please log in to view this image Manchester City hid £30.74million in costs from UEFA investigators and threatened to engage the ’50 best lawyers in the world’ to sue the organisation ‘for the next 10 years’ as part of a bitter feud over their failure to comply with Financial Fair Play rules, it has been claimed. Whistleblowing hackers Football Leaks have also claimed they have seized documents that show current FIFA president and then UEFA general secretary Gianni Infantino sided with City and went behind the backs of independent auditors to meet officials in Manchester for secret talks while negotiations over a penalty for the breach were ongoing. City, along with French giants Paris Saint-Germain, were found in breach of FFP regulations for 2011-12 and 2012-13 when they posted combined losses of more than £150m – far beyond what UEFA's then-new rules permitted. As a result, in 2014 they reluctantly accepted a fine of £49m, which was later cut by two thirds following subsequent compliance. they only punish us two faced bastards
Financial fair play doesn't really make much sense to me. If owners want to spend their own money and run at a loss I think it's their call. Otherwise it would just be the same couple of teams dominating because of their global appeal and huge revenues. It's only really when owners want to pull out that the club's future needs to be safeguarded. Up until that point, if they want to spend their money, let them I say.
Can anyone explain to me what's Fair about the Fair play rules cos to me it's the rich clubs can do what they like and the rest of us are easy targets for Fifa. A bit like the government using motorists as a cash cow cos they can.
They want the Manchesters, Madrids, Barcelona's, Milans, PSG & all the rich clubs to have a European league and f*ck the rest of us. Its like normal justice the rich buy their way out it whilst us peasants go to jail. Corrupt b*stards and as AR said c*nts.
Yep, that's the most concerning thing about these leaked documents. That would really **** football up beyond all recognition.
Seems the big clubs are planning a european super league in secret. Has nobody asked the supporters? If I was, say, a man city supporter, and I cared, the very idea would mortify me. A super league would be the final nail for many!
I feel I'd get more enjoyment out of beating Huddersfield in the premier league than beating Barcelona in some poxy European super league. No relegations apparently. What's the point?
In a way , I hope it happens. There’s no relegation , but somebody will have to finish bottom. Let’s see how these clubs and their glory hunter fans cope with being the worst .
I think it would be a great idea. As it is we have an exclusive group of Clubs who can win the League with only the very occasional break if a Leicester City gets lucky one year. As it is It's mostly an exclusive squabble involving Man City, Man Utd and Chelsea, with Liverpool, Spurs and Arsenal looking as if they might join in but rarely doing so. The Prem as it is consists of those six then a group of six or so who occupy the middle with the others trying to avoid relegation. The competitive element is missing for far to many games. Get rid of those six. Let them play in a European League where it makes no difference if they win lose or draw. Yes, they will sweep up the best players, at least for as long as viewers are interested in the meaningless competition. Who will care? The rest of us can watch a more or less, level playing field, where the games are truly competitive and any side can win the league.
But the Premier League is not the closed race you make it out to be. Since it began Leicester, Blackburn, Leeds, Everton, Villa, and some team in black and white have also challenged for the title/qualified for the Champions League. When you compare that to the period beforehand it's not that different. For at least 16 years prior to the Premier League, the First Division was dominated by Liverpool with occasional tilts at the title by Arsenal, Everton, Forest, and Derby. There will always be a small dominant group at the top of the league but history shows us that dominant group changes gradually. Getting rid of the top clubs in England won't create a level playing field, it will just water down the standard of the league. The (currently) dominant 6 will be replaced in their dominance by an equally dominant but lower quality group. Not forgetting that the lack of interest in the domestic league (from sponsors rather than fans) will also serve to water down the quality of the league. Did the creation of the Premier League improve the quality of the Football League that it left behind? Arguably not. Not when, looking at re-runs of 1970s Match of the Days and The Big Match, 2nd and even 3rd Division matches were getting high billing on these programmes (I'm not old enough to remember this so admittedly, I may not be entirely accurate on this point). Ridding ourselves of the big, rich clubs is not some panacea to improve English football. We need those clubs. We need them in order to retain people's interest in the league. We need them because they are traditional parts of our league. We need them to keep the money rolling in (even though less money in football WOULD be desirable. And we need them to stay because if the pinnacle of football is unachievable for all but 6 clubs, the whole pyramid of English football, from grass roots up, makes no sense at all.
In most American sports here there is no relegation. They also have this thing called draft picks where the team at the bottom has first pick on the best young kids from the colleges,etc. So what happens in reality is that teams that are not going to win anything are playing to finish as low as they can....it's f*cking madness. The fans basically get f*cked....let's say you pay a mint for your season ticket and your watching your team playing to finish as low as possible. It's protectionism. To me if the top teams want to go.....f*ck them and let them go. The leagues would still survive but I think the concept of a Super League would die on the vine...after a period of time they would want to come back.....then tell them to go and f*ck themselves.....greedy bast*rds......
But there's no guarantee that the leagues would survive because interest in them could wane due to the lack of investment in them. Correct me if I'm wrong but in Ice Hockey (which is the sport played your side of the pond that I know most about) but the CHL, OHL, AHL, ECHL are all feeder leagues for the NHL with subsidiary teams for the NHL teams in them aren't they? With the creation of a European Super League, there's the danger that domestic leagues in Europe could be taken over in a similar way. That would go against the traditional character of the English league system (even if not those of Spain, Germany etc). Some big, historic clubs could potentially become feeder clubs to some rich men's play things. If fans aren't opposed to that possibility they certainly should be. We don't have the collegiate system or major/minor league system that you do so a closed league would fundamentally alter the way sport (well, football) is organised and the danger of that is that it could lead to the extinction of some of our clubs. We're barely clinging on to some of them as it is.
I think watching football without promotion or relegation once the novelty of a new set up is over wouldn't fly with the fans over a period of time. Even within a Super League it will be split into an elite group.....a sort of elite group within an elite group. It will be a case of who is the richest owner scenario. The American sports system has evolved this way.....to do it in this day age with football in my opinion will never work. You put all the top teams together there can only be one winner. At the moment most of the top teams have multiple opportunities to win things whether it's their domestic league, domestic cups or European Cups. Most of the games would just be like friendlies.....maybe their thoughts would be to take say Barcelona and Real Madrid to places like America to fill the stadiums...I know the concept of playing outside of Spain hasn't gone down too well there.
These are good points. I still think it would do irreparable damage to the leagues that were 'left behind' though. And it could even see some of the clubs that leave end up in financial problems. I would hope that fans wouldn't stand for it but as you can see from this board, there are some that would accept it as they disgruntled with the status quo
No, it's not a closed race. But it is restricted to a very few and the joy of winning the title is confined to Fans who have, in general terms. been lucky to have owners who have chosen to buy the title. Since the Prem started, twentysix years ago, only six Clubs have won the title and two of them only on one occasion. Basically it's now become a two horse race most years between The Sheik and The Oligarch. Mere millionaires can no longer influence the table. Even a 'small time billionaire has no chance, (as we found out). At the top in England's Premier League it a game for the super rich only. And letting them go their way won't be so bad, honestly. As a Sunderland fan who has watched ALL of our relegations and promotions I can tell you that over the whole of a season the most pleasure the most times have mostly come while we have been in the Second division/Championship. Putting it bluntly, would you rather support your team in the Prem in the hope of a mid table finish and perhaps a Cup run but probably a regular relegation struggle on a regular basis. Or would you prefer to turn up at The SSoL expecting us to be in with a good chance of winning regularly. While we might not have the 'Worlds Best' playing we would still have many of the best of Englands players, including, hopefully, local lads who have come through the Academy. I'd prefer to be a bigger fish in a slightly smaller pool. There isn't much fun in watching your team loose every couple of weeks but there is great joy when we win regularly. And for anyone who doubts what I'm saying, just contrast how you have been feeling on Saturday nights of late compared to recent years.
