The sea serpent has still resurfaced. This week, the Super League returned to the front of the stage, no longer as a dissident competition, but as a “fusion” project with the UEFA Champions League in 2028. The idea? Create a hybrid format, with free broadcast for everyone, guaranteeing prestigious posters each week. A proposal which, on paper, has something to seduce. But behind this marketing varnish hides a major flaw, a vice of design which has so far escaped the public debate, and which would make this new competition deeply inequitable.
The paradox of the UEFA coefficient
The flaw lies in the criterion for distributing teams. The project proposes to divide the 36 participants into two groups: the first 18 in the UEFA coefficient in an “elite” pool, and the following 18 in a second pool. However, this coefficient, calculated over the past five years, is an indicator of the past, not of the present. By using it as the only selection criterion, the format would freeze an artificial hierarchy. A club like Chelsea, despite recent disappointing seasons, would be guaranteed to stay in the group of “big”, while a team in full sports ascent would be relegated to the second group, regardless of its form of the moment.
A competition without sporting merit
This system would create a competition without real sporting merit. The difference between the 18th and the 19th in the coefficient could only be a few points, but it would determine access to opponents and to radically different income for a whole season. Worse still, the format does not provide for any promotion or relegation mechanism between the two groups during the year. A cador could finish last in the “elite” pool without ever risking descending, as long as its classification over five years protects it. It is the antithesis of the competition, where the performance of the moment must take precedence over the achievements of the past.
The detail that kills: the flaw in the new format of the super League explained
A vicious economic circle
Even more pernicious, this system would establish an economic vicious circle. The clubs of the “Elite” group, by clashing, would generate much higher audiences and advertising revenues on the free broadcasting platform. These additional income would still widen the gap with the clubs of the second pool, making their access to the “top 18” almost impossible in the future. The promise of more democratic football would turn into a machine to strengthen inequalities.
A project that remains a mirage
This fundamental flaw, added to the categorical denial of UEFA and the crumbling of the support of founding clubs (Barcelona would be about to withdraw), makes this project highly improbable. It appears more and more as a simple maneuver of political pressure in the showdown which opposes the big clubs to the UEFA. But by revealing this two -speed system, this new proposal shows that, even in its “soft” version, the spirit of the Super League remains the same: guaranteeing a pre -square at the historically dominant clubs, to the detriment of sports equity.
