The American Coup d’etat of European Football
A lot of theories have been floated as to the origins of the schism in football that led to the attempted suicide of the beautiful game under the guise of the “European Super League”.
John Barnes said spiralling players salaries are to blame. Jamie Carragher and Gary Neville have accused the ‘big six’ clubs of being motivated solely by greed, “this is a grab, an absolute grab”. The Trump-like conspirator-in-chief Florentino Pérez blames the pandemic (publicly at least).
Certainly the eternal lust for money is a factor, but football and greed have been happy bedfellows for decades without actually destroying the essence of the game. No, to understand the true cause of this mess we have to dig deeper.
In truth, the birth of this foul and odious League of Anti-Sport derives from the self-deception at the heart of the American psyche when it comes to professional sport, namely, the irreconcilable struggle between America’s religious faith in capitalism and its communism-like outlawing of failure.
The major league sports in the US act a lightning rod for this paradox: your team can only win, or win less well; they can’t lose. Wealthy financiers are attracted to the most successful teams or ‘franchises’ as investment opportunities and as glittering status symbols, yet flinch at the inherent uncertainty of sport. Relegation (and therefore also promotion) is banned, and everyone gets a participation medal sooner or later.
Indoctrinated US commentators suffering from a kind of collective Stockholm syndrome therefore shrug their shoulders at the hysterical outrage in Europe.
“A sports league in which the best teams play against each other is an idea so crazy it just might work”
–Matthew Yglesias
Of course, American-owned Premier League clubs such as Liverpool, Manchester United and Arsenal are unlikely to ever face the prospect of relegation, and indeed are almost certain to finish within the top four Champions League qualifying positions each year.
The European Super League is now dead, but the desire that created it lives on–to eliminate that word: “almost”.
