies that pay players to advertise for them wouldn't be interested in a team without supporters.

[Mr_Bramboy]

Fans can hate it or love it, can't really have a say in what happens.

Sounds like a fascist way of thinking.

[princeofcarthage]

No you don't. What have you ever contributed to your favourite club Ajax? Stop acting like some entitled privileged person. If the club was going down would you contribute few thousand dollars to keep it afloat with no guarantee of returns or what might happen in couple years?

Eh, football clubs like Ajax owe their entire fucking existance to their fans? The fact that you seem to consider these sports teams to be some sort of business shows just how ignorant you are..

The fact that you seem to not consider sport as business shows just how ignorant you are.

[fightinfrenchman]

No you don't. What have you ever contributed to your favourite club Ajax? Stop acting like some entitled privileged person. If the club was going down would you contribute few thousand dollars to keep it afloat with no guarantee of returns or what might happen in couple years?

Eh, football clubs like Ajax owe their entire fucking existance to their fans? The fact that you seem to consider these sports teams to be some sort of business shows just how ignorant you are..

The fact that you seem to not consider sport as business shows just how ignorant you are.

Just shut the fuck up you dumb fucking moron

[gibson]

To be fair, the "you just don't understand it" response is understandable when you post dumb takes about this ESL idea and then don't really show that you do in fact understand why the fans hate it.
And also when you describe the EU football fan culture as "almost exactly the same" as US sports fan culture. It's obviously not because you think this ESL was a good idea, in contrast to literally all of the EU football fans ITT.

No, you don’t get the point. It makes complete sense why most Europeans don’t like it, and my argument was never meant to be that they should like it. It’s not good for the vast majority of teams, even though for most teams the chances of playing in the best league in the world was a pipe dream, so really for most teams this wouldnt change much. My argument is that it’s good for the sport.

[princeofcarthage]

Show hidden quotes

No you don't. What have you ever contributed to your favourite club Ajax? Stop acting like some entitled privileged person. If the club was going down would you contribute few thousand dollars to keep it afloat with no guarantee of returns or what might happen in couple years?

Eh, football clubs like Ajax owe their entire fucking existance to their fans? The fact that you seem to consider these sports teams to be some sort of business shows just how ignorant you are..

The fact that you seem to not consider sport as business shows just how ignorant you are.

Just shut the fuck up you dumb fucking moron

@Community Team He may disagree with my views but why he is allowed to talk to me like that on continuous basis?

[harcha]

cause it's funny

[Goodspeed]

To be fair, the "you just don't understand it" response is understandable when you post dumb takes about this ESL idea and then don't really show that you do in fact understand why the fans hate it.
And also when you describe the EU football fan culture as "almost exactly the same" as US sports fan culture. It's obviously not because you think this ESL was a good idea, in contrast to literally all of the EU football fans ITT.

No, you don’t get the point. It makes complete sense why most Europeans don’t like it, and my argument was never meant to be that they should like it. It’s not good for the vast majority of teams, even though for most teams the chances of playing in the best league in the world was a pipe dream, so really for most teams this wouldnt change much. My argument is that it’s good for the sport.

My point was that you didn't show you understood why they didn't like it, which invites the "you just don't understand us" response. Your argument that it's good for the sport ties into this because it very much depends on how you define "the sport" and you seem to define it very differently than most football fans.

[Mr_Bramboy]

No you don't. What have you ever contributed to your favourite club Ajax? Stop acting like some entitled privileged person. If the club was going down would you contribute few thousand dollars to keep it afloat with no guarantee of returns or what might happen in couple years?

Eh, football clubs like Ajax owe their entire fucking existance to their fans? The fact that you seem to consider these sports teams to be some sort of business shows just how ignorant you are..

Ajax NV, you mean? I own 20 shares!

[InsectPoison]

To be fair, the "you just don't understand it" response is understandable when you post dumb takes about this ESL idea and then don't really show that you do in fact understand why the fans hate it.
And also when you describe the EU football fan culture as "almost exactly the same" as US sports fan culture. It's obviously not because you think this ESL was a good idea, in contrast to literally all of the EU football fans ITT.

No, you don’t get the point. It makes complete sense why most Europeans don’t like it, and my argument was never meant to be that they should like it. It’s not good for the vast majority of teams, even though for most teams the chances of playing in the best league in the world was a pipe dream, so really for most teams this wouldnt change much. My argument is that it’s good for the sport.

Is it really good for the sport to have a closed-off private league? The champions league already exists which any team from any European country has the chance of entering and winning. The super league is just another way for execs to line their pockets with more money. If these clubs will always have this extra cash injection compared to other clubs, then no one will ever be able to compete with them. Do you really think we would have fairy tales like Leicester winning the league when 6 clubs in the same league will always be earning an extra 300 million every year? At the end of the day this idea of "super league" is just another greedy cash grab from out-of-touch owners. Teams like Manchester United have had ZERO investment from their owners, each year these owners take money out of the club, the super league was just another way to earn more money whilst simultaneously investing even less money as they don't need to worry about European qualification. I don't know what @princeofcarthage is on about, these clubs are institutions to the local area, owners will come and go but the fans will always be there. These clubs are nothing without the fans.

[RefluxSemantic]

I also dont see Gibsons case. One argument he brought up was that he wants the best players at the best teams, but thats already the case in football so we wouldnt need any changes for that. I dont see any other arguments, at least no arguments that make sense to me.

[duckzilla]

One final comment on this topic: the general idea of a European League is not bad. It is just a question of implementation. Having fixed teams in the highest league is just against anything that European football stands for. One could, however, think about a European League with a proper relegation system that would at least nominally allow any football club to be promoted into the highest circle just as any top club should be able to fail.

[RefluxSemantic]

One final comment on this topic: the general idea of a European League is not bad. It is just a question of implementation. Having fixed teams in the highest league is just against anything that European football stands for. One could, however, think about a European League with a proper relegation system that would at least nominally allow any football club to be promoted into the highest circle just as any top club should be able to fail.

Or what about giving all countries some form of participation, but make the tickets or way they qualify depend on how well their teams do in Europe (ie the average 'points' per team they enter over a 5 year span) so a strong competition like La Liga gets like 4-5 direct qualified teams and a weaker competition like NL gets one qualified team and maybe one team in the qualifiers, and even weaker competitions just get one team in qualifying rounds?

Idk just some thoughts on what the system could be like.

[duckzilla]

Yeah that would work as well, as we can see in the CL. There are lots of better alternatives than what has been proposed.


edit: you were faster in pointing out that it's how CL looks like.

[RefluxSemantic]

Yeah that would work as well. There are lots of better alternatives than what has been proposed.

Its the current system

[duckzilla]

Yeah that would work as well. There are lots of better alternatives than what has been proposed.

Its the current system

Nah it's not exactly the same as what I had in mind. The Champions League is a knockout tournament, which is somewhat inconsistent with the name to me, since I would refer to such a tournament using the term cup. Anyway, I could imagine the implementation of a proper league system accompanies by a minor reform of the current CL.

[RefluxSemantic]

Ah, tbh I love the knockout leagues. So much more tension and excitement. Normal league games can be exciting too, but I feel like all the great tournaments are knock out tournaments.

[gibson]

A little different vein, but an interesting headline