Real Madrid president Florentino Perez and mastermind of the European Super League has insisted the botched ESL was not a failure and still has a future.
Backlash across Europe, but particularly from fans of the Premier League clubs, saw the proposals collapse and the president of the proposed competition, Perez, was left with the metaphorical egg on his face.
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Despite that, Perez is not giving up on his dream, telling UEFA to ‘do something stronger’ for fans amid claims that football is ‘dying’ amid supposed reducing interest from supporters.
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Perez has claimed the involved clubs were working on the plans for two years before launching, and he has accused UEFA chief Aleksander Ceferin of putting his ‘privilege’ before the game.
“More than removing the away goals, it’s important to me that UEFA does something stronger for the fans, to make a competition more attractive and competitive,” Perez said in an interview with El Transistor.
“We are losing many fans. I came to fight for football and I continue fighting for football. Football is having a bad time, it dies if we don’t do something.
“It cannot be that all the clubs lose money and Ceferin and the presidents of the league raise their salaries. It’s insulting.
“All they want to maintain are their privileges while football dies.
“With the Super League, I didn’t fail at anything. We worked with the 12 clubs for two years on the format that made sure football didn’t die.
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“Football is losing interest, the youngsters are using other platforms. The audiences are decreasing and if they decrease, the rights for television also.
“We said that it has to be that there are more fans. Who buys the rights for the television? How many fans do Liverpool or Juventus have? We are not going to be liked by everyone. We all have to organise it.
“The Super League is not closed, and the leagues continue equally. It’s a league where the only objective is for them (television companies) to buy it. The leagues continue to exist.
“We don’t exclude anyone but not everyone can be in there. A United vs PSG will get more interest than Roma vs Sampdoria.
“We have taken all the audiences of all the games, all the league and those who rule are the fans.
“We see that Manchester has more fans than Roma. We take those that have more fans in the world because they are the ones who will have the demand for television.
“Now is the moment to see the reality, what happened when the European Cup was created and the people said that football was going to die.
“It wasn’t like this, the other way around. The same happened when we went from regional to national tournaments.
“I came to change the world of football. I have always fought for the values of Madrid. I have contributed to the best football and I continue working for that.
“Football needs…although it can sound presumptions…I believe that one has to change it.”
The Super League saga lasted just a couple of days with 12 of Europe’s biggest clubs signing up before nine of them withdrew within the space of 72 hours, leaving only Barcelona, Real Madrid and Juventus.
Since the plan blew up, all six of the English clubs initially involved in the scheme have been punished, alongside Atletico Madrid, AC Milan and Inter Milan, with all nine of them forced to pay a combined fine totalling £13.4million towards children’s and grassroots football across Europe.
Despite the trouble caused by the Super League plan, UEFA have still granted Barcelona, Real Madrid and Juventus permission to play in the 2021/22 Champions League, even though they initially said they would be banned from all UEFA competitions if they refused to withdraw their involvement.
