Uefa president: European Super League reports are ‘fiction’

The president of Uefa has rejected plans for a proposed European Super League and described reports published in Football Leaks documents as “fiction”.

Aleksander Ceferin, who was appointed Uefa chief in 2016, and Andrea Agnelli, the chairman of the European Club Association (ECA), told the BBC that the breakaway league would not go ahead.

According to the Football Leaks exposé published by the German magazine Der Spiegel, 16 European clubs are thought to be planning the launch of a new league in 2021. Der Spiegel claims that 11 founding member clubs would be joined in the super league by five “initial guests”.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

The founders named in the leaked documents are Premier League clubs Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool, Manchester United and Manchester City, and European giants Real Madrid, Barcelona, Bayern Munich, Juventus, Paris Saint-Germain and AC Milan. The five additional teams are named as Atletico Madrid, Borussia Dortmund, Marseille, Inter Milan and Roma.

The Guardian, citing Der Spiegel’s report, says that if the plans for the European Super League went ahead the competition would replace the Uefa Champions League in three years’ time.

In an interview with the BBC, Ceferin said: “The Super League will not happen. It is in a way a fiction now or a dream. All I can say is that any Super League is out of the question.”

Juventus are named as one of the founders but ECA chief Agnelli, who’s also the Italian club’s chairman, said: “I can confirm we have never seen, never discussed, never been involved in the creation of this document. We are fully engaged with Uefa in shaping the game going forward.”

Following the Football Leaks revelations, Fifa president Gianni Infantino warned earlier this month that players would be banned from playing in the World Cup if their clubs joined a European Super League. He said: “Either you are in or you are out. This includes everything.”