This Thursday, starting at 9:30 a.m., the Court of Justice of the European Union will issue its final ruling on the Super League case. A capital ruling to determine whether the competition project led by Florentino Pérez, and today supported only by Real Madrid and FC Barcelona publicly, it may or may not be developed in the coming years, but in no case will it be definitive: neither the Super League will completely die this Thursday nor will it become a near reality.
It is important to note that this is not a ruling on the legality of the Super League or its fit into European law. Nor is it a resolution that will close the dispute that is ongoing. A22 Management Sports, the company that manages the competition project, with UEFA and FIFA. The case, in reality, is instructed in the Commercial Court number 17 of Madrid and there it will continue starting this Thursday.
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15 of the 27 judges of the CJEU They will decide on a preliminary ruling that was raised by the Spanish court. This is the depository of the complaint presented by the clubs promoting the Super League when they announced the creation of the project, with the aim of preventing UEFA and FIFA from taking retaliation against them, such as the expulsion of teams and players from organized competitions. by these institutions: national leagues, Champions, World Cup, Euro Cup…
Is the UEFA and FIFA monopoly legal?
The Super League defends that UEFA and FIFA exercise an abuse of powerr by attempting to block the birth of a competition that is outside both institutions. Their respective statutes recognize them the monopoly of the federated football organization in their respective areas, a circumstance that the Super League understands to be contrary to the antitrust rules contained in community law, a matter that the Spanish court decided to consult the CJEU. That is the key point of the decision that will be made this Thursday: is this monopoly legal?
A year ago, the court’s general counsel, Anastasios Rantospublished his general conclusions, which practically entirely defended the theses defended by UEFA and FIFA (also supported by LaLiga, the RFEF and almost all football agents from different countries), in the face of the demands of the Super League. This is a prior procedure of the CJEU that is not binding, but in 80% of cases it anticipates the final decision that the court based in Luxembourg ends up making.
Rantos estimated that the creation of a Super League is legal, something that no one disputes, but that Those who join them must be exposed to consequences such as expulsion from competitions organized by UEFA and FIFA.. It determines, in short, that “the FIFA and UEFA rules that make the creation of any new competition subject to prior authorization are compatible with Union Law on competition matters.”
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That ruling implies that the monopoly of these two institutions on the organization of federated football is legitimate, in accordance with EU rules, and that so is a possible exclusion from the competitions that both manage of clubs that decide to participate in tournaments organized at the same time. margin of UEFA and FIFA. A22, through its general director, Bernd Reichart, has been trying for a year to downplay the forcefulness of Rantos’ conclusions. With little success.
What to expect from the ruling
The rumor mill predicts that the CJEU ruling will be aligned for the most part with the theses defended by Advocate General Rantos, but without being so forceful in its conclusions. If Justice ends up shielding the legality of UEFA’s monopoly at the continental level, however, The Super League will be even more mortally woundedsince the institution that presides Aleksander Ceferin has no intention of opening up to sharing the pie of European football with other agents.
The Super League was launched in April 2021 by 12 of the main European clubs. The list, however, and after brutal pressure from the British Government on the six Premier League clubs involved, was reduced to three just 48 hours later: Real Madrid, FC Barcelona and Juventus. The Turin team announced last July that it was also abandoning the project, leaving Spain’s two biggest clubs as the only defenders of the project, which in recent months has tried to persuade clubs in the second tier of Europe to join. Or so they say, since no one else has raised their hand so far.
Sin Bayern is PSG
Originally, it was presented as an almost closed competition, with a guaranteed place for the 12 founders, as well as for three other clubs, intended to Bayern, Dortmund and PSG, who never joined the project. On the contrary, they positioned themselves fiercely against his birth. During the last few months, the Super League has stated, without going into more details, that the competition format would be open and that it would reward the sporting results obtained in the national leagues, the main point of criticism of the project.
Reichart, CEO of the Super League, assures that the new format of the tournament, which has not yet been presented, will accommodate “more than 60 teams”compared to the initial 20, and that these will be “treated equally and fairly”compared to the original supremacy of the 12 (or 15) founders, who according to the initial project, supposedly would have distributed 3,525 million euros among themselves just for founding the Super League.
2023-12-20 12:24:46
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