European Court to deliver crucial Super League verdict

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.