MADRID:

to Superliga is already on everyone ‘s lips. Josep María Bartomeu took the first step on the day of his farewell to the presidency of Barcelona, ​​but it was Florentino Pérez , not to mention the word, who has put on the table the appearance of a competition demanded by many and feared by others. What is the Super League? What are you looking for? Is there a competition format? What is the positioning of UEFA and FIFA? How far are the teams willing to go? How many?

The Super League is a project that many of the great teams in Europe have been thinking about for a long time and that is much more advanced than certain sectors of football believe. Those who pull the strings speak of 2022 as the time to launch it. The leaders of these top-level teams consider that the Champions League format has expired , that they need more, that fifteen games, in the best of cases, is little and that the audience level does not correspond to what was expected due to differences in many of the group stage matches.

They bet that the number of matches can reach 30 in a League with 16 teams , but they know that they must encourage matches and that a closed League would not be the most convenient either. The format is under development and is still open to alternatives to make a product as attractive as possible , which captures the attention of the widest possible market.

In addition, they consider that the television distribution in many of the countries is not fair because of what they represent and the audiences that each other has, so they must go to another type of competition than the one that exists at the moment before the exhaustion of the domestic championships , at least economically. There is talk of amounts out of the market, but those who are behind the project do ensure that the winner of the Super League will take much more than those 120 million euros that can currently be raised .

In the case of Spain, the crisis caused by Covid 19 has revealed the current economic distribution. The clubs that produce the most for the competition, that have the most audience, are the ones that have suffered the most forcefully the rigors of the economic hit , hence the leaders of those few teams think that they are the ones who keep the party going, but without power compete with the greats of other countries.

The positioning is clear. They understand that there is a need to change, to evolve, that the circus is paid by few to ensure the lives of many and that they get very little in return. They do not go against the domestic championships, but they do against some privileges. They intend to continue with the local leagues, but they understand that the priority must be in the Super League. Inevitably it would go to larger templates. They advocate cutting the number of teams in local Leagues to reduce the number of games, something the Leagues are opposed to.

Real Madrid, Barcelona and Atlético are the ones called to shape the Super League by the Spanish side. Without a one hundred percent defined format, the idea is to fill the gap in the Champions League, a competition that UEFA already plans to give a face to the summer of 2024 , since the following triennium is already sold and with a format continuity to the current one. The clubs are not going to give UEFA that much margin. In season and a half they want the Super League to be ready and willing to start. No format or teams defined one hundred percent (in the 90s some teams agreed to the Media Partner project and later left the teams that faced UEFA on their feet), but with the conviction that change is necessary .

The idea is to listen to UEFA, to reach out, but always with the demands of the teams ahead. The legendary G-14 managed to change the format , for the teams to participate in the distribution of audiovisual and marketing rights that they did not see. It is not easy to take the leap and vertigo was what stopped that revolt. The list of teams is very similar and in them is to push the situation to the limit, but always remembering that to start a competition like this there is a lot of bureaucracy behind and an organization that is not easy to start .

What does FIFA think? It has little to say. The competitions of each confederation are particular matters, although as MARCA has learned, the idea has been well accepted. It should be remembered that FIFA has the new Club World Cup on the starting ramp, which was to be held in 2021, but that it has had to be suspended for the moment. It points to Japan that World Cup in its first edition. The germ of the world club association chaired by Florentino Pérez and which was born under the FIFA umbrella, supports the idea of ​​the Super League. This idyll with the highest body in world football leads one to think that on the table there may also be a change in the national team model, but without forgetting that they are the ones that keep FIFA as such.