The group which represents hundreds of European football teams including Liverpool, Manchester City and Bayern Munich has dismissed the latest bid to revive a European Super League project as a “disruptive” campaign led by “separatist self-interested clubs”.
Sky News has obtained a memo circulated to the board of the European Club Association (ECA) by its chairman, the Paris Saint-Germain president Nasser Al-Khelaïfi, in which he accuses the architects of the rebranded Unify League of “desperately crav[ing]” publicity.
The strongly worded message, which has not been publicly released, underlines both the deep fissures which continue to exist between some of Europe’s footballing elite and the challenges that A22, the group behind the new project, faces in getting a rival tournament off the ground.
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A22 said this week that the Unify League – which would be designed to usurp UEFA’s Champions League tournament – had submitted proposals for a 96-team, four-division competition to FIFA and UEFA.
It plans to show the games on a bespoke free-to-air streaming platform rather than selling the rights to broadcast partners.
The original European Super League (ESL) project, details of which were exclusively revealed by Sky News in the autumn of 2020, was effectively blocked by UEFA, with a European Court of Justice ruling last year concluding that that veto had been unlawful.
Six English Premier League clubs – Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur – joined the original ESL ranks, but rapidly withdrew after a huge backlash from fans and politicians.
The clubs’ plan to participate is viewed as one of the principal catalysts for the creation of a new English football regulator, for which the government is…
