Case for the Planet: Football Needs to Think

James Beardsworth

7th April 2021 | 10:26 PM

By any football club’s standards, 2020 was a catastrophic year. Pandemic-driven shortfalls caused by the absence of fans has left clubs across Europe cash-strapped. The continent’s superclubs are no exception. Last month, The Financial Times reported that Inter Milan are rushing to raise $200m in emergency funds to cope with a €102m loss last season. In Catalonia, the world’s highest earning club are in crisis, off-loading players and staff to mitigate the effects of amassing debt and an income shortfall of over €200m for the 2019-20 season. 

In an attempt to safeguard their finances from any future catastrophe, the elite have again breathed life into the prospect of a European Super League. The proposal, first propagated by Silvio Berlusconi, has lurked in the shadows of European football since the late 80’s. Aggrieved by the prospect of Real Madrid facing Diego Maradona’s Napoli as early as the first round of the 77-78 European Cup, Berlusconi denounced the competition as an ‘historical anachronism’, that lacked the ‘modern thinking’ to foresee the glamour and profitability of regularly pitting Europe’s elite against each other. UEFA later snubbed Berlusconi’s proposals, but the essence of profitability, broadcasting hegemony and ever-expansion lay at the core of its successor, the UEFA Champions League. 

Art by Charbak Dipta

Three decades later, Europe’s elite are after an even bigger piece of the footballing pie. Despite already laying claim to nearly 30% of total market revenue, the founding 15 Super League members, led by the European Club Association, are attempting to do away with the Champions League, replacing it with a ‘closed league’ that sits beyond football’s pyramid. The motivations for which are apparent: more viewers, larger broadcasting deals, and even more lucrative sponsorship payments. 

Yet when Berlusconi made his remarks, kickstarting an era of rapid and continual growth, the future of European football lay in a different dimension. Thirty years on, having enjoyed the greatest standard of football ever played, catalysed by globalisation and technological advancements, but leaving a fragmented football pyramid and a sizable contribution to impending ecological disaster in its wake, the future of our game faces some very different questions. The central one being; what place does football have in a carbon-neutral world? 

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