MADRID.- The promoter of the Super LeagueA22 Sports Management, assured AFP this Thursday that it was in “negotiations” with the UEFA for the creation of a new formula of the Champions Leaguea perspective “categorically” denied by the European body.
“What A22 and the Super League clubs have done is propose to UEFA an agreement that essentially consists of offering a free streaming platform and very slightly changing the current competition format,” said an A22 spokesperson.
In this version, a far cry from the initial semi-closed competition project that almost caused European football to implode in 2021, the 36 teams currently classified in the Champions League would be divided into two groups of 18 clubs and the best classified would then face each other in the round of 32.
“This innovation proposal is on the table. Now, if UEFA does not wish to accept it for its own reasons, we will not be able to continually turn our backs on judicial decisions,” warns the promoter.
Relying on several judicial victories, in particular that of May 2024 in Spain, which considered that FIFA and UEFA “abused their dominant position”, the promoters of the Super League are “enabled to create a competition and UEFA cannot prevent it”, estimates this source.
“Multiply income”
An interpretation, however, is debatable, since the procedure had sanctioned outdated rules: UEFA rewrote its regulations in 2022, without it having been brought to justice since then.
A22’s goal remains “to multiply soccer revenues, which today are not at all up to par with what they should be,” compared, especially, to television rights to American sports, according to its spokesperson.
Renamed the “Unify League”, the Super League had requested official recognition of its competition from FIFA and UEFA in December 2024.
Consulted by AFP, UEFA acknowledges, for its part, several “public meetings” between its general secretary, Theodore Theodoridis, and the co-founder of A22, Anas Laghrari, which “did not lead to any results.”
“We categorically reaffirm that there are no plans to modify the format of the UEFA Champions League,” said its spokesperson, while the new formula came into force in the 2024-2025 season.
The Super League project “is dead”
This adjustment comes after the statements of the president of FC Barcelona, Joan Laporta, for a long time a defender of the Super League project together with Real Madrid, in which he claims to want “an agreement with UEFA” for “the pacification” of European football.
Contacted by AFP, Real Madrid, whose president Florentino Pérez made this initiative a priority to “save European football”, did not want to react immediately on the issue.
In Rome, during the general assembly of the European Football Clubs (EFC) organization, former Association of European Clubs (ECA, also in English), its president Nasser Al-Khelaïfi celebrated the “return to the family” of Barça and its president, present in the Italian capital and with whom he had a conversation over a meal and a “romantic walk.”
“Joan (Laporta) is a friend, a super friend, sometimes you can disagree with a friend about how to do things (…) All the clubs are happy that he is here with us,” declared ‘NAK’, the initials of the Qatari businessman.
For the president of Paris Saint-Germain, Barça’s approach to the EFC and UEFA does not mean the end of the Super League project, because “it was already dead before. We do not need other competitions, we already have the best competitions,” he insisted.
