The Quick Crash of the European Super League
Why a long-floated idea for elite club soccer was DOA
Sports Biblio Reader, 4.25.21
Also in This Issue: Oscar Charleston; Picturing America’s Pastime; The Best Baseball Season Ever; Grover Cleveland Alexander and the Great War; The Man with the Most Baseball Cards; Allen Iverson and Larry Brown; Brian Grant’s Biggest Rebound; British Horse Racing and the Arts; Sports Ministry; Ice Hockey’s Toxic Culture; Remembering Bobby “Slick” Leonard
When I began covering soccer in the mid-1990s, there was constant speculation about the biggest clubs in Europe pulling away to form their own competition, shedding the minnows and the qualifying legs that could undermine the giants’ unquenchable thirst for profits on a global scale.
This was the age of proliferating television exposure and the lucrative rights that came with them, and astounding sums in transfer fees for elite players.
In 2002, Real Madrid shockingly signed French World Cup star Zinedine Zidane away from Juventus for what was then a world-record transfer fee of $85 million (U.S.).
This was just a few years after players from European Union nations were granted free agency with the Bosman ruling.
Like arbitrator Peter Seitz’ historic 1974 ruling ending Major League Baseball’s reserve clause, the Bosman ruling was bound to change the economics of not just European, but international club soccer.
Last Sunday, 12 of the biggest clubs in the game were announced as participants in the “Super League,” theoretically freeing them from the constraints of their domestic leagues and the UEFA continental competitions, including the Champions League:
Chelsea, Manchester United, Manchester City, Liverpool, Arsenal and Tottenham Hotpsur in England’s Premier League, Atletico Madrid, Barcelona and Real Madrid in Spain’s La Liga, and Italian Serie A powerhouses AC Milan, Inter Milan and Juventus.
But within 48 hours, the Super League was dead, with a fierce push back from UEFA, FIFA, top-level players, fans and the media, a catastrophic collapse and the mother of all own goals surely aided by the viral outrage powers of social media.
The globalism of elite soccer in the last three-plus decades has raised its profile exponentially, but the revolt resembled much of the populism in Western Europe and the U.S. in recent years. NYT:
“But while soccer is now the biggest business in sports, it remains, at heart, an intensely local affair. Teams rooted in neighborhoods and based in small towns compete in domestic leagues that have existed for more than a century, competitions in which the great and the good share the field — and at least some of the finances — with the minor and the makeweight.
“An uneasy truce between the two faces of the world’s game had held for decades. And then, on Sunday night, it cracked, as an unlikely alliance of American hedge funds, Russian oligarchs, European industrial tycoons and Gulf royals sought to seize control of the revenues of the world’s most popular sport by creating a closed European superleague.”
The greed and hubris on display among the Super League impresarios is just as fascinating as their stumbling palace intrigue. There’s too much low-hanging fruit to pick to describe them as evil, because some of these grifters have been at it for years.
The soullessness of elite club soccer has become even more pronounced over the last three decades, to the point where I don’t even bother to tune in. Some have additional reasons to turn away, but clearly the Super League revolt produced some shocking public scorn that may have a lasting effect.
Some of the blame was placed at the feet of American owners of Manchester United, Arsenal and Liverpool, from a nation with closed professional sports machinations.
Then again, the Premier League has produced little to no suspense since its founding in 1992, with only two champions outside of the six would-be Super League clubs.
As a British observer in Washington noted, despite its “closed” competition, American sports is “surprisingly parochial.” That’s especially the case with top-flight college football and college basketball:
“American sport is the country at its practical, impassioned best. European football, meanwhile, is in love with an idea of itself completely at odds with the reality. Give me the consortium of midwestern tycoons over an unholy alliance of corrupt continental bureaucrats, Qatari princelings and Russian oligarchs every time.”
Yet the economic calculus for the top clubs remains stark. Zidane’s former transfer fee record has been eclipsed 22 times. The top 11 sums are well over $100 million, including Neymar’s astonishing $244 million switch from Barcelona to Paris St-Germain in 2017.
As Rory Smith writes in The New York Times, there’s blame to go around on all sides for the Super League fiasco, and those parties that snuffed out the breakaway shouldn’t pat themselves on the back.
The European club sport’s problems remain gargantuan, and there’s not much of an appetite for substantial change or cooperation:
“The Super League was wrong on almost every level, but though its architects never quite had the nerve to come out and say it, they did get one thing right. Soccer’s economy and ecosystem, as they stand, do not work.
“This was recognition of what ultimately explains how 12 teams, in those three distinct groups, could stand together under the same flag, albeit briefly, albeit without seeming to notice that it was adorned with a skull-and-crossbones.
“The status quo does not work for the American owners who need cost controls. It does not work for the grand old houses of continental Europe, who cannot compete with the Premier League’s riches. And infinitely more important, it does not work for almost everyone else.”
After the Super League’s demise, the domestic leagues resumed, and there were some ironic results: Arsenal drew with Fulham and lost to Everton; Liverpool drew with Leeds and Newcastle; and Chelsea drew with Brighton.
On a few fields at least, the beautiful game produced a badly needed respite from what figure to be ongoing battles for a significant part of its soul.
Diamond Reads
I enjoyed reading recently the first full-scale biography of Negro Leagues star Oscar Charleston. Jeremy Beer’s 2019 book is as methodical and workmanlike as its subject, who devoted his life to the circuit, including many years as a manager. After growing up poor in Indianapolis, Charleston found in the segregated Negro Leagues a way out of a life of even more limited options. What I liked most about Beer’s approach was to take Charleston’s life in the context of when he lived, bucking the ahistorical, anachronistic trends of addressing racial issues against contemporary times:
“He was universally respected and widely perceived to personify the black pursuit of excellence under the conditions of segregation.
“The pursuit of excellence, the sense of meaning and accomplishment that comes with a fidelity to a well-articulated tradition, the sense of identity and connection that attaches one to compatriots in one’s own time and across time—these are what make sport compelling, to both those who play and those who play vicariously through an act of the imagination.”
Beer has compiled a lengthy appendix of Charleston’s playing and managing statistics and here’s his working blog about the book. The author has provided in longform what John Schulian’s 2005 Sports Illustrated piece about Charleston accomplished in magazine format: A full rendering of one of the most important figures in baseball history, and not just the Negro Leagues;
From MLB.com, Matt Monagan writes about Paul Jones, who as a 9-year-old in 1995 set out on an adventure in which he would amass 528,000 baseball cards, considered a world record for a private collection by Guinness. That figure now? Nearly 4 million, as Jones is set to serve as a 34-year-old bat boy for the Idaho Falls Chukars of the Independent Frontier League;
From CNBC, the pandemic-induced baseball card-collecting boom figures to be affected by the rise of NFTs, (non-fungible token), a unit of digital data stored on a blockchain that could boost the fortunes of Topps, the 83-year-old card giant which is soon going public to take advantage of both trends;
What would change if Major League Baseball lost its antitrust exemption? At The Athletic, Evan Drellich explores the multi-faceted possibilities;
I’ve been tracking some baseball chatter on social media this week about the best book about the best baseball season ever, which is fun given how totally subjective both subjects are. Here’s one I wasn’t familiar with, however: “Baseball in ‘41,” by Robert W. Creamer, and published in 1991. The book (Sports Illustrated’s initial review from Ron Fimrite can be found here), which will soon be discussed at the Baseball by the Book podcast for its Patreon subscribers;
From Baseball History Daily, the story of Bill Byron, a National League umpire until 1919 who went to the Pacific Coast League with a controversial reputation for sending players and managers to early showers;
Coming in May, the Baseball Hall of Fame is publishing “Picturing Americas Pastime,” a photography collection from its archives, with a foreword by Randy Johnson. You can pre-order at the link.
A Few Good Reads
The Super League saga has compelled some college football writers in the U.S. to speculate how such a concept might work in that sport;
Brian Grant beat some long odds to get to the NBA, but as he writes in “Rebound,” his new memoir, fighting Parkinson’s Disease has been a whole different challenge,
The Grand National—Britain’s longest-enduring horse race, dating back to 1839, returned in April after a pandemic-related cancellation in 2020, and the sport’s place in that nation’s history has been amply reflected in literature, painting and other artistic representations;
From Hyperallergic, artists in India objected to Budweiser’s painting-over of street murals with corporate branding messages that included the likenesses of Lionel Messi, and the giant beermaker backed down, in an “episode [that] has emphasized how subtly street art has become a part of the Indian landscapes and psyche. In a country where there was no concept of street art a decade ago, the art form is now able to bridge gaps and bring communities together to take action and fight for its rightful place in the public domain;”
From the Faith and Sports blog at Baylor University, Baptist minister and high school football and baseball coach Jose Olvera recounts his unexpected journey in sports ministry, referencing a theologian’s 2003 book about the subject in concluding that as Christians make themselves “vulnerable” in their desire for God, “sports . . . . lay bare those yearnings and desires in a similar way. All around us, day after day, athletes and coaches are putting their most vulnerable selves on display for us to see.”
Sports Book News
Published in March, by the University of Nebraska Press: “The Best Team Over There,” a look at Hall of Fame pitcher Grover Cleveland Alexander’s stint with the 342nd Field Artillery Regiment during World War I, and how the conflict changed his life. At the History Author Show, Leeke, the author of a 2017 book about baseball and that war, is interviewed by Dean Karayanis;
Coming in June, from Triumph Books: “Game Misconduct,” an examination of issues involving racism, homophobia, xenophobia, bullying, sexism, and violence in various levels of ice hockey.
Classic Reads
The cover story on Sports Illustrated 20 years ago this week was the legendary Gary Smith’s deep look at the fascinating relationship between Allen Iverson and Larry Brown, and how their raising by single mothers figures into the story.
Passings
Bobby “Slick” Leonard, 88, won 529 games as the coach and later a color commentator for the Indiana Pacers, both in the ABA and NBA, cementing his status as a basketball-mad state. He was inducted in the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in 2014, the year after publishing his memoir. The Pacers are wearing a black stripe on their uniforms for the remainder of the season. At Leonard’s funeral this week, his son Tommy said "he was truly a man of the people. He just couldn't understand why people put him on a pedestal, telling us all that he did was put a ball in a round hoop and people go crazy over this."
Spring Break
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The Sports Biblio Reader e-mail newsletter is delivered on Sunday. You can subscribe here and search recent archives. The full archives for Sports Biblio Digest can be found here. This is issue No. 241, published April 25, 2021.
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