A few weeks ago, the world of football-especially European-clouded with a lot of opinions on European Super League. This league was established by twelve “Founding Clubs” including Premier League’s Big Six (Manchester United, Manchester City, Liverpool, Chelsea, Arsenal, and Tottenham), Real Madrid, Atletico Madrid, Barcelona, Inter Milan, Juventus, and AC Milan. The ESL games would take place in the midweek, consists of (according to the plan) 20 clubs that split into two groups. Now what comes to mind when you heard all those clubs name in the private league like that? Big match, every single week. Apparently, a lot of people-like a LOT-is not a big fan of this idea and it leads to protests and rage. While the league was only a few days-old, the protests and the rage still remain until today-especially, from the fans.
It started hours even before the Super League was announced. Fans already “attacking” the club’s social medias with things like “say no to Super League”, “cancel the Super League”, “don’t join the Super League” and so on. People started to throw their opinions on the rival competition of UEFA’s Champions League. Media kept the tabs on updates about the announcement and informed it to the audience. Well, maybe you were there too and you can see the timeline went so fast and crazy, updates here and there every few minutes, fans calling out their clubs non stop on the comment section, people criticizing both clubs and football associations, opinions flying like a bird from fans, journalists, and former footballers. It was the craziest 24-hours in football in all of my life as a football fan, if I might add.
The wave of protest seems like never sleeps. After the announcement, everything went crazier if it wasn’t crazy enough. From what I saw on social media, fans started to go big-Liverpool fans putting signs in order to cancelling the Super League outside Anfield as a form of protest. The weekend after Super League announcement, a lot of Chelsea fans came to the street and protest in front of Stamford Bridge at the day of the game against Brighton & Hove Albion. Not long after, Arsenal fans were taking over Emirates Stadium in the protest to the club’s owner. And the most recent, two days ago Manchester United fans stormed Old Trafford, protesting against the club’s owner, Glazer family. All these protests were the effect of the establishment of Super League.
The rage that follows the Super League, even until today-even if it’s not as “loud” as the first time-shows how important the football is to the fans. They’re willing to go down the street, even taking over the stadium to fight and save the football they know all these times. It also tell me the importance of fans’ voice and the ability of club to listen to it. When the founding club withdrew themselves from the project, one by one, clubs released a statement of their withdrawals. Even the club already released a statement, some fans demanded an apology from club to the fans.
As the day goes by, and with the Super League was put “on hold” and getting “reshape”, it seems like the football nation is back to normal. But it’s like the problem is not going anywhere, UEFA proposed a new form of Champions League which is not much of a different than European Super League. While this new form still underway, some people starting to pay attention on that too. But at least for now, we can enjoy the rest of the season. Some European domestic league already crowned the winner, some still have to wait for a few more games and Champions League is entering the final phase of this season.
One thing that I think I can learn from this is that, football should be a perfect balance of every aspect of it; the fans, the players, the club itself, the owners, the stakeholders, the association-all of it. Every aspect should listen to one another and also, respect each other. Because at the end, football is one of many things in life that gives joy to a lot of people around the world and unite them. Because at the end, football is nothing without the fans and fans live their lives in the beauty of a game that we called: football.
