European Super League: What Can We Learn?

When corporations and oligarchs tried to steal the game, the people fought back. What can that mean for Americans?

The English Football League was founded in 1888 in a sport that had mostly been comprised and dominated by a closed circle of aristocracy.  Teams like the Old Etonians, the Carthusians, and Oxford University not only consistently held aloft the F.A. Cup - the highest honor in football at the time - but organized the competition as well.  Five years prior something happened that would mark a period of change and progress in association football.  In 1883, a working class team from the north of England, Blackburn Olympic, would win the F.A. Cup.  A team of workers won a game at which they were desperate to play, a game that served as a reprieve to the quality of life the players and their communities all shared.  The creation of the EFL, and subsequently professional football, allowed those of little means to be paid for their skill - undamning the talent pool so to speak - in sharp contrast to the elite class who could afford the time to practice and to play.  Time, as it still is today, being a luxury of which the most affluent can easily afford.  And, there the game was, for almost a century and a half, in the hands of the people.  Sure, professionalism and the commercialization of the sport would bring more capital in the game that would create a small pool of wealthy clubs capable of competing at the highest level annually but the nature of our game hadn’t fundamentally changed in over a century.

This was until the footballing giants across England, Spain, and Italy announced their plans for the European Super League.  The ESL was intended to replace the current European top flight tournament the UEFA Champions League.  The major difference being that in the UCL any club from the top European leagues has a clear path to qualify for the tournament by placing highly or winning their respective domestic leagues; failure to do so prevents a club from competing in the UCL.  What these few powerhouses had suggested was that in their proposed Super League there would be fifteen charter teams that would perennially compete amongst each other regardless of their performances in their domestic competitions.  Five additional births, left up to the ESL’s discretion, would be reserved for clubs across the world who had performed exceedingly well in the previous year; essentially rendering top flight European competition moot amongst clubs not in the cabal of the original fifteen.  

Domestic football leagues, and European competitions have always, in essence, been meritocratic and are multi-tiered pyramids.  If a club wins the lowest tier league it qualifies to be promoted to the league directly above it.  This remains true all the way to the top of the pyramid.  Conversely, place amongst the lowest in the league and a club is subject to relegation to the league below.  There is no guaranteed position in any league, and no protection from falling out of the bottom. This is the philosophy that the teams of the proposed ESL were intentionally hoping to subvert.  Monstrous guaranteed dividends from their new league, lucrative broadcasting deals, and branding opportunities awaited these chosen clubs irrespective their successes or failures.  No more Davids, only Goliaths.  These goliathan clubs were claiming themselves ‘too big to fail’.  Sound familiar?

In an astounding turn of events only days after the initial announcement of the ESL the founding clubs one by one resigned from the future competition.  The change in tune can only be credited to the massive blowback the executives and boards of the clubs received from their own supporters.  Within hours of the announcement Liverpool supporters amassed outside Anfield Stadium before their game against Leeds United to protest the American ownership’s plan to join the ESL.  Chelsea fans later that evening protested outside of Stamford Bridge chanting “we’re fans, not customers” so loud that even the Blues’ Russian oligarch owner must have heard them from wherever he was that evening.  Former players, pundits, and fans across the globe joined in on the dissent until the specter of a European Super League dissolved in a matter of days.  The people, by virtue of their will, had succeeded in retaining what the ruling class were so intent on taking away.

What will surely go down as a historic weekend in European football will have only registered a blip across the pond in America seeing that association football isn’t exactly in our purview.  However, there is a valuable lesson our countrymen can learn from these recent events.  Simply, people still have power though American’s have seemingly forgotten how it’s applied.  The Occupy Wall Street movement went out with a whimper once identity politics had been introduced to the fray.  The nationwide protests of the last year have largely been besides the point.  They haven’t addressed the real institutions of power, nor have they suggested any tangible, feasible policy reform.  All the while real rights of individuals and the populous are being stripped away by the week.  

Benito Mussolini purportedly affixed his name to the definition of fascism claiming that corporatism was a more apt name as it represents the merger of state and corporate power.  Regardless of who is responsible for the quote the practical meaning of fascism was codified when Mussolini dissolved parliament and instituted the Chamber of the Corporate Fascists where corporations would no longer have to go through the degrading process of lobbying and extorting for legislation. They could now write it themselves.  Here, in the United States we still include the extra steps but the results are almost indistinguishable from one another.  

In fact, giant tech companies loom so large that not only do they dominate the market they control public discourse as well serving as de facto legislators.  While the governing body struggles to keep up in the new era of technology the policy makers of Silicon Valley hand out punitive action to its users with no recourse.  Twitter banned the New York Post and anyone who linked their story after the paper published an article weeks before the election detailing the influence pedaling of Hunter Biden.  Facebook banned Britain’s Socialist Workers Party for opposing Boris Johnson’s lockdown policy - among other things - before sheepishly reinstating their account.  In the run up to the 2020 presidential election Twitter banned the Articles of Unity account, a grassroots effort to upend the political duopoly in America, for reasons it could not prove while the account remains barred from the social media platform.  In an act that in any other situation would have been considered collusion; all major social media platforms banned the then President of the United States of America for breaking their user guidelines while allowing similar rhetoric from other accounts, elected officials even, to go unfettered.  Amazon Web Services and Apple dropped Parler from their platforms citing that the platform was instrumental in the planning of the January 6th riots at the Capitol when in reality the event was mostly planned through the platforms of Twitter and Facebook.  

Free, and public thought are actively being suppressed by major corporations - often with a pat on the back from Congress.  The social media age has ushered in an increase of the atomization of the individual, and has largely made the physical ‘public square’ of yesterday obsolete.  The most meaningful concept of the ‘public square’ exists online where the free market of ideas is beleaguered by tech authoritarians, and their constituency.  If the concept of free speech is not protected by the State in this locale then the concept itself ceases to exist - also, it’s worth noting that the literal public square of Capitol Hill of Washington, D.C. has remained fenced off for four months preventing any public protest in close proximity to the body of Congress.  Americans have sat idly by while these rights that are fundamental to a free society have been intentionally restricted.  

These American corporations are no different than Manchester United and Liverpool in the way that they are also subject to the actions of their patrons.  Public protest, boycott, and opposition are the passages to consequential change.  Chelsea F.C. have already promised that supporter representatives will be involved in some board room meetings moving forward.  This would’ve been all but unthinkable pre-protests, but the club is responding to the power of the demonstration they witnessed firsthand.  

Wigan Athletic defeated Manchester City in the FA Cup in 2013 in a shocking result. Leicester City, in the most unlikely of odds, bested the likes of Arsenal and Tottenham to win their first Premier League title in 2016.  Football fans across the world toppled the prospects of the European Super League, a giant slaying worthy of celebrating.  A victory that provides a glimmer of hope that while none of us are safe from the threat of relegation there still remains, as long as there are those willing to fight for it, the promise of promotion

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