The European Super League

By Jordan Fermanis

Last month plans for a football European Super League (ESL) competition were crushed within 72 hours. The announcement had been coming for some time. In a prelude to those explosive few days in April, it was reported last year that one of the last deeds performed by outgoing Barcelona president Josep Maria Bartomeu was agreeing to enter a European super league competition.

The news from Barcelona was followed by a report from Sky News indicating that the so-called “big six” of English football which includes Manchester United, Manchester City, Liverpool, Chelsea, Arsenal and Tottenham were in talks to enter a breakaway competition called the “European Premier League” backed by $6bn (£4.6bn) in finance from American investment bank JP Morgan.

Even in those early days of speculation, the issues around which a breakaway European competition would be debated became clear. Shortly after the news from Barcelona broke, former Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger was interviewed by The Guardian. In response to the reports about a new European competition, Wenger said that any new league would be an attempt to destroy the English Premier League as football’s most lucrative competition. Looking back now, at a time when the ESL has been roundly condemned and momentarily quashed, positioning the English Premier League in opposition to the ESL foreshadowed the controversy that was to come.

There is no doubt that the proposal put forward by the dozen European clubs from Spain, Italy and England committed a cardinal sin by hatching the plan in secret amid a global pandemic that has ravaged football leagues throughout the world. Nothing smacks of elitism more than a covert gathering of billionaires attempting to recover costs from the pandemic by creating an exclusive competition with secured financial benefits for themselves. However, the paroxysms of disgust from commentators in the media revealed a nationalist undertone to protect a pillar of English culture.

When a statement of intent to join the ESL was released by European clubs last month, there was palpable outrage directed at the English clubs by sections of the British media. In one British tabloid the English clubs were dubbed “the Shameless Six” and the “Dirty Half-Dozen”. They were touted as avaricious and arrogant entities motivated by the insatiable greed of their out-of-touch owners. Right away the media distilled the ESL into a Manichean struggle between the purity of English football fans on one hand, and the dark forces of foreign capital that control England’s biggest football clubs on the other. Within no time, commentators were waxing lyrical about the moral bankruptcy of the ESL competition, taking particular aim at the contemptible influx of American money.

Three of the English clubs that signed up the ESL Arsenal, Liverpool and Manchester United are owned by American businessmen. Chelsea is owned by a Russian billionaire and Manchester City by a member of the royal family of Abu Dhabi. The only British majority-owned team from England in the proposed ESL was Tottenham, a club owned by British businessman Joe Lewis who moved to the Bahamas as a tax exile in the 1990s.

The rise in foreign ownership of English football clubs has caused much anxiety in footballing circles for years. As the English Premier League has grown in popularity since its inception in 1992, there has been a growing yet reluctant acceptance on the part of supporters that foreign capital is needed to achieve results on the pitch.

However, the short-lived ESL experiment showed just how aggravated these sentiments have become in English football. A narrative began to emerge in the media that the reason English clubs committed this act of treason against football was due to foreign ownership. One tabloid colourfully described it like this: “you don’t need to sleep under a Union Jack duvet and eat only tripe to appreciate that permitting international speculators, oligarchs and plutocrats to buy football teams would end in tears”.

All of a sudden, English football fans were being actively encouraged to mobilise against their foreign owners. In a wave of football populism, fans were pitted against greedy owners and asked to protest until the ESL was abandoned. At the same time, it was becoming difficult to ignore the English nationalism seeping through so much of the pundit handwringing. Right wing national newspaper The Telegraph branded the ESL “the obvious next step in the Americanisation of European football.” Former England player and manager Glenn Hoddle said by joining the super league the big six clubs were disregarding the “history and traditions of football”. In a ferocious excoriation former Manchester United player and now pundit Gary Neville went further, saying the big six were “imposters” with “no loyalty to this country”. Then there was the salute to British exceptionalism by Graeme Souness on Sky Sports, who after repeating “it’s not their game” in reference to the owners of the big six, said “we’re not America… this is a proper country”.

The assault on American ownership extended beyond football commentary. Noel Gallagher from Oasis and a staunch Manchester City fan summed up much of the vitriol when he said “it’s no coincidence that it’s a brainchild of Americans. We should never have allowed them into the game in the first place. Americans are idiots. They shouldn’t be allowed in this country.”

A national call to arms over the ESL was also heard in the halls of Westminster. Shortly after the furore kicked off Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden told Parliament, “football is in our national DNA. We invented it, we helped export it around the world, and it has been a central part of British life for over a century.” He went on to suggest that as a conservative it was his duty to protect the interests of English football.

Fears of “Americanisation” manifested themselves into American billionaires becoming convenient punching bags for problems in English football. Pundits drip fed fans a series of televised tirades in which they promulgated the idea that an “American model” of sport was attempting to infiltrate the English game. There was widespread dismay that replacing the sanctified pyramid system of promotion and relegation with a fixed competition was somehow an importation of perverse American values into England. But it’s hard to see how scapegoating Americans for making use of an ownership structure that invited them in is anything more than a reflection of the state of politics in Britain.

The hostility directed towards American owners of English clubs comes at a time when culture wars are raging across Britain. Movements like BLM call into question Britain’s history of empire, the Labour Party is looking to redefine itself after election losses while trends like identity politics and cancel culture dominate political discourse. These are playing out in the wake of one of the most divisive referendums in British history in 2016, the years of chaotic Brexit negotiations that followed and continuing threats to the stability of the union in Northern Ireland and Scotland. All this in a year marred by death and loss from the coronavirus pandemic means football represents a symbol of nationalism like never before. At a time of such upheaval and discontent it seems like the sanctity of football’s pyramid structure is the only thing we can all agree on.

While there isn’t anything wrong with rallying around English football, it does raise the question of what unifies such a vociferous response. It is worth asking if years of combative Brexit politics has shifted Britain into an era characterised by symbolic nationalism. The reaction to the super league shows just how easily symbols of nationalism can be deployed against extraneous groups or individuals. It took Boris Johnson less than twenty four hours to throw his support behind English football in the face of the ESL onslaught, wilfully ignoring the unrest in Northern Ireland. By the time Johnson gave English football his blessing, the unanimous disapproval of the super league allowed him to score easy political points.

The ESL saga exposes the state of British politics in unexpected ways. After years of performative English nationalism stemming from the Brexit referendum in 2016, we could now be witnessing how public consciousness has shifted to a suspicion of outsiders, especially those with money, when an institution as adored in this country as football is seen to be under attack.