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2021 European soccer megathread

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G650
G650

I mean if the Super League crashes AND Madrid goes broke, I'm not sure how much more of a win/win you can have.

Cheeseweasel
Cheeseweasel

2031: Bayern Munich wins their 9th consecutive Champions League defeating West Brom 14-0...

Cheeseweasel
Cheeseweasel

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mdmost

mdmost 42999

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Posted
5 minutes ago, Surly Bevo said:

Fascinating, I think if tonight it was announced that at the end of the current TV contracts the following league was being formed with 24 members, 3 conferences and a 6 team playoff where first and second in each conference made the playoffs or whatever (point isn't really the playoff structure):

Alabama, Arkansas, LSU, Georgia, Florida, Auburn, Tennessee, Ohio State, Michigan, Wisconsin, Penn State, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Texas, Texas A&M, Clemson, Florida State, UCLA, USC, Washington, Oregon, West Virginia, Virginia Tech, Notre Dame 

Most fans (not all) here would think "yea fuck the NCAA, fuck the jag ass Big 12,  let's go..... time to dump the coat tail riders and get it on"

The opposite passionate response from most English and European football fans shows how different those things have grown and matured vs here.  

 

-note this is also not a post to argue about the teams I included, let's just say I quickly pulled a mental list of long standing winning college football programs that tend to have large fanbases and make bank.

Is this the new realignment thread? You guys think Cloak Room is bad. It has nothing on the realignment thread people. 

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alincoln

alincoln 2371

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The concern in England specifically is that the Super League will reduce the competitiveness of the Premier League.  The elimination of CL qualification will cause the Super League teams who aren't in contention for the EPL title to coast through the end of the season.  Tonight's Liverpool-Leeds game is (was?) very important to Liverpool due to CL qualification.  In the Super League era, it would mean nothing because Liverpool would be in the Super League next season regardless of their league position.  This is a hugely significant concern.

I do wonder how football would evolve if the best players in the world are constantly playing against each other as would be the case in the Super League.  

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mdmost

mdmost 42999

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Posted (edited)
5 minutes ago, Buzzrock said:

Tottenham should stay behind, they might finally win something!

On the flipside, if Arsenal is banned from the Community Shield, what silverware can they look forward to winning each year?

Edited by mdmost
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BrickHorn

BrickHorn 18216

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8 minutes ago, Surly Bevo said:

Fascinating, I think if tonight it was announced that at the end of the current TV contracts the following league was being formed with 24 members, 3 conferences and a 6 team playoff where first and second in each conference made the playoffs or whatever (point isn't really the playoff structure):

Alabama, Arkansas, LSU, Georgia, Florida, Auburn, Tennessee, Ohio State, Michigan, Wisconsin, Penn State, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Texas, Texas A&M, Clemson, Florida State, UCLA, USC, Washington, Oregon, West Virginia, Virginia Tech, Notre Dame 

That analogy is a little off. It’s more like this:

The conferences will remain the same. But a dozen historic programs will skip the bowls and BCS playoff, and will instead participate in a closed round-robin tournament at the end of the season and those programs will get a shitload of cash based on a separate TV rights deal.

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alincoln

alincoln 2371

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2 minutes ago, Buzzrock said:

 

So more rebates they can't afford to their broadcast partners then.  UEFA further demonstrating their legendary foresight by voluntarily delegitimizing its own CL within 48 hours of the announcement of the Super League.  

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Surly Bevo

Surly Bevo 24908

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1 minute ago, BrickHorn said:

That analogy is a little off. It’s more like this:

The conferences will remain the same. But a dozen historic programs will skip the bowls and BCS playoff, and will instead participate in a closed round-robin tournament at the end of the season and those programs will get a shitload of cash based on a separate TV rights deal.

Fair technical point...do you think we would have a different reaction based on that technicality?

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Cheeseweasel

Cheeseweasel 26438

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2 minutes ago, alincoln said:

So more rebates they can't afford to their broadcast partners then.  UEFA further demonstrating their legendary foresight by voluntarily delegitimizing its own CL within 48 hours of the announcement of the Super League.  

Cutting your own dick off is peak UEFA.

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Surly Bevo

Surly Bevo 24908

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13 minutes ago, mdmost said:

On the flipside, if Arsenal is banned from the Community Shield, what silverware can they look forward to winning each year?

Troopz and DT trade winning  the "Best Performance by a Super League Fan in a Weekly Meltdown" award week after week after week after week after week.  So we got that going for us....

Edited by Surly Bevo
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Ted Lange

Ted Lange 16083

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I think March Madness is a better analogy than CFB playoff.   March Madness is closer to the UCL than the closed system CFB playoff.   

This would be like Duke, UNC, Kentucky, Kansas, UCLA, Michigan, Indiana, Syracuse, Louisville, etc...   decided they will no longer play in the NCAA tournament, but instead will play in the SUPER MARCH MADNESS tournament at the end of each season.

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WBT

WBT 20561

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Posted
27 minutes ago, Surly Bevo said:

Fascinating, I think if tonight it was announced that at the end of the current TV contracts the following league was being formed with 24 members, 3 conferences and a 6 team playoff where first and second in each conference made the playoffs or whatever (point isn't really the playoff structure):

Alabama, Arkansas, LSU, Georgia, Florida, Auburn, Tennessee, Ohio State, Michigan, Wisconsin, Penn State, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Texas, Texas A&M, Clemson, Florida State, UCLA, USC, Washington, Oregon, West Virginia, Virginia Tech, Notre Dame 

Most fans (not all) here would think "yea fuck the NCAA, fuck the jag ass Big 12,  let's go..... time to dump the coat tail riders and get it on"

The opposite passionate response from most English and European football fans shows how different those things have grown and matured vs here.  

 

-note this is also not a post to argue about the teams I included, let's just say I quickly pulled a mental list of long standing winning college football programs that tend to have large fanbases and make bank.

I think the reaction would be more negative than positive.  And turning NCAA football into the NFL would be a less drastic change than turning European football into the NFL.

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Hagbard Celine

Hagbard Celine 10849

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54 minutes ago, Dutch said:

I don't think the American owners of the clubs have an idea of the depth and level of supporter involvement/attachment to football clubs.

they do have an idea, and they give zero fucks.  the idea that the fans are stakeholders was tested in mls and it failed, so they (the american owners) have decided it's pax americana and the europeans will shovel the shit and eat it.

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mdmost

mdmost 42999

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I've already seen talk from I think it was the Real Madrid ownership that existing fans who just want things to stay the traditional way they are are called "legacy fans". They are trying to appeal to new fans who want Real Madrid and United to play twice a year and not the occasional matchup in UCL. No, you want money and power. That's all you give a shit about.

Edited by mdmost
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Hagbard Celine

Hagbard Celine 10849

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15 minutes ago, Cheeseweasel said:

Imagine a guy like Klopp not being brought into the loop by ownership. Fuck those money hungry cunts.

in order to do this the way they did it and when they did it they had to have a total lockdown.  probably no more than 25 people including lawyers and the person that farked up the super league logo.

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Buzzrock

Buzzrock 14902

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La Liga, Serie A and Ligue 1 are no different.  Juve has won 9 straight Serie A titles, there has only been 1 La Liga winner outside of the Barca/Madrid duopoly since 2004 and PSG has won 7 of the last 8 Ligue 1 titles. 
31 of the last 32 league titles in the Big 5 leagues outside of England have been won by 5 teams (PSG, Bayern, Juve, Madrid/Barca) and 39 of the last 40 CL finalists have come from the Super 12/Bayern.  It's already a de facto closed system when it comes to the important trophies.   
As for the EPL, it has been won once since 1995 by a team outside the Big 6. 


I was thinking about this, and it’s about more than just the league winners. Promotion and relegation is beautiful and the SL kills it. I’ll never forget when Tottenham lost to already-relegated Newcastle on the last day of the season to keep them below Arsenal. I was watching on a plane and I absolutely RAKED my BIL Spurs fan about it. It was great.

Hell, Fulham almost beat Arsenal for the first time EVER yesterday. Moments like that are gone with the SL.
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Hagbard Celine

Hagbard Celine 10849

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apologies for the pool talk in this thread, but this match about to kick off with leeds.....  here's the new epl table:

Leicester 56

West Ham 55

Everton 49

Leeds 45

Aston Villa 44

Wolves 41

Crystal Palace 38

Leeds are now in 4th and playing to hold on to their place in europe if 4th is still the finish line.

Pool have nothing to play for as they are an ESL Franchise.

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Captain Ron

Captain Ron 12864

Posted
Posted
2 minutes ago, Buzzrock said:

 


I was thinking about this, and it’s about more than just the league winners. Promotion and relegation is beautiful and the SL kills it. I’ll never forget when Tottenham lost to already-relegated Newcastle on the last day of the season to keep them below Arsenal. I was watching on a plane and I absolutely RAKED my BIL Spurs fan about it. It was great.

Hell, Fulham almost beat Arsenal for the first time EVER yesterday. Moments like that are gone with the SL.

 

 

All of this.

Everyone thinks seeing the big boys play week in week out is what it is all about. But it really isn't. People want to watch underdogs play a team they shouldn't beat, and then do it. In the EPL, we are talking about 6 teams. If you go to England, the bulk of the people that live there don't root for these teams, they root for teams they hope can pull an upset that particular week.

And frankly if every week we get ManU-Madrid or Barca-Arsenal, those games just don't matter as much. Why was Texas-LSU such a big deal a few years ago? The same reason we are salivating over Texas-Bama and Texas-Michigan in the next 5 years.  Because we don't get those games all that often.

And frankly, the players also like having "off weeks" when you get a Sheffield or Fulham instead of City or Chelsea.

 

All in all, this is stupid.

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alincoln

alincoln 2371

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I would also say that the grandstanding and predictably hyperbolic reaction to the proposed Super League by politicians, administrators, columnists, media figures and social media influencers is so very emblematic of our current environment.  The CL has been a cynical money grab ever since it was expanded for the 1999-2000 season.  Remember that CL qualification wasn't even a thing before then. 

European and particularly English football were sold to the highest bidder more than a decade ago and trophies are almost universally bought and paid for.  Gary Neville working himself into a lather about the Super League while Chelsea and then City literally purchased the mountaintop of English football with petrodollars is pretty rich. The horse has been out of the barn for a long fucking time Gary.  He wasn't waling and gnashing his teeth when the expanded CL killed the relevance of a true hallmark of English football (the FA Cup).     

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Speedtrucker

Speedtrucker 2071

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I've already seen talk from I think it was the Real Madrid ownership that existing fans who just want things to stay the traditional way they are are called "legacy fans". They are trying to appeal to new fans who want Real Madrid and United to play twice a year and not the occasional matchup in UCL. No, you want money and power. That's all you give a shit about.

guarantee kroenke taught them that term


Florentino Perez didn’t need to learn that shit.

He was elected on the promise of Luis Figo and financial rise to power. Galaticos and spreading the Real Madrid brand to the US, Asia and the UAE.

He’s even tried at times to have Real Madrid basketball to be included into the NBA... he knows how to be the devil without learning that shit from others.

And I’m a huge Madridista... this all sucks. I love Madrid being the king of the UCL.
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Captain Ron

Captain Ron 12864

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2 hours ago, Speedtrucker said:

Yeah I think it’s UEFA trying to extend their power past the euros.

But UEFA has no say over CONCACAF and further more FIFPRO represents the players. No way that would stand for World Cup participation

I think this goes into how suspensions are handled between leagues. If FIFA wanted to stand against TSL, then they could uphold these rulings. 

 

But frankly, this move helps FIFA in their struggles with UEFA, they don't have a reason to stand against it. If anything they support it because it's 1 step closer to their real meaningful Club World Cup.

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Captain Ron

Captain Ron 12864

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3 minutes ago, Speedtrucker said:


And I’m a huge Madridista... this all sucks. I love Madrid being the king of the UCL.

 

 

 

Because winning the Champions League means that you are really the kings of Europe and frankly the football world. Teams distilled down to the best of the best and if you win that you can claim to be the best of the best.

 

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C-Man

C-Man 27184

Posted
Posted (edited)
1 hour ago, Surly Bevo said:
Fascinating, I think if tonight it was announced that at the end of the current TV contracts the following league was being formed with 24 members, 3 conferences and a 6 team playoff where first and second in each conference made the playoffs or whatever (point isn't really the playoff structure):
Alabama, Arkansas, LSU, Georgia, Florida, Auburn, Tennessee, Ohio State, Michigan, Wisconsin, Penn State, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Texas, Texas A&M, Clemson, Florida State, UCLA, USC, Washington, Oregon, West Virginia, Virginia Tech, Notre Dame 
Most fans (not all) here would think "yea fuck the NCAA, fuck the jag ass Big 12,  let's go..... time to dump the coat tail riders and get it on"
The opposite passionate response from most English and European football fans shows how different those things have grown and matured vs here.  
 
-note this is also not a post to argue about the teams I included, let's just say I quickly pulled a mental list of long standing winning college football programs that tend to have large fanbases and make bank.


Funny you mention it. From The Athletic:

924eb26e509c6c5694ce95da3e720e0d.jpg

No aggy

https://theathletic.com/2529433/2021/04/19/staples-college-football-super-league-alabama-notre-dame-nebraska-and-a-lot-of-hurt-feelings-texas-am-tennessee/

Quote

 

Unlike most of my college football writing brethren, I don’t follow international soccer. But even I couldn’t escape the Super League news that exploded Sunday. Twelve of the world’s most popular clubs banded together — with the hope of adding three more — to thumb their nose at decades of tradition in search of a massive media rights payday.

It sounded so juicy. It sounded so explosive. It sounded so . . . familiar.

What is the Super League if not the nuclear-option version of college sports realignment from a decade ago? In college sports, schools consolidated into leagues to maintain a brighter line between the haves and have-nots. Leagues that added schools did so with the goal of adding to their cable television footprints so more people would pay higher per-month subscriber fees for their conference networks. The Super League, meanwhile, would be akin to the 15 most popular football — though not necessarily the most recently accomplished — programs deciding to play games only against one another and outside the confines of their own conferences. The Super League* is a massive cash grab, and the media rights could make Arsenal, Manchester United, Barcelona, Inter Milan, Real Madrid and company half a billion dollars richer (each) on an annual basis. The founding clubs intend to split about $4.5 billion in seed money for signing on.

*The Super League may not come to pass because much of soccer’s power structure has united against it. There are threats of teams being banned from their current leagues and players being banned by FIFA from playing for their countries in international competition. And like the Power 5 leagues occasionally threatening to leave the NCAA, this might just be a ploy to get better deals for these clubs under the current structure.

The college football numbers wouldn’t be so mind-boggling, but they’d still be huge. The 15 programs would split a pot of media rights that would absolutely be worth more than any single league’s and probably more than, say, the Big Ten and College Football Playoff rights combined. Monday morning, I texted a TV consultant the list of 15 schools I’m about to share with you and asked if that football rights package would be worth $1 billion a year. The response?

“That’s all? ”

The consultant texted back to explain that such an arrangement probably could fetch closer to $1.5 billion a year and maybe more. Schools that currently make between $30 million and $55 million from their conference’s media rights deals would stand to make $100 million in addition to other revenue such as NCAA basketball tournament distribution and rights fees for other sports. (Unlike the Super League, which presumes the teams would continue to play in their current home leagues, it would seem unlikely college football teams could stay in their conferences and do this because American football teams just can’t play that many games.)

I know what you’re thinking: Stop giving them ideas.

But I had to game this out to understand why soccer fans have raged at this concept, which, on the surface, sounds like a bunch of matches between clubs that a lot of people would like to watch play one another. Translated to college football, the backlash made far more sense to my American brain.

I started by making the list of the 15 programs that likely would be included in a college football Super League. I chose the 15 that I thought would deliver the most viewers across the widest swath of football-loving geography. Success factored in, but it wasn’t the primary driver. This is the part that drives people crazy about the current system of Power 5 and Group of 5 conferences, and it would only be magnified here.

Here are the 15 programs, listed in alphabetical order. Prepare for many, many hurt feelings.

Alabama

Auburn

Clemson

Florida

Georgia

LSU

Michigan

Nebraska

Notre Dame

Ohio State

Oklahoma

Oregon

Penn State

Texas

USC

It is here that you might note that Nebraska is 16-28 the past four seasons. This is true, but Nebraska also remains a brand name (though it won’t be for much longer if the Cornhuskers don’t turn things around soon) that would draw eyeballs while playing against the other teams on this list. It also gives the league a foothold in a large geographic region that, while not heavily populated, is extremely passionate about football. This might be the equivalent of Tottenham Hotspur, which hasn’t won a trophy of any kind since the Carling Cup in 2008. At least Nebraska won the Big 12 North in 2009 and the Big Ten Legends Division title in 2012.

You might also note that Texas A&M, with a massive, passionate fan base in a heavily populated, football-crazy state, was left off the list. That was the most difficult omission, and it happened because the league needed at least one more team on the West Coast to ensure the league didn’t essentially ignore an entire region of the country. (More on this in real life later.) Had Texas A&M won anything of consequence in the past 20 years, the Aggies might have been impossible to leave out of the league. But Oregon, which established itself as one of the coolest programs in college football and has played in two national title games since 2010, got the spot the Aggies would have gotten.

Oregon quarterback Marcus Mariota, left, and Florida State quarterback Jameis Winston meet after the College Football Playoff semifinal at the Rose Bowl on Jan. 1, 2015. The Ducks won 59-20. (Ric Tapia / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

Let’s be honest. Texas A&M fans shouldn’t be the only furious ones here. Fans of Wisconsin, Michigan State, Florida State, Iowa, Oklahoma State, Kansas State, Tennessee*, Virginia Tech and Washington should be incensed. They are also loyal, passionate and create incredible college football atmospheres. Plus, they all have enjoyed at least a measure of on-field success in the past 20 years. Heck, Florida State has won a national title and Michigan State and Washington have made the College Football Playoff.

*Ten years ago, Tennessee makes this list instead of Clemson.

But tough decisions must be made when creating an exclusive club that can essentially print money. All the schools on that list understand that because they’re currently on the comfy side of the velvet rope. And some of the programs on that side haven’t exactly done much to earn their continued place in the VIP.

This is a great example. Vanderbilt rakes in cash by virtue of being in the right place at the right time when the SEC formed in 1932 and by being smart enough to stay in the SEC when founding members Georgia Tech and Tulane dropped out.

What makes the soccer fans so angry about the Super League is the same thing that frustrates a lot of college football fan bases. No one gets kicked out of the Power 5 leagues for failing to perform. But in European soccer, teams that don’t perform do get kicked out of their leagues thanks to a system of relegation and promotion. The Super League seeks to subvert that system, and in that way, it is copying college football. Once you’re in the club, you’re in. Unlike the UEFA Champions League, a similar concept that actually requires wins on the pitch to make the pool, the founding members of the Super League would be in regardless of their success in their home leagues. And here’s what makes the deal so great for them. If they got relegated to a lesser league back home, they’d lose the top-league media rights money, but they’d still be making Super League rights money. In practice, they’d always have enough to spend on players to ensure they’d never get relegated.

Again, I realize this sounds awfully familiar — just without the locker room waterfalls, nap pods and antitrust suits from the players who, in lieu of over-the-table cash payment, receive scholarships and access to locker room waterfalls and nap pods.

Soccer fans are angry because this plan stabs at the heart of what they believe makes their sport special. If you win, you can climb the rungs of the sport. If you lose, you get sent back and a winner from the lower division takes your place. This would essentially be like Boise State replacing Kansas in the Big 12. The Super League would, in effect, make it possible for the clubs with the biggest reach to game that system. It would consolidate the power and interest in a few select clubs . . .

. . . which would make it a lot more like college football.

The catch is that if those soccer fans were given a truth serum, they’d probably watch the hell out of the Super League matches. Ditto for college football fans. If those 15 schools played only one another, we’d watch. At least most of us would.

The “most of us” is the problem, though. Many fans would drop away and never come back. College football’s challenge in the next few years is to find a way to keep satisfying the fans who grow weary of the same six or so programs running the sport. The four-team College Football Playoff essentially has ignored teams west of the Rockies for the past four seasons. That could be fixed easily, but the people who run the sport have to be willing to realize it. An eight-team playoff would still be the most exclusive tournament in American sports (thus keeping the regular season valuable), but guaranteeing spots for every Power 5 champ and the highest-ranked Group of 5 champ would keep millions of more fans engaged through the entire season.

The economic underpinnings of college football make legislating parity nearly impossible. There won’t be a draft or a collective bargaining agreement. Attempts to legislate parity have actually made the issues worse and probably helped cause the current lopsidedness. Those rules robbed athletes for decades of money they should have been allowed to take — and soon will be thanks to coming Name, Image and Likeness laws that will force the schools to allow it — while enriching coaches and administrators at a select few schools. Perhaps the coming transfer and economic freedom for athletes will help even out the distribution of talent and give more teams a chance to compete for Playoff berths.

With any luck, those will be the happy accidents that come from the moves that should have been made long ago. The concern that these will allow the best programs to further consolidate the most talent doesn’t take into account how these decisions actually work. Yes, Alabama creates the most draft picks and wins the most national titles. For these reasons, it makes perfect sense why Alabama would collect the best new talent each year. But Alabama can only play 11 on offense and 11 on defense at a time. A player who can transfer without sitting out a year might see a bigger opportunity elsewhere, especially if being the best player at the new school is worth more money now than being a backup in Tuscaloosa. Or maybe the player makes that decision in high school. The 20th-rated player on Alabama or Ohio State’s recruiting board might be the highest-rated player in an Arkansas class. Soon, being the best player at Arkansas — home to a devoted fan base that envelops the entire state — might be worth a lot of money. So what if No. 20 from that Alabama or Ohio State recruiting board decides to go to Arkansas, forcing the more powerful brand to take No. 26 on its list instead? If that happens over and over, then things get interesting. Because that doesn’t just help Arkansas. Let’s say the Razorbacks got that player instead of the Buckeyes. That also helps Michigan, Penn State and Wisconsin.

But this only works if Arkansas fans think their team still has a chance and create the kind of audience that can make a popular player valuable to the market. Right now — in spite of everything that happened in 2018 and 2019 — Razorbacks fans still feel that way. And hopefully, they’ll keep feeling that way. As long as the fans of the schools outside the group that competes for Playoff berths every year still cares, then college football hasn’t completely devolved into the Super League. The game’s long-term health depends on ensuring those people keep caring.

 

 

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