5 minutes to understand the “Bohr” project, the Super League on which PSG was working

PSG and the Super League are a long story. Long mentioned, never really involved and even recently opposed, the capital club has always been associated directly or indirectly with this new format of closed European competition. This Tuesday, February 20, The Team put a part back in the machine after having access to a confidential document of around thirty pages. PSG would, in fact, have been working on its own Super League project with other European clubs.

The “Bohr” project: what is it? With whom ? And when ?

This is the code name given to this project for a new European competition which Paris Saint-Germain has been working on. A name taken from the Danish physicist Niels Bohr, Nobel Prize winner in physics in 1922, who also participated in work on the atomic bomb.

Behind this project are two clubs, according to L’Équipe, or rather two men, Nasser Al-Khelaïfi and Andrea Agnelli. The presidents of PSG and Juventus Turin, who have worked alongside each other for several years within the European Club Association, began negotiations around this project in the fall of 2020, six months before the launch of the real Super League which flopped.

“I remember taking the plane to Paris in the middle of Covid. The town was deserted. Nasser (Al-Khelaïfi) and I had conversations about a new competition, where he said that we needed changes, because if we did not react, we were dead,” Agnelli confirmed on this subject to Financial Times last January.

Unlike the other Super League project, known to all and launched in April 2021 by Real Madrid, FC Barcelona and once again Juventus Turin, PSG was this time in control with the Turin club. Contacted by Le Parisien, the entourage of the boss of PSG confirms the existence of such a project, but assures that they were not alone in this matter: “It was a project shared with many other big clubs and Aleksander Čeferin himself. UEFA was fully aware. »

How far along was the project?

On the PSG side, we are tempering the issue. We talk about a “set of ideas”. “Talking about a project would be exaggerated,” says those around Nasser Al-Khelaïfi. The document revealed by L’Équipe, however, seems detailed.

This new European competition was designed for 24 clubs. In detail, the first 14 participants would have been the 14 clubs with the highest income in Europe. To this, we must add two institutions in Europe (Lyon and Milan) whose finances did not allow them to appear in this list. To complete it all, the last eight present would have qualified via European competitions.

These 24 participants would have been grouped into four groups of six. But there’s no question of talking about hens or groups. As in the new Champions League on which UEFA also worked, the “Bohr” project provided for a Swiss format. Each team would have been guaranteed to play 32 matches in total (16 home, 16 away). During this first phase, the eight worst teams would have been eliminated. See you for the other 16 in the final phase in the format we know: round of 16, quarter-finals and back-and-forth matches, before a single-match final.

The “Bohr” project went even further, with the details of the business plan. This competition would have generated 12.2 billion euros per year, 8.2 of which would have been returned to the participants.

Would PSG have considered leaving Ligue 1?

With these 24 teams guaranteed to play 32 matches each and a round-trip final phase, we arrive at a staggering total of 413 matches. Is this possible for clubs in addition to their respective championships? In the “Bohr” project document cited by the sports daily, it is written: “Total secession from the national leagues, aiming to maximize revenues. » Would PSG have considered leaving Ligue 1 or involving a B team in the championship? “This project was not developed to the end, but the proposal was not a break with UEFA. It would not have affected the national leagues and would have been included in the calendar,” is the response from those around Nasser Al-Khelaïfi.

The objective of the “Bohr” project was therefore to launch in partnership with UEFA, to “guarantee the legitimacy of the competition” and that the European football body remains “the only solidarity distributor (of aid transferred to other clubs)”. This is its main difference with the Super League, which was built in opposition to UEFA.

Finally, is PSG for or against the existence of a Super League?

The Super League as we know it, PSG has already clarified its position on this subject on December 21. “Paris Saint-Germain totally and completely rejects any project for a so-called Super League, which has been the case since day one and will always remain the case,” said its president Nasser Al-Khelaïfi in a press release.

But the idea of ​​a redesigned Champions League or a slightly more closed league which would guarantee more income and better attractiveness for clubs has already crossed the mysteries of the capital club. Paris Saint-Germain was not indifferent from its beginnings to the contours of the Super League, which generates substantial income. But the French champion ultimately decided not to be there and to side with UEFA, despite numerous requests from the founding clubs, notably those of Agnelli and Juventus Turin.

PSG had therefore, in fact, focused at the same time on a project for another Super League, without detaching itself from UEFA. A balancing act that did not succeed. Unless the 2024-2025 Champions League new format always more matches, always more revenue but with UEFA ― was judged to be a good compromise…