Thoughts on a European Super League

I've been debating for the past 24 hours about whether or not to respond to this, I guess I've been suckered in.  Here are the reasons it's a terrible idea:

1.  This proposal would kill the domestic leagues.  Teams falling out of the super league might never recover.  It would be a financial disaster for all but the top clubs.
2.  Not only would traditional rivalries break down, but the amount of relegation you suggest would keep new rivalries from forming.  Would a parade of Shaktars, Sporting Lisbons, and Standard Lieges really be better than consistently going up against Bolton, Wigan and West Brom?  I say no.

3.  Travel.

4.  The high amount of turnover would actually make the quality of football worse.  If Porto finishes 13th, would promoting Sporting Lisbon the next year make the quality better or worse?

5.  As alluded to in point 2, you still will have far too many minnows under your proposal.  I'll come up with my own solution to fix this in a minute, should a Super League really have Belgian teams, or Ukranians, Turks etc?  If those countries are taking up 25% of the spots, is it really a super league?

6.  You're an american for crying out loud, why would you want to get rid of the playoff structure of the champions league, replacing the CL final with more round robining?  No, we should concentrate on taking the existing structure and making it better, so here is what I propose.  Keep everything the same, except add one more elimination game before the group stages.  Instead of 4 groups of 8 you'd have 4 groups of 4, increasing the chances of seeing truly tasty matchups.  You also get to keep the quarterfinals, the semis and the championship.  

I also thought about a 9 team league (2 each from the top three leagues, 1 from the next two, plus the Europa league winner).  That's 16 games.  The current CL winner will play 13, so you'd really only need to free up 2 games from the leagues, but I think I like the current format better.

Thanks for commenting.  I'll respond to each point in turn:
1) Hopefully if Super League revenues were shared with domestic leagues, there wouldn't be a giant gulf between those in the league and those still in domestic leagues.  Under my system, there would probably be a lot of teams bouncing back and forth, but I don't see why it would be a financial disaster.
2) I admit somewhat that traditional rivalries would break down.  However, I wouldn't say playing Bolton, Wigan, and WBA are rivalries.  I'm much more interested in seeing us play teams like Olympiakos or Marseille, rather than seeing the traditional EPL teams again and again.
3) Regarding travel, it's not any more than North American teams do.  And it would be more than compensated by greater revenues, I believe.  Furthermore, if you already believe that Super League teams would pull away in the revenue department, then who cares if they also have to pay extra travel costs along with it?
4) I don't know that the high turnover would make quality worse.  I'm not saying it makes it better, but at least you wouldn't have dead weight teams hanging on every year.  But just look at relegation/promotion in any domestic league - does it make quality better?  Were the three clubs promoted to the EPL this year better than those making the drop?  Probably not, but relegation/promotion spices things up, gives more teams a chance at the big league, and makes the games played by the bottom teams more compelling.
5) I understand the point about too many minnows, and I don't really disagree.  However, the flip side is to form an exclusive club and say that no team from a lesser league could EVER be in the Super League.  I don't like that either.  I think it should be open to any team in Europe, if they can manage to qualify, just like the Champions League now.  Theoretically, the CL could be won by a team from Hungary or wherever, so I think allowing some of the smaller teams in would spread the wealth and allow every team to dream a bit.
6) Yes, I'm American.  But I also see the value of the system I proposed too.  As it is now, there can be a fluke winner of the CL (like Porto and Liverpool in recent years).  In other words, teams that clearly aren't the best in Europe, but they manage to win the cup anyway.  But a full round robin would reward the best club in the end, so that has some upside too.  Plus, there would still be knockout cups in each country too, if you're into that too.

1.  Do you really think a Premier League without MCFC, MUFC, CFC, or AFC would make even half as much revenue as it does now?  
2.  Rivalries have the potential to develop with familiarity. 
4.  There is a big difference between relegating 15% of the Premier league and relegating half.  If the PL had this policy, instead of Newcastle, Stoke, Wolves, you'd have Leister, Millwall, and Burnley.  That's a definite downgrade in quality.  You can argue that there is more depth Europe wide, but in most cases you'd be trading a better team for an inferior one.

Van Persie 100 Goals http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...

Another problem is where to play these games.
Having a home/away scheme would be difficult for players as they would have to travel every weekend to a different European country.

It would be tough, but given the advances in travel with charter jets and everything, I don't think it would be that unfeasible, especially since most of the teams involved would be in major metropolitan areas with direct flights from London.

As a fan of North American sports, I laugh at the travel issue.  Teams here regularly fly from coast to coast, and even to some cities in Canada.  Travel for a European Super League would still be considerably less than the travel involved during one season of the NHL, NBA, or MLB.  

My wife has had many of her Dutch cousin come to Canada, and they literally have zero sense of the distances out here.
They figured they could go see Niagra Falls, CNN Tower, The Rockies and Vancouver all in one day if need be.

They simply don't know much about other regions of the world much like ignorant North Americans don't know much about the rest of the world. Its all the same.

I think part of the greatness of having so many top leagues in Europe (and by "so many" I refer to the EPL, the Serie A, La Liga, the Bundesliga and Ligue 1) is that we can have a "top four" of sorts in every one of them. I feel like if all the top teams were placed in a single league, luck, money, hard work, or something of the sort will lead to the top four or five pulling away from everyone else; happens in every league.
An international superleague would really only kill the diversity of the game, estrange local fans from their beloved teams and kill the illustrious names of numerous clubs. The nice thing with the CL is that a club can still be wildly successful without winning, while the title is simultaneously  the most prestigious one in Europe. This way we have lots of top, top teams coming to battle it out every year, and very little predictability.
If anything, I think the CL should be refereed better, like every other league. Perhaps they could be the first to "champion" the idea of in-game replays. More exclusivity would be nice too (say what you wish about Pool, but they're probably better than BATE), but the current system gives the minnow leagues some rare media attention.
I hate to be so pessimistic, but I don't see any potential benefit from this except-- hang on, just Barca making more money? Strange.

Your point about whether it would estrange local fans or not is an interesting one. Do you mean the teams in the league or the teams outside of the league?

Because I think you could certainly make a point that it would actually help a lot of teams outside of the Super League. Look at it this way -- if you're a diehard Everton or Sunderland fan, what have you had to root for the last few seasons? You're consistently good enough not to get relegated, so staying up isn't really a concern. But you're not big enough to win the league, or anymore even make the Champions League, so that's not something in your mind, either. So . . . you root for Europa League qualification?

On the other hand, if you took the big clubs out of the equation, all of a sudden you feel like your team is a dark horse title hopeful. Sure, there are still some bigger teams out there, but the odds don't seem quite so insurmountable. I thought Homey made this point pretty nicely with the Hearts example -- I think it would help Hearts greatly to get rid of Celtic and/or Rangers, I think the fans would get much more excited.

Its a well thought-out plan, though the seed of your idea is a bad one. I find the concept of a Super League both childish and improbable, but there's still time till Saturday so I'll bite. You said four spots in your SL for the top domestic league, say the Premiership. In what world would the FA allow its four top teams to ditch domestic football and play in this Super League? Arsenal would never play in the EPL ever again given as they are relegation proof, how will the fans feel about the club opting to shed history and culture for money? What about derbys and St. Totteringham's Day? The bigger teams will pull away financially while the standard of domestic football will drop and with it the quality of players most club produce. Call me old fashioned, but I would rather sit at a pub near my home on Saturday match day and watch The Arsenal kick the twats off of those Spuds, and then miraculously lose to a newly promoted minnow. I think the current system, though there is always room for improvement, has got it fairly right and there is no need to fuck with domestic football. So I know you presented this "Homey Plan" as your take on a Super League but do you actually prefer it to our good ol' EPL?

Yes, I voted for it.  Your objection is mostly one of the legal/procedural hurdles.  And I'm sure the FA would never stand for it, so I think you're right.  I'm not an expert on what could happen and what rights the clubs would have to set up a Super League.  My blog was more about what would be cool in theory, if I could pretty much wave a magic wand and create it.
As for local rivalries and such... some of those could still come in domestic cups, as mentioned.  But again, average fans probably don't care to watch a giant take on a minnow week after week, so it's an idea to grow the relevance of more of the games.  
Anyway, I'm sure it would never happen, just like when I talk about all the high-priced players I wish Arsenal would sign.  Ha.

I am quite sure that the teams would have every right to pull out of the Premier league and play in another league. I think the clubs would have the power so FA may have no choice other than to agree and just hope to do as well as they can out of the change.

All of those issues are way above my level of knowledge, in terms of the legal rights of clubs and such.  My guess is that the domestic leagues would at least have to approve of such a deal, because they'd be engaged in yearly promotion and relegation of their teams.  I would further guess that the only way they'd agree to it, is if the big clubs threatened to split off from UEFA entirely, and hoard all the massive profits for themselves.  That might force the domestic leagues to play ball with them in the way I set forth, so that they'd get a split of the money and other concessions.  But again, that's pure speculation on my part. The main point of my blog was just to throw out what would be cool in theory.

Well, one alternative, and one that seems feasible to me, is to do away with promotion, and make it like an American sports league, with a set group of teams. I say it's feasible because it would seem like the teams involved would be very much in favor of such a proposal. The television rights to such a Super League would be massive, so the teams involved would definitely want as much security as possible. If you were Arsenal, a team that would certainly not be relegation-proof in a Super League, why wouldn't you want to do away with relegation so you could be assured of that giant television revenue on an annual basis? This is probably even more true for teams from "smaller" leagues, like Porto or Shakhtar. And this would take it out of the hands of the FA, since the only leverage they would have is not to let the relegated teams back in.

Well of course the teams in a Super League wouldn't want there to be relegation, just like current teams in the EPL wouldn't want it either.  I think what you're saying is that from a legal standpoint, the only possible way to have the Super League would be to break apart from UEFA entirely, which may be true.  However, I was writing from what would be more interesting from a fan's point of view.  Or at least from this fan.  Plus, I have no idea how you'd decide who to include and exclude at the formation of the thing.  Sounds ripe for lawsuits and all sorts of things.  
Frankly, I think the tv money would be even higher if you relegated half the league every year, rather than having no relegation.  The reason is there would be a compelling reason to watch all the games throughout the year, and not just the teams at the very top competing for the title.

I have a major objection to this league. I do like your plan and in general I like the idea of European football, but I don't really want it to happen.

My main problem is that there will be teams, like Tottenham and Liverpool this year, who are easily have enough quality to be in the league but because of the structure will miss out.

In addition, there will be teams, like Madrid, Barcelona, Man U, Munich etc. that will be in your league every year, and they will pull away financially.

You have presented a well thought out plan though, I am very impressed.

Another thing is that it seems as though the huge clubs are pulling away financially as it is anyway.  So this would be just a way to pair the big boys together, rather than seeing them throttle the little ones on a regular basis.  But yeah, that's a worry about it, and hopefully there would be some revenue sharing built in.

I had that same thought, to an extent.  In fact, when I first wrote the blog, I proposed relegating 8 teams every year.  Then I made it 10.  Then I made it 12.  But I was thinking of the same thing you were thinking.  Which is, if there are 4 teams from England, and they manage to survive relegation every year, then there could be an EPL Champion every year who would never get promoted.  When I expanded my relegation number to 12, I finally thought it was a big enough number to include major teams in major leagues that would still get the drop.  I think there would be chances for a team from England or wherever to move up.
As for the other issue, I understand the financial "haves" and "have nots" thing.  And I really don't like that.  I'd want quite a slice of that profit to go back to leagues and clubs that aren't in the Super League.  Hopefully the money would increase all around.  But just a thought.  I hadn't really planned it all out in my head before today.