Ding dong, the Super League’s dead

Here lies the Super League, 18 April 2021 - 20 April 2021. Rest in pieces.

Tottenham Hotspur have formally announced their withdrawal from the European Super League, effective 600 PM ET. The club released a statement via Twitter:

The statement reads as follows:

Chairman Daniel Levy said: “We regret the anxiety and upset caused by the ESL proposal. We felt it was important that our club participated in the development of a possible new structure that sought to better ensure financial fair play and financial sustainability whilst delivering significantly increased support for the wider football pyramid.”

“We believe that we should never stand still and that the sport should constantly review competitions and governance to ensure the game we all love continues to evolve and excite fans around the world.”

“We should like to thank all those supporters who presented their considered opinions.”

It’s about the kind of response you’d expect when a club made a pretty egregious error, but it truly lacks an honest sentiment or some form of responsibility. Fabrizio Romano has confirmed that all English clubs have withdrawn from the league, effectively killing it. Somewhere, Florentino Perez is crying into a pillow he wishes was a sack full of cash.

Sooooooo....what now?

UEFA released a statement shortly after Manchester City made their formal announcement to withdraw praising them for their decision, leading us to believe that the European Confederation isn’t going to do much in the way of punishment or leave it up to the domestic leagues:

UEFA, FIFA, and the domestic leagues came out firing every big gun they had and have won this battle. Granted, the belief is that this isn’t over and we’ll revisit this somewhere down the road. The fallout from this decision has yet to be tallied, but it’s so far claimed the job of Ed Woodward, who has resigned his position as executive chairman of Manchester United. There are rumblings that the Glazers may look to sell the club as well, but that remains to be seen.

So what caused the sudden turnaround? If you believe Mundo Deportivo, UEFA offered cash to the Premier League clubs to ditch the Super League without punishment. However, UEFA has not offered the same olive branch to the Spanish clubs, probably because eliminating half the clubs involved was more than enough.

For Tottenham Hotspur, the effects of this are to be determined. Supporters had at least one protest completed outside the stadium and another was planned for Wednesday. There’s a good chance that still goes on because ENIC, Joe Lewis and Daniel Levy all should be held accountable for their part in this. As I mentioned in an article earlier today, they needed to eat a large amount of crow and one club statement doesn’t wash away what they’ve done.

Yes, the Super League is effectively dead and we can all breathe a bit easier, but this is nowhere close to being over. It’s safe to say that the English clubs saw a massive injection of cash and ran with it, not bothering to see if anyone actually wanted this. Now they know what the response is and will return to the drawing board. Repairing the trust between ownership and supporters is already difficult to begin with.

The ENIC Out contingent of Spurs fandom is going to grow rapidly. Daniel Levy and Joe Lewis have nobody to blame but themselves.