Soccer newsletter: European Super League idea is gone, but not dead yet

Hello, and welcome to the L.A. Times soccer newsletter. I’m Kevin Baxter, The Times’ soccer writer, and we begin again with the European Super League, an idea that faded faster than the Harlem Shake.

The organizers of the 12-team league, which was to debut in August, clearly misread the room and woefully underestimated the pushback from fans, players and the European Union when they announced their plans for an elite invitation-only tournament last week. As a result, they abandoned the idea less than 48 hours after proposing it.

But that doesn’t mean they’ve given up on the concept. In fact, you can bet they’ll be back, wiser and better prepared after their embarrassing defeat.

The Super League, after all, isn’t a new idea but one that’s been around for years.

In its most recent iteration, its base would been formed by 12 founder clubs – six from the Premier League and three each from Spain’s La Liga and Italy’s Serie A. Three additional founding members and five annual qualifiers would have been added to form a 20-team field for the competition.

The most contentious part of the idea – the one that made it so appealing to the founding clubs and an anathema to everyone else – was the “closed” nature of the format. The 15 original members would be guaranteed a spot in the competition – and a share of the tournament’s prize money and profits – every year while the rest of the continent would be left to fight over table scraps that would go to the five remaining invitees.

The Super League was, in essence, a gated community of teams who had grown tired of having to compete for money and trophies with other UEFA clubs they felt were beneath them. The 12 who originally committed to the ESL – Spain’s Atlético Madrid, Barcelona and Real Madrid; Italy’s AC Milan, Inter Milan and Juventus; and Arsenal, Manchester United, Manchester City, Chelsea, Liverpool and Tottenham of the Premier League – account for 11 of the 14 richest clubs in the world, according to Deloitte. Those clubs also share 26 of the 28 English champions during the Premier League era, the last 18 Italian champions and the last 16 La Liga winners.

Now compare that Billionaire Boys Club to the more egalitarian Champions League, which is open to every club in Europe based on their finish in their respective league tables. That makes the tournament’s purse, which was nearly $2.5 billion in 2019-20, accessible to all. Simply being one of the 34 teams to make the first qualifying round can be worth more than $330,000, while making it to the quarterfinals can bring tens of millions of needed revenue to more modest clubs such as Italy’s Atalanta, which reached the quarterfinals last summer.

The advent of the Super League threatened that by watering down, if not washing away, the Champions League and codifying the monopoly the major clubs already hold in European soccer.

Competitive balance throughout the continent also would be harmed by the Super League, detractors argued.

It should be noted many of the same arguments about money, power and competitive balance were made three decades ago when clubs in England’s first division, lured by a lucrative broadcast deal, broke away from the Football League to form the Premier League. But rather than ruining soccer, the advent of the Premier League ushered in an era of unimaginable prosperity and popularity that spread across Europe.

That history didn’t stop everyone from the EU to the British government to FIFA and even independent supporter groups from attacking the Super League concept and threatening lawsuits and strikes. But it’s far from certain they would have succeeded in stopping it.

Certainly the courts would have trouble dictating to the businessmen who own Arsenal or Juventus which tournaments their clubs can play in. And FIFA’s promise to ban players on Super League clubs from international events likely was just as hollow; why should Argentina be forced to play without Lionel Messi or the U.S. without Christian Pulisic because of a decision their club teams made?

There’s precedent for all this, pointed out Steven A. Bank, a professor of business law at UCLA who has written and lectured extensively on soccer. There’s already a breakaway basketball league in Europe, for instance, and the European General Court ruled last December the International Skating Union violated competition law by barring some speedskaters from its world championship because they had competed in an unsanctioned event – the exact argument UEFA, FIFA and others would try to make against the Super League.

Third-party organizations, the court said, need to be allowed to operate in the marketplace.

A better strategy might be the one the Italian soccer federation followed Monday when it added a clause to its regulations that would ban member teams from participating in a privately run competition.

“Those who feel they have to participate in competitions not authorized by FIFA or UEFA lose their affiliation,” federation president Gabriele Gravina said at a news conference. Expect other leagues to adopt similar regulations.

But if the reforms simply stop at keeping teams from breaking away, they will address only half the problem. UEFA, FIFA and the rest of the interested parties also must address – really address -- the unequal and out-of-control financial ecosystem of the sport, one which no longer is working even for the super clubs. That’s why they felt the need to establish their own league in the first place.

In the meantime, the credit for stopping the Super League before it really got started goes to fans who made their opposition known from the outset, in many cases forcing big-name players and managers such as Manchester City’s Pep Guardiola and Liverpool’s Jurgen Klopp to undercut the concept as well. That made it untenable for the clubs to try to go forward because even the most powerful teams can’t play without fans, players and coaches.

But unless financial reforms are put in place to address their concerns they’ll be back – smarter, more united and more organized after last week’s debacle. The first battle may have been won, but the war is far from over.

Two games don’t make a season, but it’s a start

We’re just two weeks into the MLS season, which is far too early to make any grand pronouncements regarding the two local teams. But we can look at trends, and the early returns are favorable to the Galaxy while a little less positive for LAFC.

The Galaxy are the only team in the league to open the season with two wins, and they did it by scoring a franchise-record six goals in those two games. Five of them came from Javier “Chicharito” Hernández, who joined Brian Ching as the only players with a brace and a hat trick in the first two games of a season.

Yes, the wins came against underwhelming opponents in Inter Miami and the Red Bulls. And the defense left much to be desired by giving up 33 shots in the two games and forcing new keeper Jonathan Bond to make 10 saves. So it would be wise for Galaxy fans to temper their enthusiasm until the team proves the fast start is not a mirage.

A truer test of the Galaxy’s mettle will come this weekend when the team travels to Seattle to meet the Sounders, who have played in four of the last five MLS Cup finals.

In the meantime, the folks in the Galaxy dressing room say this team could be something special. After a dysfunctional and disorganized two seasons under former manager Guillermo Barros Schelotto, the Galaxy are playing with passion and purpose under Greg Vanney, who was hired in January to restore the club’s grandeur.

“The change of culture, coach, a little bit of everything. This is the first time I feel these vibes in the locker room,” captain Jonathan dos Santos said of the team’s positive attitude. “I feel like I really know my teammates. It’s just a different relationship.”

“The aspirations for this year are to make it to the finals and win the MLS Cup,” he added. “I won’t be satisfied with just the playoffs.”

The credit for that turnaround goes to Vanney, a defender on the first team in Galaxy history and an MLS Cup winner as a coach in Toronto. In Canada he inherited a team that had never had a winning record and took it to the only treble in league history – a Supporter’s Shield, MLS Cup and domestic cup title – in his third full season.

With the Galaxy he took over a team coming off the worst four-year stretch in its history and he already has it thinking about championships.

“I’ve been on championship teams before and we have all the characteristics,” defender Jorge Villafaña said. “The team is together and united as one.”

Added Hernández: “It’s the best club in MLS and we need to try and prove it day by day.”

The rebirth of Chicharito has been even more spectacular. After scoring just twice in a 2020 MLS season marred by injury and personal issues off the field, Hernández has scored on five of his seven shots this season. And four of those five goals have either tied the score or put the Galaxy ahead.

Just as important is the fact all five scores have been classic Chicharito goals. Unlike players such as Zlatan Ibrahimovic or LAFC’s Carlos Vela, who can create goals out of thin air with their physicality and skill, Hernández is a poacher, a player who depends on his ability to maneuver around the penalty area and rely on instincts and anticipation to take him to the right place at the right time.

“Javier, like a smart forward, if he sees a guy running hard to the near post, you get to the back post and see if you can clean up something. And sure enough he was there to do so,” Vanney said after Sunday’s hat trick. “He was clever about his movements throughout the day. It was a day of opportunistic actions more than it was anything else.”

It would be premature to say the Galaxy have eclipsed LAFC as Southern California’s top team, given that Bob Bradley’s team also is unbeaten after last Saturday’s 1-1 draw with Seattle. But Hernández certainly has stolen the spotlight from the absent Vela, his former teammate with Mexico’s national team.

Vela, who set the league’s single-season scoring record with 34 goals in 2019, has played just 21 minutes this season and just 445 in MLS regular-season games since winning the Golden Boot. After missing much of the 2020 season with a knee injury, he sustained a quadriceps strain midway through the first half of LAFC’s season opener earlier this month. He didn’t train with the team last week and remains questionable for this weekend’s game in Houston.

Diego Rossi, who succeeded him as the league’s top scorer last season, hasn’t played at all this season, nor has newly signed defender Kim Moon-hwan. As a result, LAFC has gone from being a dangerous and dynamic goal-scoring machine into a team that has had to wrest out narrow results in its first two games, with Bradley already using 19 players.

“I believe in the team. We see the way they work every single day,” Bradley said. “The positive part was the mentality. Did I learn it? Not really. I knew it. But I like to see it come out with some young guys on big days.”

Speaking of young guys, LAFC used six players under the age of 23 in Saturday’s draw with the Sounders. Whether that early experience pays off later in the season remains to be seen, but for the team to recapture the kind of offensive dominance it once used to bludgeon opponents it will need to get a healthy Vela and a healthy Rossi back on the field together.

In the meantime, Bradley will play the cards he has.

“We are proud to see how some of the young players have improved and gotten better,” he said. “That makes us feel good about the way we work.”

Gold Cup leaves the Golden State

The venues for this summer’s Gold Cup were announced last week and, because of COVID-19 protocols, none of the games will be played in California for the first time since 2003.

Similar coronavirus concerns also have delayed an announcement from MLS concerning this summer’s All-Star game.

CONCACAF will play Gold Cup games at five sites in Texas and one in Florida, states whose governors long ago stopped following the science on COVID-19 by rushing to ban mask mandates and social distancing guidelines while reopening sports venues. That potentially means big crowds for the confederation’s marquee event – albeit with uncertain consequences in terms of the pandemic.

Games also will be played in Arizona and Kansas City, Kan., while the final will be held in Las Vegas.

In addition to California, which has seen six cities play host to Gold Cup games in the last 17 years, traditional venues in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts also were discarded. All four states continue to limit attendance at outdoor sporting events.

But CONCACAF’s decision may prove to be a bit hasty. With vaccine rates exploding across the country, even states with strict COVID-19 protocols are beginning to reopen. Sports venues in California, New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Pennsylvania already have allowed fans to return in limited numbers and are expected to relax those limits shortly.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom said if infection rates in his state continue to decline stadiums, including the Rose Bowl and SoFi Stadium, could open to full capacity by June 15, 25 days before the Gold Cup opener.

The Rose Bowl is the site of 18 of the 22 largest soccer crowds in U.S. history (the Coliseum played host to another two of those games), including the 2011 Gold Cup final. Leaving the stadium – and the rest of California -- out of this year’s rotation could prove short-sighted if the state is operating normally again this summer.

MLS, meanwhile, is being more deliberate in its decision-making. The All-Star game, which was to match teams from MLS and Mexico’s Liga MX, was to be played at Banc of California last summer before being scrapped by the coronavirus outbreak. The league would like to stage the game there this July but is reluctant to say so publicly until there are reasonable assurances that state and local health officials will approve the event.

In the interim, the league will consider other venues as a back-up.

And finally there’s this …

Mexico will be able to call up three over-23 players for the Tokyo Olympics and Chicharito said Sunday he would consider an offer to join the team if invited. He wanted to play on the 2012 gold-medal-winning Mexican team in London but his then-club, Manchester United, would not allow him to leave preseason training camp. He may have more luck with the Galaxy since the team’s general manager, Dennis te Kloese, formerly was in charge of the national team program for Mexico and retains close ties with the federation. Hernández will be 33 when the Games open in July … League races in Spain and France are going down to the wire. In La Liga, four teams are within three points of one other with Atlético Madrid leading Real Madrid and Barcelona by two points and Sevilla by three. Barcelona has six games remaining, the other three one fewer. In France, Lille is a point in front of Paris Saint-Germain and two in front of Monaco with four matches to play. Lille last won a league title in 2011; that is its only title in the last 66 seasons. But the biggest changing of the guard will take place in Italy, where Juventus, winner of the last nine scudetti, is fourth, 13 points back of Inter Milan with 15 points left to play for … English Premier League teams are instituting a temporary social media ban to protest “discriminatory abuse” directed at players and others connected to the game.

Podcast

Don’t miss my weekly podcast on the Corner of the Galaxy site as co-host Josh Guesman and I discuss the Galaxy each Monday. You can listen to the most recent podcast here.

Quotebook

“It brought back memories of when I started playing here in L.A. back in the Chivas USA days. Seeing my family in the stands was also amazing.”

Galaxy defender Jorge Villafaña, after playing his first home game at Dignity Health Sports Park since being trading away from Chivas USA after the 2013 season