Leeds United boss Jesse Marsch has said the idea of a European Super League is “totally ridiculous” amid an announcement the company backing the proposed project has hired a new chief executive.
A22 Sports Management announced on Monday its new CEO would be Bernd Reichart, who said that breakaway clubs Barcelona, Real Madrid and Juventus were “asking the right questions” regarding how to grow the sport.
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The three clubs were part of a group of 12 to announce a breakaway Super League in April 2021 before a hostile reception from across world football forced its collapse within days.
When asked about the proposals in a news conference ahead of Leeds’ Premier League clash with Leicester City, Marsch said: “I think this first came up when I was at Salzburg, and I even remember seeing the [Leeds] players walk out to the match with the t-shirts. What did it say? It said fair play or open play is fair play. I can’t remember exactly what the t-shirt said.
“But I thought that was a big statement for Leeds United to have that, and I agreed and in Salzburg, I said this and I’ll say it here: No one wants a league that’s not about earning and deserving it and no one wants to see a league that’s just given. I think already in our sport, the world is imbalanced, right?
“OK, you can argue clubs like Manchester United and Real Madrid and you can go down the list that over the years they’ve had a built in success and that’s helped them accumulate more and more interest and more and more value and more and more riches.
“But I’m an American. I come from American sports where parity is is the most important thing to us. At the start of the season, anyone can win. And then I was a coach in the Bundesliga where Bayern Munich had made 30.5 times or spent 30.5 times the amount of Arminia Bielefeld. It’s a league where when you start you say Bielefeld has zero chance of winning the league and Bayern Munich has 75% chance of winning the league.
“That’s not competition to me, and that is what I want to see is I want to see fairness. I want to see people have to earn whatever they deserve, or deserve whatever they earn, whatever and I think that any idea of the Super League is frankly totally ridiculous. Is that strong enough?!”
In January, a Madrid court stopped UEFA from punishing the breakaway clubs, but the case has since been referred to the Luxembourg-based European Court of Justice.
A22 Sports Management, a co-claimant to the proceedings, argues that the existing UEFA “monopoly” on European club competitions is illegal under competition law, while a UEFA lawyer called the proposed Super League a “textbook example of a cartel” in July.
