Juventus has chained sanctions and racketeers this season, but they still have manners: they have sent a letter to Real Madrid and FC Barcelona to inform them of their resignation from the European Super League. The only thing missing, on the eve of a possible UEFA sanction against Barça for the Negreira case, was for Real Madrid to do the same with Barça (instead of a letter they would also serve a lunch with a hug when Florentino Pérez left).
As in the times of the privatization of the energy heritage of the USSR, the Super League was "sold" as an inescapable progress. Faced with the aging, vicious and corrupt elephant of UEFA, the big European clubs joined Spartacus and his colleagues, some oppressed willing that no one should suck their blood again and steal what was theirs. Those who doubted the invention were characterized as retrograde, incapable of reading the future and clinging to the Ancien régime (does the Champions League work so badly? It doesn't seem except a success).
The Super League had a righteous hook: stop the proliferation of club-states (such as PSG or Manchester City) and prop up the popular clubs (Barça or Real Madrid), those that continue to be – more in theory than anything else – their members. Of the common people This struggle resulted in a mutiny on board the founding fathers of the Super League, with the climate in favor of the transversal anger caused by the dates and everything related to the World Cup in Qatar (in the end, the drama has been much less than anticipated and all the national championships have concluded with the usual intensity).
The instant opposition of the governments of the United Kingdom and France to the Super League was holy hand. There the project ended and the total rout began, except for the two Spanish Quixotes (it is not essential to say who acted as Sancho Panza). Why did the European governments take action on a "minor" matter forcefully and quickly? The national associations and UEFA are the last dam against a globalization of soccer that speaks more Arabic, Mandarin or US English than German, French or Spanish. Although from time to time they are sold to the highest bidder -see Spanish Super League in Saudi Arabia-, they never do so completely. If the Super League – a private structure – had come to fruition, how long would it have taken a Gulf country, an Asian investment fund, to buy it and transfer the routine Barça-PSG or Real Madrid-City games to Arabia, Qatar or China? Or to play the semifinals and final away from Europe? Or to invent NBA playoffs to stretch a model that, incidentally, prevented secondary clubs from the dream of playing in the Champions League on the grass?
