In the midst of the war between supporters and detractors of the Super League and just hours before the ruling of the European Court of Justice (CJEU) is known, Karl-Heinz Rummenigge has harshly attacked this new competition. “I've played football and I know when you lose. The Super League has lost and they must recognize it,” he said in an interview with Gazzeta dello Sport.
This Thursday morning the European Court is scheduled to rule on whether there is a monopoly on the part of UEFA, giving way to the creation of the Super League. For the legendary former German player and current representative of the European Club Association, the ruling is clear. “It is Europe's rejection of the project. The only thing missing is legal confirmation.”
Rummenigge claims not to be worried about the sentence: “I was the night they announced the Super League. There were twelve of them, they had tried in vain to convince us and others, they were on break. I thought: 'What if they really make the revolution? It would be chaos'. Within two days, the bubble burst. "I was at the Bayern stadium and Ceferin was texting me every five minutes to tell me: Chelsea, Liverpool, City have withdrawn... It's over."
For the German, the word Super League already "says it all": "There is a 'super' inside him, he wants to be superior to everything: the leagues, the Champions League, football... What an idea!" Rummenigge believes that if this competition existed “Serie A would become Serie B and the Bundesliga would become the second division. “Poor tournaments.” “And do you know why?” He asks: “To harm the Premier League that collects more simply because it is better. Especially the Spanish: they wanted to damage it and invented this tournament, the only one that would count. Goodbye Juve-Cagliari, goodbye Bayern-Bielefeld.”
He believes that “plan A, with the best teams in Europe” was just “an alibi” and that its real objective is “to include Arabs, Americans… to play an international tournament.” Something that would make football “lose its roots.”
For this reason, he believes that “UEFA offers the best possible tournament.” “The new Champions League at 36 will be even more spectacular and open. Did you see the celebrations in Copenhagen for the round of 16? He was supposed to finish last, he qualified and it was like Christmas for them. Do the usual guys always have to win? Not in football, in football there is the unthinkable, emotion, not mathematics. Nobody in Germany would go to the Super League, there would be a fan revolution,” he assures.
Despite being convinced that the courts will overthrow the Super League, even if Rummenigge approves it, he believes that the competition “would not go very far.” “30 years ago the system would have embraced novelty, now it is different. The British, Germans and French would never participate. I think the Italians and the Spanish do too, unless there is some president who thinks he can go to bed and wake up the next day in the middle of gold. “Real Madrid and Barcelona could make the tournament…” he predicts.
