Developing: Top European Soccer Teams Are Looking To Join Forces And Create A European Premier League
Liverpool and Manchester United are in talks about a bombshell plot involving Europe's biggest football clubs to join a new FIFA-backed tournament that would reshape the sport's global landscape.
If you thought Manchester United were having a tough go of things right now, just wait until they get to play Barcelona and Juventus in the same week. Getting thrashed by Palace and Spurs will surely translate into this apparent super league.
Sky News has learned that financiers are assembling a $6 billion (£4.6 billion) funding package to assist the creation of what could become known as the European Premier League.
At first, this just seemed like another click-baity European soccer article. Happens all the time. You can never tell who is telling the truth with all these Spanish papers, English papers, Italian papers, etc. As soon as I saw the casual price tag of $6 billion USD floating around, it was probably legit. No one floats around those numbers without having serious sources.
Also, can we come up with a better name than the European Premier League? So goddamn lame. Hopefully, it's just a working title but can we please get some fucking creativity in here. Might as well just call it "European Football" and just move on from it for fucks sake.
As for the actual league itself? I'm all in. Any chance that Chelsea has to win new silverware, I'm all for it. Other than that the league just sounds like what every soccer fan has been doing on FIFA for generations now. Just compile Europe's best clubs and let them grind out a full table lengthed season. I'm unsure as to if that's what'd they'd do or not - but that's what everyone is hoping for.
More than a dozen teams from England, France, Germany, Italy and Spain are in negotiations about becoming founder members of the competition.
As many as five English clubs could sign up to join it, with a provisional start date said to have been discussed as early as 2022.
The only thing that matters about this league is the teams involved. Sure there are some big names off the bat like Liverpool and Man United (Chelsea, Arsenal, Spurs, City also in talks) but we're gonna need to see all the teams before anyone can get too excited.
There also doesn't feel any need to abandon the current structure. The individual domestic leagues that funnel good teams into competitions like the Champions League and Europa League. It's sounded like this tournament is made to usurp the Champions League which makes me tremendously sad. What about the music. Think of the music.
What's going to happen to that overly dramatic, spine-tingling song? They can't just flush it down the toilet never to be heard again. What song goes better shoehorned into a Heiniken or Lays commercial? Nothing. This new league has to at least consider grandfathering in this song. Based on the creativity already show by the folks at the European Premier League, I'd say that the song they'd chose would be shit anyway. So just take the UCL one.
Sources said that FIFA, football's world governing body, had been involved in developing the new format, which is expected to comprise up to 18 teams, and involve fixtures played during the regular European season.
The top-placed teams in the league would then play in a knockout format to conclude the tournament, with prize money for the winners expected to be worth hundreds of millions of pounds each year.
Very English Championship-like rules here. So they'll have a league table but play playoffs at the end of the year. They're essentially just making a Champions League with a long group stage and less of a knockout stage. Outrageously lame. Give me all the drama of UCL knockout stages over some league structure every day of the week.
While the idea of having a massive European table is pretty cool, there's no point if it's just gonna take over the Champions League. especially if it's just gonna have playoffs at the end of the table anyway. You could understand if they just wanted to do a normal league table with no playoffs. But adding playoffs just makes it a way lamer Champions League.
It doesn't really matter though, everyone will still watch. This news on the day of the Champions League return, no less.