After the secret meeting between executives of the top five English clubs—Manchester United, Manchester City, Arsenal, Liverpool and Chelsea—and International Champions Cup executive Stephen Ross was exposed in the English tabloids over the past week, many wondered if the long rumored European Super League was any closer to fruition. Now Charlie Stillitano, another American soccer executive working with the ICC, put his own comments out to the public and many are not going to like what he has said.
“What would Manchester United argue: did we create soccer or did Leicester create [it]?” said Stillitano to SiriusXM radio, according to the AP. “Let’s call it the money pot created by soccer and the fandom around the world. Who has had more of an integral role, Manchester United or Leicester? It’s a wonderful, wonderful story – but you could see it from Manchester United’s point of view, too.”
Manchester United did not create soccer, nor did Leicester. Soccer existed long before both of those clubs and will exist if both of them are terrible. The meetings from earlier this week, according to Stillitano, were to talk about the ICC and how to better integrate it with UEFA’s own portfolio of competition, though that too could be a ways off.
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Part of the debate centers around the open structure of European soccer competition with promotion and relegation and the financial security of the franchise-based system used in American sports leagues, including Major League Soccer.
“Maybe that is absolutely spectacular unless you are a Manchester United fan, Liverpool fan … or a Chelsea fan,” Stillitano said. “I guess they don’t have a birthright to be in it every year, but it’s the age-old argument: US sports franchises versus what they have in Europe. There are wonderful, wonderful, wonderful elements to relegation and promotion and there are good arguments for a closed system.”
This also isn’t about relegation, it’s about the four spots the EPL gets in the Champions League, and if Leicester City earns a spot there, they should get the rewards next season. The “top clubs” do not have a birthright to be in the competition if they are bad, just like AC Milan, Inter Milan or anyone else. What’s ironic is that the closed-system argument doesn’t work here. The best American sports stories are underdog stories, and this is the first year in about 20 in the Premier League that none of England’s “Big Four”, or the oil bucks of Manchester City, have as good a chance to win the title as little Leicester.
Still, Stillitano, ever the businessman, believes that more people will want to watch the big boys play against each other as opposed to underdogs.
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“This is going to sound arrogant and it’s the furthest thing from it … but suddenly when you see the teams we have this summer in the ICC you are going to shake your head and say, ‘Isn’t that the Champions League?’” Stillitano said. “No, the Champions League is PSV and Gent.”
“I could make a lot more money, I can be a lot more visible, I can help my sponsors out but right now I am locked into doing certain things that are really historic.”
This is suggesting that the Champions League is still continuing in its current form because Stillitano is locked into other contracts, and if he could, he’d blow up the structure of European soccer for cash and no other reason, leaving clubs like Leicester City and Eibar in the dust because—according to him and those who run the top clubs in England who will be shut out this year—nobody wants to watch them. It’s the same way nobody wanted to watch the Kansas City Royals win the World Series, so let’s lock them out and only have teams from New York, LA and Chicago compete for it every year, even though they’re not the best teams in baseball. Right?
A European Super League could be on the horizon one day, but it’s not coming soon, which means that Leicester City’s spot in the Champions League will be safe next season. There are no birthrights in soccer, and that won’t change, no matter how much money is thrown into a super league.
[Guardian]
