LUXEMBOURG
CITY, Luxembourg
The European Court of Justice will deliver a ruling on the breakaway Super League on Thursday in a case that has potentially massive consequences for the future of football on the continent.
Depending on what the judges
decide, it could be a key victory for European football's governing body UEFA
or it could send shockwaves through the sport in the same way the Bosman ruling
did in the 1990s.
The case goes back to April
2021, when 12 of Europe's biggest clubs announced they had signed up to the
planned Super League, just before UEFA were set to reveal vast reforms to the
Champions League.
The Super League was seen as a
direct competitor to UEFA's flagship competition. It quickly crumbled in the
face of a strong backlash from supporters and football's governing bodies, and
UEFA, as well as world governing body FIFA, threatened to take disciplinary
action against the clubs involved.
Nine of the 12 clubs involved
-- including six from the English Premier League -- threw in the towel almost
immediately, leading to the collapse of the Super League within 48 hours of its
launch.
Two years on, only Spanish
giants Real Madrid and Barcelona have not stood down from the project, with
Juventus withdrawing in July.
Juve's president, Andrea
Agnelli, had been a key pro-Super League voice but he resigned late last year
and was then barred from Italian football for two years after his club were
found guilty of using transfers to artificially boost their balance sheet.
Yet the threat of a breakaway
by Europe's most powerful clubs continues to hang over football, as they dream
of introducing a highly lucrative closed league like those in North American
sports, while also continuing to compete in their existing national championships.
It means the European court's
ruling will be crucial, and in October last year the promoters of the Super
League launched A22 Sports Management, a company whose aim is to contest UEFA's
so-called "monopoly" over the sport on the continent, in the interest
of "supporters, clubs and of football".
Technically, the court (CJEU)
will rule on several questions put to it in 2021 by a judge in Madrid, most
crucially that of whether UEFA is "abusing its dominant position" in
submitting all tournaments in Europe to its authority, and threatening
punishments against clubs and players who go against that.
UEFA has cause for optimism,
given that CJEU Advocate General Athanasios Rantos advised in December last
year that rules laid out by European football's governing body, as well as by
FIFA, were "compatible" with European Union competition law.
Yet while his opinion is
frequently followed, the CJUE is not obliged to do so. And any slight
difference in the decision could have a major impact on club football, and more
broadly for the regulation of sporting competitions in Europe.
The court will decide whether
measures taken against the rebels by UEFA have "legitimate
objectives" in mind and are "proportionate".
The first question seems
clearcut, given that European treaties explicitly protect the "sporting
model" on the continent, with competitions that are accessible based on
results, with a system of promotion and relegation, and a redistribution of
revenues.
UEFA is regularly criticised
for the fact that so much of football's revenues, as well as its best players
and its biggest trophies, end up in the hands of a small group of powerful
clubs.
But the body insists that it
has made efforts to open up its competitions, notably with the launch in 2021
of the Europa Conference League, an extra European club competition aimed at
teams below the elite.
UEFA also recently increased
so-called "solidarity" payments, meaning that 10 percent of the money
it brings in from its three club competitions is now distributed to teams who
do not make it to the group stages.
However, it remains to be seen
what are considered "proportionate" reprisals from UEFA to protect
its model, between financial sanctions against clubs, or against players who
take part in a rival competition, like the threat of banning them from
international tournaments as FIFA and UEFA envisaged in April 2021.
That measure, which could stop
many of the world's best players from taking part at the World Cup, was
considered excessive by the Advocate General Rantos last year.
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