Super League Shambles and why Celtic have to be ready when a more palatable version is re-presented | OneFootball

Well, that was a close call, wasn’t it? The big bad bully of the ESL is put at its peep by fan power. Not sure I’m entirely buying into that theory but it’s been a crazy couple of days. Did we witness 24 hours of backlash or 24 hours of ‘look over here – bad stuff happening’ – whilst the changes for the 2024 Champions League receive little scrutiny? Or did someone or something propping the whole thing up get the financial equivalent of the jitters.

So, what are these big clubs left with? A grand plan that now looks, at best, like ill-thought-out posturing. A design with 12 member clubs – but it might be 15 or it could be 20 we haven’t decided yet, as some people haven’t got back to us – Oh and did we mention we’ll do a women’s super league also? Very commendable I’m sure we’d agree, but scarcely believable when the French weren’t involved and Lyon are the women’s games Real Madrid – not too Super League that one!

And so, we had a scheme released for public consumption with more holes in it than your great Granda’s string vest, a bank who were fronting £3.5 billion as a ‘grant’ apparently, but no meat on the bones of that whatsoever, other than a well-known link between said financial institution, Manchester United and the Glazer’s.

So, did these big clubs not get what they wanted from the Champions League reforms, chuck their toys from the pram and grab some form of loosely discussed blueprint from 2 years ago and take their tantrum into the public domain? Or were they scared of the backlash to the Champions league revamp and instead decided to create a monster to deflect attention? I guess we’ll either never know now or it will take time to surface just what that explosive 24-hour side-show was really all about.

I don’t see the clubs pulling out so quickly at the first sign of pressure, after all their own strategy about creating content rather than football was evident by the use of a phrase that will damage their brand now more that Gerald Ratner ever managed.

The term ‘legacy fans’ for the rank and file, to be relied upon to fill expensively charged seats every midweek, whilst the clubs had made it clear their 1.5million social media followers in Asia and beyond were the real fans they’d be targeting with Pay per view armchair tickets and a shed load of expensive advertising – the new love of the club’s lives.

That didn’t sound like a plan that would flop at the first sign of protest from those their plans evidenced they were taking for granted. That said the use of the legacy term may take some repairing of their collective brands now, indeed Ed Woodward’s head which rolled today may not be the last of the sacrificial lambs offered by the clubs to try and save face.

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But in truth it may be much simpler. A load of clubs in astronomical debt needed a scheme properly funded as they certainly couldn’t do it themselves. As such the cost connection of JP Morgan to Man United and their owners may have been the ideal start up package. Yet if anyone was going to jump at the first sign of trouble and be blissfully unaware of the feelings of your ordinary football supporter in Liverpool, Manchester and London, it was going to be a Wall Street institution, one somewhat detached from the intricacies and passions of football’s working-class roots rather than the clubs themselves.

As such if this proposal by Europe’s ‘elite’ was somewhat ill thought out by the clubs, JP Morgan may have initially been willing to underwrite in principal and allow the detail to develop later. After all the long-term sums would stand up to scrutiny if it got off the ground.

However the huge backlash wouldn’t have been able to be ignored from Wall Street, and with JP Morgan looking to move into UK retail banking and a Chief Executive who had only two weeks ago, advised shareholders “When JP Morgan Chase enters a community, we take great pride in being a responsible citizen at the local level – just like the local bakery,” it doesn’t take a genius to think fan power played some part in the collapse of this plan, particularly when The Guardian was clear to point out the mixed messages on show and not in the sport pages either.

READ THIS…UEFA said they need Celtic – What Celtic now need from them in Champions League reform after ESL shambles

As such, it may not have been the clubs that folded first, instead the unintended consequence of bad publicity may have been someone at JP Morgan decided at a time of moving retail operations to the UK, they may not be met with a warm hug and immediate profit when they’re bankrolling a closed shop and alienating huge swathes of local communities in three of the UK’s biggest cities.

Whatever it involved it matters little to Celtic right now, probably why we went nowhere near an on the record opinion to the ESL plan. Whether it is the Champions league reforms for 2024, where some extra crumbs are thrown through the back door every year to show a façade at least of a not quite entirely closed shop, unlike the alternative proposals of the ESL, we are somewhat behind the curve.

When Celtic haven’t heard a Champions league soundtrack since December 2016, we have work to do just to ensure we can regain enough domestic dominance to be allowed to even approach the rear entrance of UEFA’s expensive Five-Star restaurant. And with a new CEO, no Director of Football, an ineffective scouting and recruitment approach, no manager, a poor pathway plan for young players and the grand sum of around four first team footballers likely to be hanging around for next season, as we look to re-exert our domestic dominance, we would do well to focus on the foundations for now, with a view to having our own house in order, built and operational for 2024.

READ THIS…Alexsander Ceferin: “UEFA needs Celtic” UEFA President names Celtic as he battles against Super League formation

We can but hope the Celtic Board know just that. That we are aware just how far behind a relevant opinion in the European conversation we are right now. It’s like witnessing a huge argument over the marketing campaign at the Lamborghini showroom, while you’re on your way to Arnold Clark hoping to pass the credit check for a used Renault.

Even UEFA Godfather Aleksander Ceferin’s gentle flirtations with the name of Celtic during the ECL fallout, whilst welcome enough to appreciate we haven’t been entirely side-lined, will be forgotten now as UEFA return to the lovers who spurned them. Celtic and Ajax soon forgotten as Ceferin asks the errant lovers what behavioural changes they need to ensure such a separation doesn’t occur again for some time, as UEFA focus attentions on rebuilding fire damaged bridges rather than look to Glasgow and Amsterdam to prop up the Champions League.

The only way Celtic can ensure we ever have a voice in European football is to start with an organisation fit for purpose and a football team on the pitch to match, maybe then we’ll have some leverage and an opinion with any credibility and in a league where we are currently second in a two-horserace. We’d do well to focus entirely on regaining the dominance that will result in an invite for the Champions league scraps at that back door.

The sound of Celtic’s official silence, we can but hope, is a realisation an awareness of a lack of relevancy in European circles for now, but one the Celtic Board have indicated the current plans to restructure the club will address.

It will have to be ready by 2024 at least. And when the ESL, this time unlikely to be a closed shop, and more likely with an effective pyramid system for bigger clubs outside the top four leagues comes back, Celtic need to be ready.

This ESL attempt was a shambles but it doesn’t take a lot of thought to realise we were nowhere near the conversation on or off the park. We don’t have long to ensure we are relevant when this seismic change comes back, better thought out and more palatable to sporting integrity – and it will. If that happened today, we’d have our face pressed against the window, we now have time to ensure we can have a foot in the door at least.

Niall J