I’m with
@Libby with regards to the punishment for these clubs. Whilst I empathise with these clubs supporters who didn’t want this, you can’t just let it go because any punishment will potential affect the fans enjoyment for a span.
As has been pointed out there’s been numerous drastic punishments handed out over the years for far less egregious acts than this. Which was essentially a collection of clubs who created an entirely new breakaway league behind the backs of all of the authorities without a single **** being given for the consequences for the game. Let’s be right, this wasn’t just some ****ty idea that was floated, off the back of some potential plan, these ****s actually committed to it legally, opened a new company to run it, and had funding in place. You can’t just let that go without severe sanction.
Perez has reportedly already said that the group should stick together and continue to push for change. We know what means, as we know what they want, and football can’t just sit back and allow this to potentially happen again.
So for me, 2 things needs to happen, firstly they all get a UEFA sanction, this was primarily about them coming up with a closed shop alternative to the CL, so it’d be fitting if they were excluded from it for a year, and they can take the revenue, commercial and matchday losses and shove it right up their collective arses.
Secondly, the European FA’s and UEFA need to tighten their rules on plotting in this manner, clubs found to working on new league ideas that do not form part of the collective organisations plans or that aren’t aired first via the appropriate channels, should result in an exclusion from all European competitions for a longer spell, say 3-5 years, and domestically would result in automatic relegation or expulsion from the league.
I’m afraid using the ‘it’ll hurt the fans’ line or that these clubs are somehow too important to sanction, plays to the exact narrative that they’ve been banking on. So it’s a ‘**** ‘em hard’ from me.
