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The time has come A new European Super League is what soccer needs
Posted: Wednesday April 26, 2000 03:44 PM
If ever there was a time to get serious about a new European Super League for soccer, then, in my opinion, that time is now. The reason is, that football thrives on competition, and quite frankly, in many of the leagues around the continent there isn't that much. Look at the evidence. England's Manchester United, the nations' champions for the thirteenth time, has won the title 6 times in the last 8 years. Glasgow Rangers, the champions of Scotland for the forty-ninth time, have won the Scottish Premier League in all but one of the last twelve seasons. Across the English Channel, Monaco has lifted the Championnat 7 times in total, 2 of them in the last decade, while in neighboring Holland, PSV Eindhoven's fifteenth league title takes its list of domestic trophies in league and cup competitions to ten in ten years. Anderlecht's dominantion of Belgian football is similarly emphatic, as this year's league crown is its 25th in all, and fifth in the last decade. The one-way traffic is even more pronounced in Ukraine, where the league title has just made its way to Dynamo Kiev for the eighth consecutive year.
Even in countries where the champions have yet to be decided it's the same old teams that are among the leading contenders. Should Barcelona take the Primera in Spain for example, it will be its 6th in ten years and sixteenth of all time. In addition, it is the only team to make the European Champions League every year since European competition began in 1955, and has won twenty-four Spanish Cups. As for what many people consider to be the creme de la creme of European football, the Italian Serie A -- well, if, as seems likely to be the case, the Scudetto goes to Juventus for the 25th time, it will be Juve's third title in a ten year period that's seen them win seven domestic trophies altogether. The point I'm making is that foregone conclusions and complacency do not make for good entertainment, which is ultimately what football should be about. We've already seen evidence in cup football that some of the bigger clubs consider domestic honors far inferior to those available in Europe. Indeed recently, Bayern Munich commercial manager, Uli Hoeness, said as much when he explained why Bayern will probably field a team of reserves in the German Cup Final with Werder Bremen, which has bizarrely been positioned right in the middle of the two legs of Bayern's Champions League semifinal with Real Madrid. And therein lies the truth. I mean let's be honest, whatever lip service coaches like Manchester United's Sir Alex Ferguson pay to the glory of winning domestic honors, their real cache is the fact that they're a passport to Europe, with the Champions League as the Holy Grail.
With that in mind, I'd like to see Europe's top clubs cut to the chase, by competing in a full time European Super League featuring the league champions of all the European nations inside FIFA's top-20 for example, (to ensure the champions of football minnows like Luxembourg and San Marino don't reduce the standard you understand). I'd like to see it played over an entire season, on a week to week basis, with each team withdrawing from their domestic league for that season to avoid the pressure from too many matches -- a problem clubs currently face with the Champions League. There'd be no promotion or demotion as such. But to reduce the chance of the same teams participating every season, each year all but the European Champions would play off against the national champions of their respective countries, with the winners going into the Champions League and the losers staying or returning to domestic football. Financially, UEFA and the clubs involved would still have a cash bonanza, in fact an even a bigger one than they do now, as there'd be more matches. You'd also preserve the thrill of knockout cup football by having the end of season playoffs. The fans of course would also strike gold, as they'd be able to watch the best against the best each week, and as a result, hopefully enjoy a season of truly competitive matches. A season-long Super League along these lines is surely only the next step from what we have now, and it's more honest. Unofficially clubs already spend most of their time playing for a place in Europe, so why not make it official? Terry Baddoo is a co-host of "World Sport," the international sports show that airs live on CNN/Sports Illustrated and CNN International. The opinions expressed here are solely those of the writer.
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