Is the Super League back? What a landmark European court ruling does and doesn’t mean for football

From a courtroom in Luxembourg came the ruling that stopped European football in its tracks.

UEFA and FIFA, the sport’s two governing bodies for the continent and around the world respectively, were judged by the European Court of Justice to have rules in breach of EU law on Thursday morning — a verdict that has immediately revived talk of a Super League project involving Spain’s top two clubs, Real Madrid and Barcelona.

UEFA insists the unwanted threat will be averted, just as it was in 2021, but a complex case has dredged up a project it hoped had been sunk.

Proposals for a new 64-club competition to rival the Champions League have already been announced and those promoting change have considered it a key moment in the fight. “It is a great day for the history of football and for the history of sport,” said Real Madrid president Florentino Perez.

The Athletic analyses the key questions:

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Remind me how we got here

This story effectively began on April 18 in 2021, when 12 of Europe’s biggest clubs announced they had joined the Super League, a lucrative new competition to rival UEFA’s long-established Champions League.

It promised its participants untold riches but, quickly enough, the project crashed and burned against a backdrop of supporter protests and widespread condemnation.

Nine clubs, including all six of those involved from the Premier League, had withdrawn within 72 hours but the three that refused to let go, Real Madrid, Barcelona and Italy’s Juventus, soon began legal action against UEFA and FIFA, insisting their rules were not in line with EU competition law. The game’s governing bodies, the European Super League Company argued, were in effect operating a monopoly.

A case that began in a Madrid commercial court was referred on to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) and despite a non-binding verdict from advocate general Athanasios Rantos concluding UEFA’s rules were “compatible with EU competition law” last December, the final ruling would come from 15 judges in the Grand Chamber.

All eyes were then on a Luxembourg courtroom this week, four days before Christmas.

What did the judgment say?

Lots. The full, unabridged judgment runs to 32,000 words of nuanced legal arguments but the accompanying press release, issued by the ECJ, began with a punchy introduction that set the tone to paint this as a defeat for the establishment.

“The FIFA and UEFA rules on prior approval of inter-club football competitions, such as the Super League, are contrary to EU law,” it read.

It added that new breakaway competitions were “potentially entering the market” and that the game’s historic governing bodies must ensure their powers were “transparent, objective, non-discriminatory and proportionate”. It should not, in short, punish those who wish to sign up for rival competitions.

The report said: “However, the powers of FIFA and UEFA are not subject to any such criteria. FIFA and UEFA are, therefore, abusing a dominant position.”

It was not the ruling UEFA expected nor wanted but there was a line in the verdict that underlined its limitations. This had merely been a case to decide if UEFA and FIFA’s rules were in line with EU competition law. The ECJ report added: “That does not mean that a competition such as the Super League project must necessarily be approved. The court… does not rule on that specific project in its judgment.”

UEFA could take other wins, too. Although its previous rules over pre-authorisation were considered to be unlawful, the ruling reinforced its role as regulator and operator just so long as its regulations were transparent and non-discriminatory.

“The judgment is actually positive as it embraces the key features of the European football pyramid,” said UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin. “Open competitions, sporting merit and solidarity. The ECJ accepts that UEFA maintains its role as organising and authorising body. We actually welcome the clarity the ECJ has delivered.”

So, the Super League is back on then?

Not so fast. For all that this was celebrated as a victory by A22, the management company working on behalf of the European Super League, the resistance against those grand plans remains fierce.

UEFA was quick to present a united front in the wake of the ECJ’s ruling. Ceferin was joined by Nasser Al-Khelaifi, chief executive of Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) and chairman of the European Club Association (ECA), and Javier Tebas, president of Spain’s La Liga, in a press conference that also included addresses from the European Leagues group, FIFPro Europe and Football Supporters Europe.

“Football remains united,” said Ceferin. “My phone is full of SMS (texts) from leagues, clubs, supporters of football. I’ve got 200 messages. Stakeholders in this room are in disagreement many times, we speak about different reforms and we argue. But where we have to speak about the openness of football we are completely united.”

Real Madrid and Barcelona were predictably quick to welcome the ruling as a landmark day but for now, they remain in the minority. PSG, Bayern Munich, Manchester United, Manchester City, Chelsea and Inter Milan all denounced any notion of a revived European Super League, as did the Premier League, which said it continues to “reject any such concept.”

Fan groups, too, vehemently condemned a project they helped shoot down two and a half years ago. “We all want to see the trigger pulled on the walking-dead monstrosity that is the European Zombie League,” said the UK-based Football Supporters’ Association.

“There’s no place for a breakaway Super League in European football,” said Ronan Evain, of Football Supporters Europe. “We were hoping the circus was behind us but we have to go through it all again. It would be best for them to give up now.”

This ruling, though, helps make that a fanciful notion.

A22 had announced its plans for a revised breakaway competition within a couple of hours of the ECJ verdict, with 64 teams competing in three leagues titled “star, gold and blue”. Relegation and promotion would be possible between the tiers, with the potential for 20 clubs to qualify for it each season via their domestic leagues. TV coverage would also be free for fans.

Ceferin scoffed at the proposals.

“We watched the so-called presentation of A22,” he said. “It’s really hard to decide if you should be shocked or amused by the show we have seen. Seeing as it’s close to Christmas, I will choose amusement.

“I am so happy that we saw the presentation, because it is clear now they are offering a closed competition, which we knew all the time. We will not try to stop them. I hope they start their fantastic competition as soon as possible with two clubs (Real Madrid and Barcelona, as the only clubs still attached). I hope they know what they’re doing.”

However, A22, and by extension Madrid and Barca, remain very serious.

“We have won the right to compete,” said A22’s chief executive Bernd Reichart. “The UEFA monopoly is over. Clubs are now free from the threat of sanction and free to determine their own futures.”

Is this bad news for FIFA and UEFA?

Life would have been much easier if this ruling had gone the same way as last December’s initial verdict, certainly. That would have helped grind the European Super League Company down, starving the project of oxygen.

This outcome, though, has emboldened those who are attempting to bring down the UEFA empire. A22 believes it now has a mandate to push ahead with reform and encourage others to follow the lead of Real Madrid and Barcelona, two of the most famous names in European football — ‘If nothing else, let’s talk, free of the threat of sanctions. What harm can it do?’.

UEFA, as well as FIFA president Gianni Infantino, has stressed that life goes on as usual and argues the ruling has changed very little. The governing bodies have fended off previous challenges to their authority and will be confident in doing so again when they can count on the support of so many stakeholders. That door, though, has now been left ajar, with Madrid and Barcelona given licence to plot.

“If there remained any doubt that sports governance is susceptible to detailed competition law scrutiny, this has been comprehensively removed,” said Andre Pretorius, competition lawyer and partner at Herbert Smith Freehills.

“But importantly — as the court notes — this does not mean that those regulatory powers have been removed and competitions such as the Super League must be allowed to proceed. Instead, the court is telling sporting bodies they need to have better rules and processes that are transparent, fair and objective for sanctioning new competitions.”

Does it pave the way for new tournaments run by wealthy backers, such as Saudi Arabia?

The bank JP Morgan Chase backed the Super League in 2021, underwriting an initial €3.5billion (£3bn, $3.8bn) investment. When the project collapsed, it offered an apology, although the bank’s co-president Daniel Pinto looked at it coldly, saying: “We arranged a loan for a client. It’s not our place to decide what is the optimal way for football to operate in Europe and the UK.” Now the ECJ has decided, one imagines investment banks and private equity firms will once again consider funding a Super League project; and if not them, what about a state?

Saudi Arabia has already disrupted another sport by launching the LIV Golf tour, attracting many of the world’s best players away from the U.S. based PGA Tour and culminating in a proposed merger. Could something similar happen in football? Al Ahli, Al Hilal and Al Nassr spent the summer assembling teams so super, one doubts the Saudi Pro League is big enough for the three of them.

Let’s galaxy-brain a scenario whereby a Saudi Pro League delegation flies to UEFA headquarters in the Swiss city of Nyon and proposes that an invitation to Europe’s Champions League is extended to its star-studded teams, who currently compete to play in the Asian version. Affronted by UEFA’s decision to rebuff the proposal, the Saudis fund an alternative competition, luring the best European teams away until UEFA do a PGA Tour, bend the knee and join forces.

One not-so-minor issue here is that as hosts of the 2034 World Cup, Saudi Arabia will presumably have to stay in FIFA’s good graces. This imagined Super League would also very much undermine the newly expanded Club World Cup. Which brings us back to the original proposal in 2021, but with a twist.

Continental Europe’s big clubs already look at England’s Premier League as a Super League. It makes three times the money Serie A, La Liga, Ligue 1 and the Bundesliga — its Italian, Spanish, French and German equivalents — do. What if the future of European football is a continental league to rival the Premier League, in which the mid-table offering going up against Brighton vs Fulham isn’t Torino vs Sassuolo or Getafe vs Las Palmas but Roma vs Sevilla? Might one of the world’s private equity firms bankroll something like that?

Who will be happy about this?

The cheers were almost audible from Madrid, the adopted base for this revolution. Real Madrid, 14 times winners of the European Cup/Champions League since the competition began in the 1950s, have always been at the forefront of plans for a Super League and this will be seen as validation for the unshakeable faith in a project most abandoned.

Club president Perez triumphantly declared they were now “masters of their own destiny” following a landmark day. “We, the clubs, see our right to propose and promote European competitions that modernise our sport and attract fans from all over the world fully recognised,” he said.

“In short: today, the Europe of freedoms has triumphed again and today, so have football and its fans. In the face of the pressures we have been under for more than two years, law, reason and freedom prevail today. And that’s why Real Madrid will continue to work for the good of football.”

Those foes turned friends, Barcelona, were also voicing their pleasure to the rest of Europe.

Joan Laporta, who has predicted a Super League could be up and running within two years, echoed the sentiments of counterpart Perez in a video message recorded in several languages.

“Barcelona have thoroughly analysed the problems of European football and we think that it benefits clubs that enjoy unlimited profits and in some cases outside the world of football,” said Laporta, whose club’s debts were reported to stand at £480million in October.

President @JoanLaportaFCB discusses the Super League sentence pic.twitter.com/BVW8QJl3fl

— FC Barcelona (@FCBarcelona) December 21, 2023

“For this reason, and in defence of our members, we believe that we must protect the sustainability of the club. We do not intend to go against national competitions.

“On the contrary, with more resources, they will be more competitive. What we want is a dialogue to generate positive synergies. But to enter into a constructive debate, the resolution needed to be clarified. There is a monopoly situation, as we said, and we are facing a historic opportunity.”

A22, whose bravado continues to irritate figures at UEFA and the ECA, was another to hail this as a notable victory. “It is a historic day for football,” said Reichart. “It proves UEFA’s dominant role was unfair.”

Isn’t the new Champions League format basically a Super League anyway?

The revamped ESL proposals are much closer to the new Champions League format when compared to what the breakaway clubs initially signed up for nearly three years ago. The league was presented as a closed shop then, but will now be built on “sporting merit”, where clubs can be relegated and promoted.

Before the new Champions League plan was approved in May last year, UEFA had floated the idea of an alternative format, which would have seen Europe’s elite clubs getting priority based on their historical coefficient status. This would have essentially made the continent’s premier club competition a closed shop.

This was heavily criticised by multiple clubs, who believed it to be grossly unfair and a way for the richest of them to get richer, leading UEFA to change the proposals and introduce a country coefficient instead.

From next season, the number of teams competing in the first phase of the Champions League will increase from 32 to 36, meaning there will now be 189 matches instead of 125, and the group stage will be replaced by a single league containing all the teams — a format known as the “Swiss model”.

Each club will be guaranteed eight matches in the league phase, up from the current six but down from the initially proposed 10, of which they will play half at home and half away. The top eight sides at the end of the league phase will qualify automatically for the knockout stage. Those finishing in places ninth to 24th will compete in two-legged play-offs to determine which other eight teams reach the last-16 of the competition.

The revised ESL format would see 64 teams — arranged in groups of eight, so giving clubs involved a minimum of 14 matches per year — competing across “Star, Gold and Blue Leagues”, with no permanent members.

Qualification for it, the plans say, would be via domestic competition.

Could the clubs who remained in the Super League sue the ones who withdrew?

While nine of the initial 12 breakaway clubs — including all the English ones — withdrew their support after a public outcry, Real Madrid, Barcelona and Juventus wanted to keep the project alive. Juventus then pulled out of any future plans in June this year, leaving the Spanish duo as the last remaining teams backing the project.

Lawyers said Thursday’s landmark EU ruling was worse than FIFA and UEFA could have expected, further strengthened by the fact the judgment is binding and not subject to appeal.

The governing bodies, however, emphasised this story isn’t over yet.

Asked about the possibility of Real and Barca suing the other clubs, Darren Bailey, co-founder of sports consulting firm Sport360, said he thought that was unlikely. He said: “I think that is unlikely not least because of the need to maintain positive relationships between clubs in these disrupted times.”

Jan Zglinski, an assistant professor at the London School of Economics law school, agreed.

He said: “The agreement was conditioned on either (a) the Super League project getting the authorisation from FIFA/UEFA or (b) the permanent lawfulness of the project being confirmed by a court ruling/administrative decision. Does today’s ruling constitute (b)? I don’t think it does. The proceedings will now continue before a Spanish court(s) and UEFA will do its utmost to convince the domestic judges that its new authorisation rules comply with the criteria set out by the Court.”

Catherine Forshaw, an associate at Brabners, a UK legal firm that works extensively in sport, said the judgment will be welcomed by Madrid and Barca but that alone does not necessarily mean the ESL project will now be approved.

She explained: “That is for the Spanish court (and potentially other jurisdictions to decide). The judgment interpreted EU law and the validity of the proposed action; it did not decide the dispute. Whilst the judgment does set a precedent for European clubs who are now, from an ECJ position, eligible to join other continental leagues outside of UEFA’s jurisdiction without the threat of sanctions, the fact that we have already seen A22 release another proposal for new competitions with 64 men’s and 32 women’s teams playing midweek matches in a league system across Europe just hours after the judgment is a clear indicator that there is still a lot more to come.”

What does UK law say?

The UK’s then Prime Minister Boris Johnson vowed to drop a “legislative bomb” on the Super League proposals when they were unveiled in 2021, with English football fans overwhelmingly in opposition.

It supercharged plans to introduce an independent regulator to the game, with a key role of the new body intended to be blocking clubs from breaking away. The law has not yet been passed but was in November’s King’s Speech, which outlines the British government’s plans for the upcoming year.

“Clubs will only be able to compete in competitions that are approved by the regulator,” said a government document explaining the plans. “This will allow the regulator to prevent English clubs from joining breakaway competitions that did not meet predetermined criteria, in consultation with the FA and fans. Crucially, this will safeguard against a future European Super League-style breakaway league.”

The law will impose conditions for clubs wanting to join any new competitions, such as fan consultation and not undermining existing leagues. It is not impossible that a new competition could meet this bar, but the plans are very explicitly designed to stop English clubs joining the Super League — and that’s before you consider the very specific sanctions enshrined in a newly created Premier League owners’ charter, introduced in June last year.

Forshaw said: “Currently these clubs face a 30-point deduction if they attempt a similar move in future and the Premier League has also asserted they will face a £25million fine if they attempt another breakaway. There are too many deterrents facing Premier League clubs presently; but ultimately, it will be the national courts which will determine the outcome and success of the ESL.”

Zglinski said the EU court “has delegated most of the key assessments regarding the justification of the FIFA/UEFA rules to the referring court in Madrid. This means that UEFA will have the chance to convince the Spanish court(s) that its authorisation rules are, in fact, justified. Based on today’s ruling, this will be an uphill battle, but they will surely try”.

In response to Thursday’s ruling, the UK government reiterated that the law will be brought forward “shortly” and it “will stop clubs from joining any similar breakaway competitions in the future.”

Although the UK has had two more Conservative Party prime ministers since Johnson’s resignation in the summer of 2022, and the opposition Labour Party is well ahead in the polls with a general election to choose the next government due soon, any shift on this issue is unlikely, with the Super League very unpopular in the UK.

With the Premier League comfortably the world’s richest division, and the gap to the rest ever widening, it is not beyond the realms of possibility that the eventual end point could be the Premier League existing alongside a European Super League operating without any English clubs in it.

So what happens next?

Nothing feels quite as certain as it did before Thursday’s verdict, even if Ceferin pointedly encouraged the rebels to make their move with that, “I hope they start their fantastic competition as soon as possible, with two clubs” line.

UEFA has a problem that is not going away and even the revised Champions League format, which is all set to begin with greater prize pots next season, will not pacify those seeking to tear it down.

There is confidence from UEFA that it continues to offer the best product, the most suitable model and the fairest forms of revenue distribution. The backing of key stakeholders, particularly major fan groups, is another pillar of strength.

That brings ample short-term reassurances but an ignorance to the long-term lingering threat of a breakaway league would be misguided. Twelve of Europe’s biggest clubs thought it a good idea a couple of years ago and two — possibly three, with Juventus — continue to be open to the project’s resurrection. The chance to improve revenues will not be dismissed lightly.

Real Madrid and Barcelona will wait and see how many others, if any, take a bite at their hook. To some, it will have appeal; to others, the backlash will be considered just too much.

Those in the Premier League who had their heads turned in 2021 will likely watch and wait. They will see if credibility can be built, all while digesting a complex case where the long-term implications remain the great unknown.

A project UEFA had hoped to bury before Christmas lunch was served is back on the table.

Additional reporting: James Horncastle, Tom Burrows and Joey D’Urso

(Top photo: Rob Pinney/Getty Images)