Lauren McCann

The European Super League caused mass outcry during its short life span. The long anticipated breakaway league reared its ugly head on Sunday, coming to fruition late in the evening, as a joint statement from the 12 clubs involved (now aptly labelled the “dirty dozen”) was released after 11pm.

It was an issue which transcended rivalry in the days which followed and united football fans across the continent, as they mobilised to show their strong opposition of the plan to further monopolise some of the biggest clubs in Europe in a closed league. Much of the anger was directed at the fact that the owners of these clubs did not consult players or staff about the decision and more importantly, excluded fans, who are the heartbeat of any club, on having their say on the matter.

Multiple images were shared by supporters across social media of Tunisian side Club Africain’s banner, unveiled during their friendly against PSG in 2017 which read, “Created by the poor stolen by the rich.” The tifo originally targeted Les Parisiens’ Qatari owners and their running of the French clubs, but the sentiments of it ring even truer with regards to the European Super League.

This is because the league was devised to help these owners increase profits and their own personal wealth. They aim to run these clubs like American franchises, maximising money generated from eye watering broadcasting deals with the allure box office fixtures between historically huge clubs every week. These twelve founding members (it was supposed to be fifteen but clubs such as PSG, Porto, Bayern Munich and Borrussia Dortmund declined invitations to join) for agreeing to join, would benefit from a huge initial influx of cash, and be protected from the threat of relegation, even if they hugely underperform.

Erin, a local football player and Arsenal fan, said: “It shows that our American owners never have, or ever will, understand the passion the fans have for our clubs. Kronke needs to go.”

One small thing the masterminds behind this plan underestimated however, was that working class supporters were not going to surrender control of the beautiful game they crafted. The backlash that owners of these clubs have endured has ultimately proved to be deadly, with supporters’ rage taking out the biggest risk to collapsing the whole football pyramid, with one swift shot.

Yet, fans are not content to stop here, and are reloading their ammunition to shoot down further threats which have tarnished a sport that is meant to be inclusive for all but has become inaccessible for many.

One Liverpool fan and Belfast student, Ethan, said it was “greedy and ill-timed”, adding that it “showed the void between how the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.”

One of supporters’ biggest gripes are the rising prices to watch their team live and on screens, with this problem particularly prevalent in England. Fan groups up and down the country continue to campaign for the cap on away tickets for visiting spectators to be reduced to £20. This is deemed more than reasonable given the amount of money fans are expected to dish out on travel and accommodation expenses to follow their team.

The Football Supporters Association have been huge advocates for change, launching the ‘Twenty’s Plenty’ campaign in 2013, calling for the necessary reduction in ticket prices. In conjunction with various fan groups, through organising protests and walk outs, they successfully lobbied the Premier League to introduce a £30 cap for tickets for away fans, which will run for another three years. Their work is not finished yet however, as they continue to encourage supporters to push for further reductions.

Watching Premier League football on TV has become even more of a phenomenon because of the pandemic and ban on spectators attending games, but many people have been priced out of watching the team they love from the comfort of their own home. Fans in the UK must shell out almost £70 a month on three different subscriptions to watch all televised action for England’s topflight and given the financial difficulties many have encountered in the last year, people simply cannot justify spending that sort of money to watch football.

Supporters were successfully able to force Sky Sports to do a U-turn over their plans to charge £15 for one-off pay per view 3pm fixtures and continued objection on Twitter is gaining traction. If enough people oppose more price hikes, Sky and fellow broadcasters will have to scale back prices once again.

UEFA have not come away from this saga as the good guys either, and must bear the brunt of criticism levelled at them. If they responded with such vociferous opposition to punishing those perpetrators of racist abuse as they did for this crisis which threatened the integrity of their prized Champions League, vital steps towards eradicating the abhorrent racial abuse which has plagued football for centuries, could have already been taken.

President Ceferin’s comments about protecting fans could be said to be hypocritical given UEFA’S unfair allocations for Champions League finals. In 2019 only 34,000 of the 63,500 tickets in the Wanda Metropolitano were given to Liverpool and Tottenham fans, with 25,000 other tickets saved for “UEFA and national associations, commercial partners and broadcasters", a quite frankly embarrassingly large number which left many fans unable to savour a magical night in Madrid.

Their new reforms for the Champions League, which will come in for the next cycle in 2024 went under the radar given the chaos in the past week, but fans have started to pick up on the fact some proposals which will be implemented, echo those put forward for the European Super League. One such example is reserving two places in the Champions League for historically great clubs who were unable to qualify for it through their domestic league.

These are just a handful of a myriad of issues and evidently it will be a long process to get rid of many of them which are fuelled by an intrinsic need to make money from owners. Plans for a European Super League have opened fans’ eyes to the immense greed in the sport, even at their own clubs.

Erin said that “it’s disappointing to see that the club was willing to walk away from a league that we have so much history in and allow the system in England which has been built over the decades to suffer, purely for their own financial benefit.”

But, importantly, fans like Erin are up for the fight to unite and bring football back to its humble roots.

Lauren McCann is an English and Spanish student at QUB. Listen to her on The Sporty Scoop every Wednesday.

SPORT - Fans reclaim their game from the European Super League