European Super League.

[AJF]

14 minutes ago, Michael W said:

I for one would welcome some targeted fixture placement when the inevitable comedown arrives. 

Friday and Sunday evening games to match Wednesday/Tuesday kick offs. And when they complain about the amount of games, tell them they brought this on themselves and have 25 man squad to pick from, and therefore can select their priorities. 

They could also impose further restrictions to try and screw them over. Introduce a rule where teams can only register a maximum amount of foreign players for domestic competitions. That way they’d need to shell out so much more money for two squads essentially, 1 for domestic football and 1 for their shitty super league.

Edited April 18, 2021 by AJF

[johnnydun]

4 minutes ago, Grangemouth Bairn said:

Everton are the peoples club on Merseyside mate. Always have been.

You'll Never Walk With Us.

[jamamafegan]

Spot on from Bottlebridge

[RossBFaeDundee]

1 minute ago, jamamafegan said:

 

 

Spot on from Bottlebridge

 

We both know he'll be commentating ESL games like nothing's new come August.

[johnnydun]

Celt-Gers fans, would you like to see your club join this monstrosity?

I think the rest of us would like to see you join.

And before anyone starts, having travelled the world, they are up there with those other ESL clubs as a global brand.

Edited April 18, 2021 by johnnydun

[Jambomo]

https://twitter.com/gffn/status/1383910887484923906?s=21

hmmm who do we lose then?

[FernandosMonobrow]

They've utterly b*****dised the European Cup over the years, so I really struggle to have any sympathy for UEFA and the 'big teams' who won't be part of this. And the supreme confidence that the clubs have that they'll still be playing domestic football, suggests something must have been agreed somewhere.

Pish for the fans obviously, but sadly they don't matter at that level.

Edited April 19, 2021 by FernandosMonobrow

[Guest]

2 minutes ago, johnnydun said:

Celt-Gers fans, would you like to see your club join this monstrosity?

I think the rest of would like to see you join.

And before anyone starts, having travelled the world, they are up there with those other ESL clubs as a global brand.

This is one of the reasons those two arse cheeks are trying to get Colt clubs in the Scottish leagues. I hope every football supporter in this country contacts their clubs to tell them to vote down such a proposal.

[RossBFaeDundee]

5 minutes ago, Baptiste Bourgeois said:

 

That is so accurate it's frightening.

[Thistle_do_nicely]

3 hours ago, G51 said:

They want the NFL, but for soccer. Two of the English club owners are also NFL owners, and another is an MLB owner.

NFL franchises are profit makers for their owners. Football clubs are loss makers. These guys don't want to sink their personal fortunes into football clubs, they want supporters to do it while they still get to play the role of owner. The way to do that is to put the brakes on your biggest expense, which is player salaries.

ohhhhh that... sounds really plausible, yeah.

Haven't caught up on all the thread yet, but would that mean some kind of draft system then I wonder/heavy, swingeing changes to how transfer windows work to try to cut down on having to compete so prohibitively on transfer fees for player registrations? It's not exactly like for like with 'murican football since they can also exploit the college football system afaik, but there's still a few of those "project clubs" that have cropped up over the last few years (i.e. New York City FC) so I wonder if it'll lead to a heavier focus on those feeder clubs from the big boys to prepare for this...

edit: lol you've touched on this literally a few posts after the one i've quoted.

Agree on wages but yeah, I reckon they'll all be very keen to find a way to stop not just the salary inflation but also having to pay such a heavy premium on transfers too; Emiliano Sala tragically shows how bad it can go making a multi million pound transfer but there's also other high profile flops like Fernando Torres at Chelsea, arguably Ousmane Dembele at Barcelona etc. that means the vast transfer fees are a HUGE risk for clubs/owners to have to pay to get the biggest names.

Edited April 18, 2021 by Thistle_do_nicely

[Fratelli]

 

[AJF]

12 minutes ago, johnnydun said:

Celt-Gers fans, would you like to see your club join this monstrosity?

I think the rest of us would like to see you join.

And before anyone starts, having travelled the world, they are up there with those other ESL clubs as a global brand.

Absolutely and emphatically not. I’d boycott if Rangers were somehow invited to join.

[G51]

4 minutes ago, Thistle_do_nicely said:

ohhhhh that... sounds really plausible, yeah.

Haven't caught up on all the thread yet, but would that mean some kind of draft system then I wonder/heavy, swingeing changes to how transfer windows work to try to cut down on having to compete so prohibitively on transfer fees for player registrations? It's not exactly like for like with 'murican football since they can also exploit the college football system afaik, but there's still a few of those "project clubs" that have cropped up over the last few years (i.e. New York City FC) so I wonder if it'll lead to a heavier focus on those feeder clubs from the big boys to prepare for this...

Thinking about it a bit harder, a better comparison for the rest of us will be the MLB’s Minor League system. Basically, clubs in the majors acquire players and send them to the minors to train up. We’ll eventually become the Minors to the ESL’s Majors.

Could explain why the latest trend has been to go around and buy loads of other clubs as part of a “football group”

[johnnydun]

Just now, AJF said:

Absolutely and emphatically not. I’d boycott if Rangers were somehow invited to join.

Would you then choose to support another team? Local to you?

[AJF]

2 minutes ago, johnnydun said:

Would you then choose to support another team? Local to you?

I don’t know what I’d do to be fair. Football wouldn’t really be the same not going to support “my team” if you get me.

[G51]

Just now, AJF said:

I don’t know what I’d do to be fair. Football wouldn’t really be the same not going to support “my team” if you get me.

Yeah. It’ll never happen because Rangers will never ever be asked to this, but I’d probably just stop supporting a football team tbh. 

There are some folk that seem to think boycotters would filter into other supports, but I think it’s much more likely they’d just find other things to do with their Saturday.

[johnnydun]

Just now, AJF said:

I don’t know what I’d do to be fair. Football wouldn’t really be the same not going to support “my team” if you get me.

Yeah, I totally get you. 

Fair fucks to you like, I would have presumed that all Celt-Gers fans would be looking to jump ship from the SPFL to a European League at the earliest opportunity.

[Thistle_do_nicely]

11 minutes ago, G51 said:

Thinking about it a bit harder, a better comparison for the rest of us will be the MLB’s Minor League system. Basically, clubs in the majors acquire players and send them to the minors to train up. We’ll eventually become the Minors to the ESL’s Majors.

Could explain why the latest trend has been to go around and buy loads of other clubs as part of a “football group”

again, having not quite caught up on the full thread, i think it would seriously raise the possibility of an Atlantic League again of some kind? was floated in a few papers relatively recently but nothing came of it at the time.

In essence if this ESL replaces the Champions League then I wonder if there's a gap in the market for a 2nd tier breakaway to collude and replicate a kind of Europa League, maybe. If it kills off the Champions League group stage money as it stands then I could see that being a serious option, and tbf Rangers + Celtic would be in that bracket. Depends what sort of names you can get to sign up to it and whether domestic leagues can find ways to entice their bigger names to stay, but I wonder what, say, Porto or Benfica will be making of this - there'd be enough cross continent interest in it to be viable imo.

These entities could then start to talk to each other about promotion/relegation or the like, and there's an element of win-win there - if you're relegated you're still going into a reasonably big name pool to keep interest, you can control it to keep it just a low 1 up 1 down with playoffs if you want, and you're potentially then all singing from the same hymn sheet on transfer rules/restrictions...

Edited April 19, 2021 by Thistle_do_nicely

[djchapsticks]

9 minutes ago, AJF said:

Absolutely and emphatically not. I’d boycott if Rangers were somehow invited to join.

 

3 minutes ago, G51 said:

Yeah. It’ll never happen because Rangers will never ever be asked to this, but I’d probably just stop supporting a football team tbh. 

There are some folk that seem to think boycotters would filter into other supports, but I think it’s much more likely they’d just find other things to do with their Saturday.

Refreshing. I'd always just taken for granted that Rangers (and to a lesser extent Celtic) supporters wholly resented Scotland and the Scottish league setup and would be keen to take the first opportunity to jump ship elsewhere.

[G51]

1 minute ago, Thistle_do_nicely said:

again, having not quite caught up on the full thread, i think it would seriously raise the possibility of an Atlantic League again of some kind? was floated in a few papers relatively recently but nothing came of it at the time.

In essence if this ESL replaces the Champions League then I wonder if there's a gap in the market for a 2nd tier breakaway to collude and replicate a kind of Europa League, maybe. If it kills off the Champions League group stage money then I could see that, and tbf Rangers + Celtic would be in that bracket. Depends what sort of names you can get to sign up to it and whether domestic leagues can find ways to entice their bigger names to stay, but I wonder what, say, Porto or Benfica will be making of this - there'd be enough cross continent interest in it to be viable imo.

I don’t know but it’s a legitimate question. I think if you were doing that it would be more than just Celtic and Rangers from Scotland.

Ultimately though I think UEFA will be able to offer a better TV deal than anything an Atlantic League would generate.