Prince Rupert's Tower
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Super league collapses and Everton back to normal

By Matt Townsend

LONDON, ENGLAND - APRIL 20: Fans hold banners opposing Chelsea signing up for the newly proposed European Super League ahead of the Premier League match between Chelsea and Brighton & Hove Albion at Stamford Bridge on April 20, 2021 in London, England. Sporting stadiums around the UK remain under strict restrictions due to the Coronavirus Pandemic as Government social distancing laws prohibit fans inside venues resulting in games being played behind closed doors. (Photo by Chloe Knott - Danehouse/Getty Images)
LONDON, ENGLAND - APRIL 20: Fans hold banners opposing Chelsea signing up for the newly proposed European Super League ahead of the Premier League match between Chelsea and Brighton & Hove Albion at Stamford Bridge on April 20, 2021 in London, England. Sporting stadiums around the UK remain under strict restrictions due to the Coronavirus Pandemic as Government social distancing laws prohibit fans inside venues resulting in games being played behind closed doors. (Photo by Chloe Knott - Danehouse/Getty Images) /
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Well that was the most incredible and farcical 48 hours in the history of professional football as the European ‘Super League’ collapses in record time with English clubs all resigning from the competition overnight. So where does this leave Everton and the wider Premier League?

Everton, despite their storied history in the English game, were of course not invited to take part and issued a very strong statement condenming the whole project.

It was a statement that seemed to catch the general mood well as social media blew up with anger and fans went out and protested in the streets.

Gradually the pressure built yesterday and eventually we heard last night that first Manchester City and then Chelsea were leaving and once that happened it only seemed a matter of time until the whole project was untenable.

Reluctantly, especially in the case of Liverpool and Manchester United, (the two most committed English clubs and prime movers in this whole thing), the other Premier League clubs all acknowledged that their fans were overwhemlingly against it and had triumphed in a remarkable and rare example of apparent people-power.

Credit to those fans like Chelsea’s, because obviously their club stood to gain enormously from this move financially but they put the good of the game as a whole first. Well done to them.

Interestingly a tweet from Liverpool captain Jordan Henderson making it very clear that the Reds players were all strongly against this, also seems to have been significant in Liverpool’s decision. After all if your own players are resolutely opposed to taking part then you’ve got a problem!

Without the English clubs the competition is basically redundant and soon Italian clubs were making similar noises with Inter Milan leading the way there.

So that’s that then. Maybe not though because this whole farce has publically exposed the rift there is between the self-proclaimed elite and the rest of professional football. And I think it might be revived again at a later date in another form. The seed has been planted.

The ‘big six’, or at least the individuals running those clubs along with their counterparts in Italy and Spain, have made it crystal clear that they want to control the vast pot of money in football and they don’t want the other ‘lesser’ clubs in their respective countries to share in it.

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While it’s true that the most popular and successful clubs have a valid claim to be rewarded the most, as they are now, the closed-shop, anti-competitive nature of this was breathtakingly arrogant.

So how will they now attempt to re-build relations with the other clubs? That will be very hard to do as there will be an imense amount of distrust and suspiscion to overcome, especially after the conspiritorial way this was done.

And the strong public stance of clubs like Everton makes that an even more difficult process.

Now we will see whether UEFA will cave in to their demands to ‘reform’ the Champions League so they get bascially guarateed access to the competition, as indeed they were about to. Perhaps this was the real agenda all along? Given that organisation’s past history it’s likely to happen.

Anyway, for Everton it meant that after a day or so of speculation that the Blues might now have a great chance of winning the Premier League if the other six were kicked out, or at least finally qualifying again for the Champions League, they are back to where they were on Saturday!

That is mid-table and fighting an increasingly long-odds battle to secure European football. After all this needless distraction I hope Everton can focus and concentrate on football itself and find a way however unlikely it seems, to get into Europe and salvage something from this season.

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