As a metaphor, Little Red Riding Hood was not particularly original, but everyone got the message. And that’s what Javier Tebas was all about. The Super League threatens everything supporters love about football in Europe, says the director of the Spanish professional league La Liga. So he tweeted last week a cartoon of the age-old fairy tale when the plan for a new elite competition, which fell with a lot of noise in 2021, was very carefully and in an adapted form revived. Little Red Riding Hood was European football: innocent and vulnerable. The Super League the big bad wolf disguised as grandma, ready to strike.
How viable the edited plans for a Super League are is unclear. But even without a new elite competition, Tebas has plenty to worry about. The Champions League will resume this Tuesday after a winter break of more than three months. For the first time in more than twenty years, Spain, which had by far the strongest league in Europe between 2008 and 2018, has only one club (Real Madrid) in the last sixteen. FC Barcelona, lonely at the top of La Liga, fell in the group stage, just like Sevilla and Atlético Madrid.
‘Drugged Competition’
That could be an incident, of course. The last edition of the Champions League was won by Real Madrid after a few unlikely breakaways. Yet it is more likely to see the disappointing performance as a result of Spain’s inability to respond to the financial dominance of the Premier League. Tebas calls the English league a “drugged league”, which, just like last year, has four clubs in the last sixteen with Tottenham Hotspur, Liverpool, Chelsea and Manchester City.
Tebas’ frustration is understandable. While La Liga imposes strict financial frameworks on its clubs, English competitors seem to be able to spend almost without limits. Thanks to higher TV revenues, but also thanks to the deep pockets of owners, accounting tricks and flawed rules for Financial Fair Play. When Chelsea soon starts the diptych with Borussia Dortmund, it will have more than 300 million euros in new players compared to the last Champions League game of the London team against Dinamo Zagreb. The most expensive purchase: midfielder Enzo Fernández, who came over from Benfica for about 120 million euros. Nice for the clubhouse of the Portuguese, who have started the season so well, but coach Roger Schmidt can no longer rely on his best player in the Champions League against Club Brugge.
It is a reality that virtually all traditional top clubs outside the Premier League struggle with. AC Milan, which plays against Tottenham Hotspur in the round of 16, was outbid last month by the English low-flyer Bournemouth when it attempted to buy AS Roma midfielder Nicolò Zaniolo (he eventually opted for Galatasaray). Bayern Munich was known for snatching the stars from its German competitors after every season. Robert Lewandowski, for example, who was bought from Borussia Dortmund in 2014. Erling Haaland should have been his successor when the Pole left for FC Barcelona last summer, but Haaland opted for Manchester City. According to international media, RB Leipzig striker Christopher Nkunku is going to Chelsea this summer.
Bayern and Naples
Has the remainder of the Champions League become predictable? Not necessarily. Take Bayern. Although less dominant in the Bundesliga than usual, the German champion won all his games in a group that included Barcelona and Internazionale. Bayern will play this Tuesday against Paris Saint-Germain, financed by Qatar, which has more than surpassed Bayern in terms of turnover and especially salary management. The French club paid a record amount of more than 700 million in salaries last season, calculated consultancy firm Football Benchmark, a spin-off of KPMG. But the team of World Cup winner Lionel Messi, Neymar and Kylian Mbappé is out of shape and has lost three of the last four away games in the French league.
Or take Napoli, the team that defeated Ajax 6-1 in Amsterdam. Napoli never got past the round of 16 of the Champions League and has a budget that pales in comparison to that of the competition from Paris, London, Liverpool and Manchester. But the attacking team of coach Luciano Spaletti, who will play against Eintracht Frankfurt in the first knockout round, has been making an unapproachable impression all season, both in Italy and in Europe. At the same time, the English participants do not look sovereign. Liverpool, a finalist in 2022, lost a lot to Napoli and is tenth in the Premier League. Just behind Chelsea, which, despite all the newcomers, has not yet won a game this month.
And City? That is performing better, but is under pressure now that the Premier League wants to impose sanctions for violations of financial rules after years of investigation. Quite late, says Javier Tebas. He has been pointing out foul play from City and PSG since 2017, he tweeted. “It is unbelievable that the Premier League has taken so long to establish this.”
A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper of February 14, 2023