Florentino Perez maintains that the European Super League as a concept will be back, as teams cannot back out of the binding contracts signed last week.
Perez ignores a major loophole of sorts: Businesses agree to dissolve contracts all the time by making universal agreements that acknowledge the best interests of all involved.
As such, the 74-year-old Real Madrid president is basically saying he doesn’t understand why all these clubs are apologizing to their fans, players, and even their governments, a sort of megalomania that would hold historic clubs hostage to their ill-considered ink.
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Premier League clubs incluyding Arsenal apologized profusely for a “mistake” in considering the ESL, but it has not done a lot to calm angry supporters. Even the American bank behind the idea has apologized for their role in the ESL, and Perez somehow seems to believe that a comparable idea branding differently will be embraced by the teams and subsequently their fans.
Anyway, here’s the man of the hour in a pretty sad and orchestrated Q&A that begins with a glowing endorsement of Perez as a man who “rescued [Real Madrid] from its serious economic problems” via the Galatico project — which, by the way, launched transfer records into the sun — via AS.com.
“Either we do something soon or a lot of clubs will go out of business,” Perez said, answering another “question” by demanding that the Super League has to be a priority for all.
“You have to do it as quickly as possible, but first you have to explain the project to people in good faith, who have been manipulated by those who had no other objective than to defend their privileges. Maybe they think that this is going to be good for them, but they are wrong.”
Simply put, Perez wants to be the gatekeeper of football. He believes that his success at Real Madrid has been the club’s best time and that dozens of trophies that preceded him were nothing compared to his achievements.
A note of caution, however, while it’s tempting to pile dirt on a greedy idea, there’s every reason to remember that the richest of the rich often find a way to do what they want (or close to what they want), regardless of the quality of the idea.
We’re still waiting for the way other clubs benefit from the Super League, other than Super League clubs paying handsome fees for their best players and relegating — pardon the pun — all non-ESL clubs to a lesser status in the game.
Sounds win-win (Sarcasm to be noted in case the preceding paragraphs have not accomplished the appropriate tone in context).
Maybe Perez just plans on extracting money for the clubs who haven’t opted out from the ones who were convinced to depart the endeavor.
