Recently, the president of Real Madrid, Florentino Pérez, once again raised the issue of the launch of the European Super League. According to Defensa Central, the Madrid boss is willing to implement the project regardless of the results of the negotiations with the English clubs regarding their willingness to join the Super League. The topic becomes increasingly hot as December 21 approaches, the date on which the Court of Justice of the European Union will announce a decision in the dispute between UEFA and the Super League. If clubs are given the opportunity to create a tournament that is not under the auspices of the Union of European Football Associations, Pérez is ready to take radical measures.
On November 29, Real Madrid will face Napoli in the group stage of the Champions League, whose president, Aurelio De Laurentiis, is against the Super League, but is convinced that UEFA is pocketing too much money. “We need a reform of the European cups, in particular the Champions League. It is wrong to allow UEFA to collect €800 million per season from tournaments; So it is not clear where that money goes,” Don Aurelio is indignant.
In a dispute, as we know, the truth is born and history tends to repeat itself. We tell you how, at the beginning of the 1980s and 1990s, a similar controversy after the confrontation between Real and Napoli led to the establishment of the Champions League.
Disqualification of players for five years, Maradona’s promise to eat Real Madrid alive
Pérez’s predecessor at the head of Real Madrid, Ramón Mendoza, was also not a supporter of UEFA. In the autumn of 1987, he criticized the governing body for the “crazy decision” to ban fans from the Santiago Bernabéu for a European Cup first-round knockout match, in which all factors increased the cost of a match. mistake. The whites faced a harsh sanction from UEFA after the match against Bayern in the 1986/1987 European Cup. The match took place in Munich, and in a fit of rage, trying to defend his teammate Chendo from him, the charismatic Real Madrid player Juanito stepped on the face of the fallen Lothar Matthäus. The Madrid player was suspended for five years, plus a match with Real without spectators.
The match against Napoli in Madrid was equally brutal, full of conflicts and provocations. Neapolitan striker Salvatore Bagni claimed that Madrid players called him and his teammates “mafiosi.” Diego Maradona was defended by three opponents at once and hit mercilessly in the legs. At the end of the match, lost by the Neapolitans by 0-2, the visiting substitute goalkeeper Luciano Castellini lost his cool and threw an ice bag at Madrid coach Leo Behnhakker, who missed and hit the photographer.
Juanito kicks Lothar Matthäus
Photo: alliance images via Getty Images
“We will eat them alive,” Maradona threatened before the second leg. It is not surprising that the Real Madrid bus was bombed with rotten eggs and the hotel where the Madrid team was staying was guarded by 50 armed police officers. The next day, Napoli, with a full stadium, opened the scoring in the ninth minute. If Carec and Maradona had scored two good chances in the first half, the visitors probably would not have been able to come back, but they made a mistake on a counterattack in the 43rd minute. Emilio Butragueño scored the visiting goal and the fate of the confrontation was decided.
After the match, Milan owner Silvio Berlusconi was the most outraged, calling the Champions Cup knockout format a “historical anachronism.” “It is terrible that one of the best teams in the world and the best player, Maradona, left the European competition at such an early stage. This considerably reduced the attractiveness of the tournament,” lamented the television mogul. A month later, he experienced similar feelings, only this time in relation to his team: Milan “got burned” in the UEFA Cup in a two-legged confrontation with Espanyol. “European football needs a reform. A continental league must be established with guarantees for the clubs in terms of management and income. Knockout games at the beginning of the season definitely don’t help.”
The president of Milan held a tournament that became the prototype of the Club World Cup
Berlusconi insisted that high-level clubs with large fan bases and substantial revenues should compete with each other, rhetoric very similar to Pérez’s slogans today. The Milanese coach was the first to work with formats: in 1981 he founded the Club Mundialito in Milan and held it at the San Siro with the participation of Milan, Inter, Juventus and the Uruguayan Peñarol. The tournament was subsequently held every two years until 1987. Over the years, PSG, Marseille, Porto, Barcelona and Dynamo Kiev also participated in it.
This attempt to break the rules was a preparation for the end of Italian state broadcaster RAI’s monopoly on live sports coverage. Media mogul Berlusconi revolutionized pay television, allowing Serie A to long surpass other European leagues and become the most attractive national club competition until the mid-2000s.
Under Berlusconi, Milan won 29 trophies, including eight Scudetto and five European Cups.
Photo: Corbis via Getty Images
In the late 1980s, Berlusconi’s Milan won the Champions Cup twice in a row (1988/1989 and 1989/1990), but Silvio was not only satisfied with the trophies: he wanted to see a higher quality spectacle that would directly affect the Profits. In the early 1990s, the Milan boss met with Mendoza and discussed the global tournament of the future. It was given a provisional name: European Television League. The advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi was involved in the project and, when this became known, UEFA realized the need for change. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
“The 1992-1993 Champions League was the result of the work done by Berlusconi and other great players,” says Milan’s technical director of those years, Umberto Gandini. “The group stage concept was introduced, the tournament was expanded, more matches meant more money could be demanded from the broadcasters. Additionally, competition at national championships has increased markedly; This was facilitated by the crazy fight to be in the top four.”
Read more about Silvio’s path in big football:
Berlusconi is the author of the football revolution. It was he who blackmailed the Champions League into changing.
Thanks in part to the Napoli-Real Madrid clash in 1987, and then watching his own team fall early in a fierce playoff contest, Berlusconi envisioned the game as it is today. Not to mention his place in media, sports and entertainment, and his ability to generate sky-high profits.
Galliani believes that the Super League already exists: this is the Premier League
As in the early 1990s, the threat of the Super League two and a half years ago triggered the most radical change to the Champions League format in three decades. Starting next season, 36 teams will compete in the group stage instead of the current 32 in eight groups. But just as the 1992 reform did not stop other Super League projects in the short term, it is unlikely that this will put an end to the initiatives of the richest clubs to make money without sharing with anyone.
As will be?
The last group stage of the Champions League in history awaits us. Then the tournament will change a lot.
As they await the European Court’s verdict, Perez and other top players are concerned about the growing gap between the English Premier League and the rest of European football, which could one day undermine the competitive balance of the Champions League. English clubs earn much more than their counterparts on the continent, which is why Adriano Galliani, a former associate of the late Berlusconi, believes that today the Premier League is, in essence, already a Super League.
“Premier League clubs earn four times more than those in Serie A. For example, our Monza received 33 million euros for reaching the first division, and the English team, which was promoted to the Premier League, received 160 million of euros. How can we stop this trend in the global economy? In 2021, English clubs refused to join the Super League not because of protests from fans: they feared losing £4.5 billion in revenue, which in the last two years have increased to £6 billion. Only one conclusion can be drawn: the Europeans Football should also be Brexit, the European Club Championship, but without the British,” Galliani sees this as an option.
Adriano Galliani (center) and Florentino Pérez are allies in the fight against UEFA
Photo: Víctor Carretero/Real Madrid via Getty Images
In trying to defend the right to the Super League, Pérez and Galliani accuse UEFA of having become a football monopoly, while competition is the basis in Europe, made up of 27 EU member states. If the field is on the side of the best clubs, then a real revolution in world football should be expected. As powerful as after the Mark Bosman case of December 1995. Then the court declared illegal the European Union’s ban on limiting footballers’ right to freedom of movement at the end of the contract. We wait.
THE NAIS IS OFFICIAL EDITOR ON NAIS NEWS