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Desperate times call for desperate measures, but even as many English football clubs look over the cliff in the face of financial catastrophe, the Liverpool and Manchester United-led bailout plan, with the working title of “Project Big Picture”, sounds good, but appears to be nothing short of a big check now in exchange for your presentation in the future.
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At first glance, the deal to “save” the game in English seems too good to be true, and it really is.
In the project, there is a proposal for an immediate payment of £ 250 million to the English Football League (EFL) to help keep its 72 member clubs afloat, another £ 100 million for the Football Association to invest in grassroots football and, in the future, 25%. of the combined revenues from the Premier League and the EFL would go to the Championship, League One and League Two clubs. There is even a commitment to ensure that tickets for visiting fans are capped at £ 20 per game.
What’s not to like? From those proposals, the English game will swim in money in the coming years thanks to the cascades of cash that will replace the trickle economy. But the devil is really in the details of the plan, devised by EFL president Rick Parry, former Premier League and Liverpool CEO, and backed by the two greats of the “Big Six”, Liverpool and Man United. .
Not only do they propose reducing the size of the Premier League from 20 to 18 and eliminating both the Carabao Cup and the Community Shield, but the details include so-called “special voting rights” for the Big Six: Liverpool, United, Chelsea, Manchester . City, Arsenal and Tottenham, and the three longest-serving Premier League clubs outside of that group, to have the ability to shift the allocation of broadcast revenue and divert more participation to the bigger clubs.
That group of nine would be free to do their own thing, while the rest – the other 11 Premier League clubs and 72 EFL teams – couldn’t stop them. So would they continue to act in the interest of the entire pyramid?
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The price of salvation for those clubs that are now surviving through a precarious existence is that they give up any hope or ambition to end the elite in the future. If they want to survive and emerge as a functioning soccer club on the other side of the pandemic, they basically have to give the “Big Six” the green light to run the game as they see fit.
As ESPN reported last month, the full impact of the COVID-19 pandemic is now being felt at all levels of football in England. At the top of the pyramid, United loses up to £ 5 million every time Old Trafford hosts a closed-door game, while further down, League One Managing Director Accrington Stanley decided to drive 200 miles to deliver a batch of coronavirus. evidence to save the club £ 300 in courier charges.
Other clubs are quickly running out of money as the UK government has halted plans to allow paying fans to return to stadiums, even in small numbers, amid concerns of a second wave of infections. This is the bleak picture that the largest and most powerful teams now consider fertile ground on which to consolidate their position of strength.
Parry, whose time in charge of the Premier League and Liverpool gives him crucial insight into how the best clubs think and act, is a smart trader, and his radical plan has many positives, such as big payouts to the lower leagues and Proposals to cut costs for fans. These are the easy vote winners, but Parry also knows that elite Premier League clubs and their owners are not motivated by charity or philanthropy. There has to be a return for them, and that would surely come in the form of a greater and unfettered power to grab a bigger slice of the pie.
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EFL President Rick Parry advocates for changes in English football backed by Manchester United and Liverpool.
The ability to claim more commercial and broadcast revenue would allow the “Big Six” to dominate not only the Premier League for years to come, but would also make them more powerful on the European stage, with higher annual earnings allowing them to outperform rivals. Continentals like Bayern Munich, Real Madrid, Barcelona, Juventus and Paris Saint-Germain for the best players. If the best clubs in England can open the door to more money, no one else will be able to compete in terms of transfer fees or salaries.
As the biggest revenue drivers for English football (it is an obvious fact that fans around the world pay to watch Manchester United and Liverpool rather than Burnley and Fulham), the “Big Six” might choose to argue that deserve a financial windfall reflect your power of attraction. But while those clubs are arguably the biggest draw on a global scale, the competitiveness of the Premier League is the real star of the show and the competition would lose its luster if the image of the best clubs changes.
The Premier League has already condemned “Project Big Picture”, as has the UK government: an official statement by Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the plan was “exactly the kind of underground deal that undermines confidence in the governance of football. “. Similarly, it’s hard to imagine players like Leeds United, Newcastle or Aston Villa voting for something that would do nothing for them other than increase the gap between clubs in their image and the treetop.
Yes, these are desperate times for gambling in England, and in all parts of the world right now, but Project Big Picture feels like nothing more than a slick, but flawed, attempt at money grabbing by the rich and powerful. of football.
