Remember when I wrote my article on Hustle? Remember what I said is at the heart of every con? You cannot cheat an honest man. It’s not a statement of moral principle, it’s a statement of fact because the con relies on greed. It relies on people who can’t see past their own narrow interest, and who therefore might be willing to take stupid risks.
For a few months now, and even longer, it has been obvious to me that those who are dead set on pushing this European Super League nonsense know exactly what they are doing. Their PR campaign has been relentless, and at every step of the way they have picked up a handful of mugs. Many of those mugs are right here in Scotland, amongst our media.
They have swallowed every single PR line that those behind this competition have put into the public domain. They have accepted every nonsensical claim as fact, even when it was blindly obvious that these people were running a scam.
The richest clubs in football kicked this off when they threatened to break away from UEFA and form their own closed shop league. They were only brought to heel by the threat of force. Now they claim to speak for the forgotten clubs of the continent, and there are fools who actually believe that they mean it. What they’re actually trying to do is rally enough stupid and greedy chairman at these clubs to do their dirty work for them and plunge UEFA into crisis.
The idea that any setup with these people at the top would somehow be fairer and more equitable than that which currently exists is almost too ludicrous for words, and yet the same hacks here in Scotland keep on running with subtly different versions of this story.
But yesterday they were suckered by an entirely different mad-skull tale, that of the “breakaway” Union Of European Clubs, which is set to go head to head with the European Club Association. And apparently the Record – and that other dire rag, The Sun – believes that they will invite Celtic and the club across the city to join as we are “outside the elite.”
Yet we might be outside the elite in terms of wealth, but Lawwell sits on the ECA board. The first club from Ibrox were one of the founding members of the organisation. There is virtually no chance whatsoever of either club ditching the ECA to join up with this rag-bag mob being organised to oppose another fundamental part of the UEFA structure.
Now, I personally think the ECA has been corrupted by the larger clubs and turned into their personal lobbying group, but the guy responsible for this breakaway plan is Javier Tebas, the president of La Liga … and what this represents to him is a personal feud with the guys who control the ECA and with the two top clubs in his own association, Barcelona and Real Madrid. Just like many others who are claiming here to speak for the small and forgotten clubs, this guy has his own agenda and his own schemes in motion and we should have nothing to do with it.
Like the Super League organisers, this is a guy looking for allies whilst he goes to war with the English Premier League and the current heads at UEFA. It’s a power grab, that’s all it is, and he wants foot soldiers and thinks that our game is populated by mugs.
And maybe there are a handful of chairmen who would be seduced by these smoke and mirrors, but it will not be the guy currently sitting at the top of Celtic. I don’t know whether Ibrox might do something mad but I know that we certainly won’t.
The ECA is the only body representing clubs which is recognised by UEFA. Any other organisation which pops up to speak as some kind of lobbying group won’t have the slightest legitimacy or power in the halls of Nyon, but as per usual our tabloids are filled with people drooling at the prospect that there might be some scraps thrown the way of Ibrox.
These people have spent years fantasising about magical solutions to Ibrox’s cash-flow problems, and they’ve promoted this guff through the prism of helping the game here as a whole, but they have no real interest in that at all any more than the people who are pushing these “reforms” and “breakaways” care about the forgotten clubs of Holland, Belgium, Scotland and elsewhere.
The rest of us know a con when we see it.
I can’t get worked up about any of these European proposals, no matter who is suggesting them. It does not affect us one bit at the embryo stages of the suggestions, so it should be kicked into the long grass until it might eventually sprout wings. Only then would it be worth commenting on. Until then it’s best ignored.
When the original plans for a European Super League were proposed, I still think they didn’t expect such a backlash from the fans of the clubs within the EPL, so put all the proposals on hold.
Still don’t believe the idea is totally dead either and could well be a financial must for many of these elite clubs to generate the income that the years of overspending has bought about.
Also created an uneven playing field with the elite spending money that wasn’t within the club and allowed for club’s to run up huge debt in the meantime without any questions being asked still.
Reminds you of a certain shower of scum in Glasgow that depended upon such proposals to get themselves out of the financial shitshow they were and still are in.
Believe we took a more cautious approach to the idea even if it meant that the 10iar season had to be given up to keep such scum relevant still.
Even the format of the CL which still remains a glorified cup competition and this still the flagship of European football still.
Yet how can a team be classed as the best in Europe when so many winners of the CL weren’t even the best team in there own country?
And that same problem can even exist this season.
Uefa have taken action with taking a more harder look at the financial issues within these so called elite clubs which isn’t going to go down to well especially when the spending is far greater than the income still.
For our part we can sit back and see what and if anything should develop, whereas the scum remain desperate for something to happen before the grim reaper comes calling again for them.
Yes I do believe that we are way too big of a club for Scottish football and even in a position to be able to run a second team within the SPFL in order to make it far more competitive still and wouldn’t have to many objections at present if any such proposals could be found in a far better way than the original plans proposed.
Pretty much agree with your article. Also I accept that we’re too big a club for this country’s league and won’t be able to grow much further within the current environment we’re in. We are a small country with supporting fans, of too many clubs already, larger, in proportion, to population to most if not all other European countries.
As stated the CL is the bugbear and if there is to be a positive to come out of all this it would be that EUFA look again and alter the overrepresentation of clubs finishing 20 to 30 points behind their league champions from the bigger leagues yet getting access to it when other champions of smaller leagues can’t. This would be a good way of redressing those smaller clubs ability to gain automatic entry to the league stages whilst enabling them to increase funding so as to compete on a better footing.
There surely is not a bat in hells chance of EUFA allowing A teams in a competition unregulated by them whilst having their B team playing in a league regulated by them. That would be to relegate their own competition to a lesser status.
If the rankers propaganda papers want to promote this then that’s great and hopefully the rankers will jump at it and we’ll finally be rid of them. If they do there should be a no return policy.