With J Hutcherson -- What raises the entertainment value of yet another reference to the possibility of a European Super League is how our English friends immediately start penciling in multiple British clubs. The current big four of course. Manchester City could be the next Chelsea. Wouldn't leave out the Old Firm. Maybe even a couple of extras like Birmingham's biggest club. Second largest city in the country you know.
In a 16-team league, all of a sudden half are from Britain. All have very good reasons for inclusion. You can repeat this for Italy and Spain.
Meanwhile, the reality of a true European Super League is basic empire building deciding on a design. The super model would suggest setting a number and working through the obvious candidates. That's not the only way.
You could argue that there's no point in stacking up clubs in any single geographic area. You're looking for width as much as depth, along with the basic idea that some of these super clubs will need to be propping up a super league.
As that thinking goes, there's more value in opening up territory than there is in a current big name. After all, the expectation would be that a club in that league would be able to build itself up through exclusivity. Put in any team you want, it becomes super by default.
If that geographic model sounds oddly like Major League Soccer's original plans to expand their footprint, there's a difference. A European league already has the clubs in place. What's left is the selection process.
That's where it gets dicey. Appeals to history mean multiple clubs sharing cities much less regions. One way out of that would be the standard promotion and relegation model, but that doesn't serve the primary purpose of creating a super league.
Does anybody see a true super league with meaningful promotion and relegation? Does anybody really see a future for those left out that would keep them at super level? Wait a few years, and there will be a sizable disconnect, basically making the point about the need for moving clubs in and out.
It could be that all involved set that aside and prop up the same old names regardless of location. There's the knock on expectation that geography will no longer matter. People follow their favorite name regardless of location. All of these clubs have defined themselves as global brands. The hundreds of millions of fans that will likely never see their super club in its home stadium go a long way to proving that point.
Set that up so the current power leagues have self-determined slots in the new Europe, and the structure rights itself. It also ends up looking oddly like the current European competitions.
The real test for an attempt at a super league is making it different than what's already in play. Why is that important? Simple. The major players would already have us at the end of the current model. To build the space to move the elite of the sport to the next level, that has to mean more than just guaranteeing games for the usual suspects and propping up what's already available.
Comments, questions, solutions to problems that have yet to present themselves. Please, tell me all about it.
