Liverpool and Manchester United are in talks about a bombshell plot involving Europe’s biggest football clubs to join a new FIFA-backed tournament that would reshape the sport’s global landscape.
Sky News has learnt that financiers are assembling a $6bn (£4.6bn) funding package to assist the creation of what could become known as the European Premier League.
More than a dozen teams from England, France, Germany, Italy and Spain are in negotiations about becoming founder members of the competition.
As many as five English clubs could sign up to join it, with a provisional start date said to have been discussed as early as 2022.
Sources said that FIFA, football’s world governing body, had been involved in developing the new format, which is expected to comprise up to 18 teams, and involve fixtures played during the regular European season.
The top-placed teams in the league would then play in a knockout format to conclude the tournament, with prize money for the winners expected to be worth hundreds of millions of pounds each year.
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One football industry figure said that a formal announcement about the plans was possible as soon as the end of this month, although on Tuesday a number of key details – including the full list of participating clubs – had yet to be finalised and the plans could still fall apart.
The source described it as “potentially the most important development in world club football for decades”.
According to insiders, a handful of English sides have been approached about joining the league, with the other candidates comprising Arsenal, Chelsea, Manchester City and Tottenham Hotspur.
It is not thought that any of the English clubs has yet signed legally binding terms to join, and it was unclear which member of the so-called “big six” would miss out if only five are ultimately involved.
The news will drop a fresh bombshell into the fracturing landscape of English football, which has spent recent weeks at loggerheads over proposals – engineered by Liverpool and Manchester United – to hand more power to the biggest clubs while providing a coronavirus bailout for teams below the top flight.
A blueprint, dubbed Project Big Picture, would have seen the Premier League reduced in size from 20 to 18 clubs, reducing the number of domestic top-flight fixtures each season.
The plan, denounced as “a backroom deal” by government ministers, was rapidly abandoned last week.
If the latest plans bear fruit, they would effectively constitute the European super league that has been subject to on-off discussions for many years.
The giant Wall Street bank JP Morgan is in talks to provide $6bn (£4.6bn) of debt financing to help launch the European Premier League, with the proceeds repayable from future broadcast income generated by the tournament, according to a football executive.
Image: Liverpool defender Virgil van Dijk, left, competes for the ball against Manchester United’s Andreas Pereira
Other banks are expected to join the financing of the new project, which would become one of the world’s richest annual team sports competitions if it gets off the ground.
Each of the founding teams is expected to earn fees paid hundreds of millions of pounds to participate, with clubs such as Manchester United and Real Madrid receiving the biggest sums for joining.
They added that the European Premier League was likely to feature either 16 or 18 teams – meaning a likely minimum of 30 matches for each club, based on a format of round-robin home and away fixtures – although that is said to be among the details being finalised ahead of a formal announcement.
If the discussions are successfully concluded, the European Premier League would effectively usurp UEFA’s Champions League competition, which has been a mainstay of the continent’s football calendar for decades.
It was unclear whether the new tournament had the backing of UEFA, the European governing body, although some insiders claimed that it did not.
If it did have UEFA’s support, it is likely to be unveiled as an enhanced version of the Champions’ League and an example of unprecedented cooperation between two governing bodies which have historically found themselves in opposition on key issues affecting football’s global governance.
However, football insiders said that if UEFA was not involved, the new tournament would represent an “incendiary” move from FIFA that would undermine the European governing body’s principal annual revenue-generating tournament.
In that scenario, there could be a string of legal challenges to prevent it from getting off the ground, given the complexity of existing tournament agreements involving Europe’s top clubs.
Image: Manchester United and Liverpool are two of the clubs backing the plans
One source cast doubt on the prospect of a successful launch of the European Premier League without UEFA’s backing, particularly before 2024, when the existing Champions’ League structure is expected to be revamped.
UEFA declined to comment.
Other clubs which are said to have been invited to take part in the new league include Barcelona and Atletico Madrid, according to Voz Populi, a Spanish publication.
Real Madrid has been one of the principal architects of the European Premier League’s creation, with a plan to get the new competition launched as rapidly as possible.
Paris Saint-Germain, Juventus and Bayern Munich are also likely to have been approached.
Key Capital Partners, a Spanish finance house, and Florentino Perez, the veteran Real Madrid president, are also understood to have been driving forces behind the latest project.
Mr Perez and Gianni Infantino, the FIFA president, were reported last year to have held talks about reforming elements of the club game.
The latest version of the European Premier League project is understood to have been in gestation for well over a year.
Image: Lionel Messi’s Barcelona are said to have been invited to take part in the new league
Providence Equity Partners, a global private equity firm which owns companies in Britain such as Ambassador Theatre Group, is understood to have held talks about becoming a shareholder in the new league, but football sources cast doubt on whether it was still involved.
Talk of a European Super League has been a ubiquitous feature of football politics for many years, but has invariably faded amid trenchant opposition from national football associations, politicians and supporter groups.
An earlier iteration of the current project was reported by German news outlets to have been drawn up almost exactly two years ago, and featured 11 “founder” teams with a number of “guest” teams.
As part of that blueprint, the founder clubs could not be relegated for 20 years, although the remaining teams would be subject to being replaced depending upon their league position at the end of each season.
A version of those rules is expected to form part of the new league, according to insiders, with a possible cap on agents’ fees also said to have been one of the ideas under discussion.
Such an American-style approach to European football would reflect the sport’s shifting power-base following an influx of US-based owners into the English game during the last 20 years.
Image: Cristiano Ronaldo’s Juventus are likely to be invited to join the European league
Manchester United, whose largest shareholder remains the Glazer family, is listed in New York; Arsenal is owned by a US-based businessman; and Liverpool’s parent company, Fenway Sports Group, is in the process of being taken public through a Special Purpose Acquisition Company.
Despite being named in leaked documents about the proposed league, Bayern Munich, the current Champions’ League holders and German Bundesliga champions, denied any involvement in the plans in 2018.
According to people close to the latest plans, the European Premier League would not be a breakaway in the sense of ending clubs’ involvement in their domestic leagues.
Nevertheless, its creation would have profound implications for the value of domestic broadcasting and sponsorship rights across Europe, at a time when the finances of the entire football pyramid have been hit hard by the COVID-19 crisis.
English Premier League clubs have complained that they are collectively losing more than £100m every month, while many EFL clubs have warned that they will not be able to survive much longer without fans in attendance, unless they receive emergency support.
Earlier this month, the EFL rejected a £50m grant proposed by the Premier League.
Sources said the result of the new format, if it gets off the ground, would be to give England’s wealthiest clubs greater leverage in future negotiations with the Premier League and with broadcasters and sponsors.
They added that the possibility of outright club defections from domestic leagues was not on the new tournament’s “short-term agenda”.
Image: Robert Lewandowski of Bayern Munich celebrates after scoring a goal
Nevertheless, a decision to join the new European tournament will leave its participants exposed to the suggestion that they were enriching themselves at the expense of domestic rivals, exacerbating the already-vast financial gulf between teams at the top and bottom of the Premier League.
That risks particular damage to clubs’ reputations during an economic crisis which has resulted in the UK’s unemployment rate increasing and millions of people becoming concerned about their livelihoods.
One person close to the project said there would need to be “very substantial” solidarity payments built into the European Premier League structure to demonstrate that its creation would benefit the wider game.
Even that, though, is unlikely to be sufficient to appease critics of the biggest clubs, who have long-sought to find ways of preventing ‘smaller’ sides breaking their stranglehold on the domestic leagues – as Leicester City, did, for example, in 2016, when it won the Premier League.
Central to the new league would be the question of whether its fixtures are played in the existing slots allocated to Champions’ League matches, or whether the prize of drawing vast live audiences in Asia and the US, as well as Europe, means there is an attempt to play them throughout the day at weekends.
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It emerged (this month) that Liverpool and Manchester United were leading a quest to reform the Premier League by cutting the number of teams from 20 to 18 and giving the so-called ‘big six’ and other long-standing shareholders in the top flight enhanced voting rights that would effectively hand them outright control.
The League Cup, currently sponsored by Carabao, and the Community Shield, would also have been expunged from the calendar or played without the involvement of clubs taking part in European competitions.
Their plot was immediately denounced by the Premier League and the government, leading to a statement from all 20 clubs that they would reject Project Big Picture.
Gary Neville, the former Manchester United and England defender, said the extent of the divisions about how to reform and financially protect the game meant that an independent football regulator should be established.
The prospective involvement of some of the top flight’s elite clubs in a European super league format would help to explain their desire to curb the number of domestic fixtures to which they are committed.
‘I want sustainable football clubs’
Ministers have applied pressure to the Premier League to formulate a financial rescue package for lower league clubs, but those talks have been far from straightforward, with some top-flight executives complaining that they are being held to a different standard to wealthy companies in any other industry.
One football insider also raised the prospect of legal challenges to the new league from excluded rival clubs, although one club source said they were confident that they were able to strike a deal that could not be overturned.
The Champions League’s existing format is said to be locked in place until 2024, with an expansion possible after that, although its name, and existence, would be cast into doubt if the continent’s elite clubs decided to abandon it.
The coronavirus pandemic has accelerated the potential shake-up of football.
In Italy, CVC Capital Partners, the former owner of Formula One motor racing, is in exclusive talks alongside fellow investment firm Advent International to take a stake in the commercial rights to the country’s Serie A league.
A number of alternative structures have been proposed in England to inject funds into the financially struggling lower leagues, including a plan tabled by TPG Capital, a private equity firm, to acquire an equity stake in the EFL.
Liverpool, Manchester United, JP Morgan and Providence all declined to comment, while Key Capital Partners could not be reached for comment.
FIFA has been contacted for comment.