The outgoing Barcelona President yesterday told the world that he had accepted an invitation for the club to join a European Super League.
Within hours of his bizarre claim the Spanish FA had responded by scorning the idea and pointing out that it would be an “inferior” competition to their own domestic division because it wouldn’t be recognised by UEFA.
This is a continuation of the story from earlier in the month about how top European clubs were planning their own breakaway division.
Which itself is a continuation of the scheme EPL clubs launched because they wanted to seize control of their own league in return for a massive cash infusion to help the lower leagues.
These moves have all been resisted.
None was ever likely to succeed.
Football goes round and round on this issue, to little avail. Breakaway competitions don’t happen with the imprimatur of the domestic governing bodies. UEFA is the most powerful part and important part of FIFA and their approval is also required for real change to take place.
Any competition set up outside the aegis of UEFA would be doomed to irrelevance.
Some in the mainstream press got a laughable amount of coverage out of the European Super League story earlier in the month, with daft suggestions that Celtic and the Ibrox club would somehow benefit from it, presumably because there would be some scraps thrown our way in some manner or other; for sure neither club is getting a seat at the top table.
This article is going to take a realistic look at this subject, and one that I think we’re overdue. Celtic is a Scottish club, but we are limited by that fact. Every now and again, someone suggests ways that we can alter that reality and the media goes into a frenzy over it.
But how realistic are these ideas? How seriously should we take any of them?
Do these ideas have merit?
Do some of them have merit?
Or are we pissing in the wind?
This article will attempt to answer those questions.