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Madrid,Spain | XINHUA | Real Madrid president Florentino Perez has explained why his club will form part of the proposed European Super League, which was announced on Sunday as a breakaway from UEFA’s European competitions.
Along with six Premier League teams, Real Madrid is one of three Spanish representatives, along with Atletico Madrid and FC Barcelona. The new competition has received widespread criticism from across the global football community.
Perez, who was recently re-elected to the Real Madrid presidency for another four years without opposition, was one of the main instigators of the move and will be the first chairman of the tournament.
Despite the Super League looking to generate even more money for football’s richest sides, Perez issued a statement saying the teams involved “will help football at every level to occupy the place that corresponds to it in the world.”
“Football is the only global sport in the world with over 4,000 million followers and our responsibility as big clubs is to respond to the desires of the fans,” he wrote.
FC Barcelona – who is over 1,000 million euros in debt – also published a communique on its website confirming it would be joining the Super League and explaining it “comes at a time when the global pandemic has accelerated the instability in the existing European football economic model.”
“The Founding Clubs have had the objective of improving the quality and intensity of existing European competitions throughout each season, and of creating a format for top clubs and players to compete on a regular basis,” read the communique.
Meanwhile, the Spanish Football Federation and La Liga have joined with UEFA, the FA, the Premier League, the Italian Football Federation and Serie A in which they promise to unite to halt a “cynical” project, which is “based on the self-interest of a few clubs at a moment when society needs solidarity more than ever.”
The respective federations and leagues promise to “study all of the measures within our power and all levels, both judicial and sporting to stop this happening,” and even threaten to expel the clubs from “any other competition at national, European or global level,” while also prohibiting their players from representing their national sides.
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