FanPost

You say you hate a European Super League, But Will You Really?

Bale in Milan. Moura in Amsterdam. Deli with the double kicking off victory against Real at Wembly. We all lived these moments in Europe and they are some of the highest moments of Spurs fandom for the past 10 years. For some, they are a balm to the wounds of an empty trophy case. For me, I care less about trophies and more about magical moments, and I’d take another Amsterdam Miracle or a Llorente hip goal (it was his bloody hip not his hand, you know it, I know it, everyone knows it) before a sparkling trophy ceremony at Wembley with Kane holding the Caraboa Cup aloft.

And magical moments are really made on the biggest stages against the stiffest competition, and lads, we’ve been invited to the party. Sure, it’s a new party, without the history of a tournament running back 5 or 6 decades, but I bet if you reached back to the start of the UEFA Champions League, errr, the European Champion Clubs’ Cup (sorry), the same hand wringing and gnashing of teeth that has commenced this week, was likely going on then in whatever analog, pre-social media form available back then. Ham Radio? Letters to the Editor to your local paper?

Also, did you know that the European Champion Clubs’ Cup started out just as a competition to clubs that won their domestic leagues? It didn’t expand to include the runners up until 1998 (6 years after it was rebranded to the "Champions League"). Then expanded again in 1999/2000 to include the top three and top four of the "big leagues". Do you see a trend here? Expanding European football to enhance a competition with the biggest clubs from the biggest leagues? I suspect at each turn of expansion the status quo domestic purists saw each turn as the end of football, but here were are some decades later and football is still going strong, just different.

Sure this is a bigger step than maybe the previous ones - a decade or so acceleration collapsed into what feels like a weekend - brought on by financial panic itself the result of a years long pandemic slog of fanless games accessible only by television and the internet. But let’s not pretend that the current Champions League itself is not already a European Super League built because more fans want to see more games played between Barca and Manchester United than Barca v. Granada or Man U slogging off to another 1-0 game at Turf Moor.

Why is that? Because let’s face it, those European nights are special not just at Anfield in front of the Kop but to the wider audience that has more access to European football than ever before and these fans don’t just clamor for the integrity of the history of the domestic league but just want to see the biggest names play in the biggest stadiums against the best competition. And the ESL promises more games of greater excitement and therefore the promise of more magical European moments.

Let’s also not forget that UEFA is hardly an angel here and hardly the protectors of the purity of football they are currently being held up to be. Let’s not forget their role in awarding world cups to Qatar and Russia, which were likely the result of an international bribery scheme. It has always perplexed me why Swiss bureaucrats have so much control over football’s machinery and UEFA's own negligence and misfeasance in this space would be grounds enough to cripple their authority. If the Super League achieves that, it might be worth the price itself.

Regardless, somehow Spurs have bought a ticket to the coming madness because for the past decade we’ve consistently developed some of the best young players in the game (I’m looking at you Mr. Bale, Modric, Kane) and because Levy has somehow built a Chicken standing on top of a 1950s ball into some weird global brand that kids in Topeka Kansas and Buenos Aires can recognize and love.

Sure we won’t have the could you/won’t push and pull of whether Spurs will even have the chance of the glory of European football if we don’t finish above the 14 also rans in the EPL and some 2 of the other big six and for that we are inviting some dead rubber games in the domestic league – especially if by January it is apparent we are not gunning for the title. But for the next 10-15 years before the whole structure of world football is upended again (and it will be), the gap between us and the Burnleys of the world is going to grow exponentially but the gap between us and the Real Madrid’s of the world is going to flatten.

And possibly instead of worrying about losing Bale, Modric, and Kane to Real, we might be able to keep them, pay them, bring in some others, and snag more magical nights against the biggest names in this beautiful game. I’m not sure we will ever win the ESL, and I’m not sure we could ever really win the Champions League if it stayed as it is (although we had one heck of a journey coming one Moussa Sissoko armpit away from winning the thing – put your arm down man, Mane is clever and you are in the box, and what they heck are you pointing at anyways), but I for one and looking forward to trying and am grateful that somehow we get the chance to try.

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