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(Reuters) – Manchester United and Liverpool are in talks with Europe’s elite clubs to join a new FIFA-backed competition that would reshape the global soccer landscape, Sky News reported on Tuesday.
United declined to comment on the report and Liverpool did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Citing unidentified sources in the “football industry,” Sky said that more than 12 teams from Europe’s five major leagues – in England, France, Germany, Italy and Spain – are in negotiations to become the founding members of the new competition, called the European Premier League. with a provisional start date in 2022.
The report added that financiers are seeking to raise a $ 6 billion fund package to get the new tournament going.
Sky said that FIFA, the world’s governing body for soccer, is working on a new format, which is expected to include 18 teams playing matches during the regular European season before a knockout phase. Sky added that neither FIFA nor UEFA had commented on the story.
A FIFA spokesperson told Reuters in an emailed statement: “FIFA does not wish to comment on or participate in any speculation on issues that arise from time to time and, for which, institutional structures and regulatory frameworks are fine. established at national, European and global level. “
The governing body of European football, UEFA, whose blue band club competition is the Champions League, reiterated the opposition of its president Aleksander Ceferin to said Super League.
“The principles of solidarity, promotion, relegation and open leagues are non-negotiable,” said a UEFA statement.
“It’s what makes European football work and the Champions League, the best sports competition in the world.
“UEFA and the clubs have pledged to harness that force so as not to destroy it and create a super league of 10, 12, even 24 clubs, which would inevitably get boring.”
The idea of a European super league has been raised regularly for the past 20 years, and UEFA has always spoken out strongly against it.
In December 2018, the German magazine Der Spiegel, citing leaked documents, said that it had uncovered plans promoted by Real Madrid together with other major European clubs, for the creation of a separatist league.
Following that report, the European Leagues (EL) group, representing 25 national leagues, including the English Premier League, the German Bundesliga and the Spanish League, expressed “strong opposition” to any such plan type.
UEFA is currently working with the European Club Association (ECA), whose members include Europe’s biggest clubs, to redesign the Champions League starting in 2024, although no concrete plans have emerged.
In February 2019, Ceferin said there would be no Super League as long as he was UEFA president and Andrea Agnelli was the director of the European Club Association.
“It is not a promise, it is a fact,” he added.
The news follows the leak of ‘Project Big Picture’, a Manchester United and Liverpool-backed proposal for a radical change in English football that was rejected by a Premier League club meeting last week.
(Information from Hardik Vyas in Bengaluru; additional information from Simon Evans; edited by Catherine Evans / Mitch Phillips / Toby Davis / Ken Ferris)
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