The truth behind Real Madrid’s climbdown over doomed Super League | OneFootball

The Uefa Executive Committee were already 20 minutes late, with some more aggrieved stakeholders aggravated, when the reasons suddenly became clear. President Aleksander Ceferin and European Football Clubs [EFC] chairman Nasser Al Khelaifi walked in with a flourish. They could announce that Real Madrid were returning to the fold, again becoming members of the EFC, the lobby group that used to be known as the European Club Association.

For many, this was obviously presented as an unprecedented Florentino Perez climbdown, the ultimate defeat of the Super League. Al-Khelaifi even felt the need to add that, if anyone thought Perez “lost”, “they are stupid and know absolutely nothing about football”.

That’s one area where he’s right. The only way you could believe that Perez has “lost” is if you see the ill-fated project as the be-all and end-all. There is instead another, more important perspective, which the Super League has served in shifting. The project was actually just one manifestation of a wider attempt from the big clubs to control the club game. That’s what Perez always wanted.

And that, through the EFC, is what Perez and the big club have finally got. The Overton window has been shifted.

Why wouldn’t Madrid return to the fold?

One fall-out from the Super League was the strengthening of Uefa’s relationship with a new Al-Khelaifi-led ECA - from which Madrid resigned - that eventually led to a partnership where they both jointly run the Champions League and European club competitions through the new UC3 company.

It has afforded the EFC an unprecedented position in the football power structure, where they are now almost a third authority alongside - or arguably above - Uefa and Fifa.

The grand theme of this week’s Uefa events was to present a united front, after so much civil war.

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Florentino Perez (AP)

Beneath that, however, dissent rumbles. There are many stakeholders who see all of this as just an accommodation of the Super League power dynamics, rather than any kind of solution; an attempt to “contain the uncontainable”. This can arguably be seen in the growing membership of the Union of European Clubs, and heard in a lot of back-corridor chats even at this Congress.

The new Champions League is certainly viewed in many quarters as an institutionalised Super League, albeit with more sops to the rest of the game. And while figures within the EFC would also point to the success of the Europa Conference League, an alternative perspective is that this system just hardens financial stratification, while siloing much of the game off.

The EFC have also been central to the formation of Fifa’s new Club World Cup, which Uefa themselves have serious concerns about, especially as regards how its prize money will destabilise the game’s ecosystem. The EFC point to how they successfully advocated for a €250m (£217m) solidarity commitment to non-participating clubs, but that spreads rather thin over the entire world game. Sources within clubs add that they have not yet received a penny.

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Ceferin has seen off the threat of a Super League (AP)

The new European club structure is viewed as the same problem on a different scale, with one complaint now seen as highly symbolic by certain stakeholders.

Some are now questioning the funding that Uefa gives to the EFC, as well as how it is decided and publicised. This annual figure stems from the Memorandum of Understanding between the two bodies in 2008, when the football world - and the very status of the old ECA - was obviously in a very different place. As of the last financial report, it had risen to €25m (£21.7m). That is money that is supposed to come out of a “surplus” from Uefa revenues, and there is an insistence that it doesn’t come out of the club prize money distribution scheme, although some sources actively question that.

And while €25m (£21.7m) is a relatively low number in the context of the EFC’s overall revenue, it has a symbolism and a significance.

It’s also more relevant when fewer than 150 clubs have full member rights of the EFC. Some sources consequently describe “an involuntary levy towards a lobby group” that they have no influence over, and that is furthering a model of the sport many disagree with.

The very raising of the issue is understood to have caused agitation within Uefa.

The Independent asked Uefa how such figures like the €25m (£21.7m) are calculated, and whether there is a publicly available formula. A response stated “the amount of funding is not calculated but yearly requested by EFC, as approved by their Board and General Assembly”.

This figure is not put to Uefa’s ExCo, according to sources. Uefa, it should be remembered, is supposed to be no more than a collection of the national associations.

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Florentino Perez, President of Real Madrid, and Khaldoon Al Mubarak, Chairman of Manchester City (Getty Images)

The EFC, for their part, would outline how its funding is “not a secret”. They would also explain how they offer considerable “value for money” for clubs, especially in terms of increased solidarity, formal agreements as regards international representation, and multiple similar compensation and revenue streams that did not exist five years ago.

In other words, they have increased the whole for everyone.

Criticisms nevertheless persist that such growth has come alongside the EFC itself, rapidly increasing in size and influence, with all of this only coming in an ecosystem where more power and money are even more likely to go to the same big clubs.

It’s also pointed out that the funding not being “a secret” is not the same as providing clear breakdowns on: how this annual allocation is determined; how much each club contributes, and whether non-members or non-voting clubs are fully aware if they are contributing.

The core of the issue, as with so much in modern football, is about transparency. Detractors also see this as reflective of wider shifts of power.

Even the €25m (£21.7m), after all, could go to smaller clubs or even grassroots schemes.

It is instead funnelled towards a body that has morphed from a lobby group into a competition organiser, taking control of the club game.

There’s even the argument about how the very partnership with UC3 involves trading away part of what is supposed to be the member associations’ share of European club competition, but without any compensation.

The Football Association were approached for comment on the last point.

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Uefa have seen off the Super League for now (Getty)

This all comes as the elite end of the game is widely seen as eroding the vast majority of the domestic leagues, precisely in the way the Super League was criticised. As one source adds, it fits with the trend of the ongoing “capture” of Uefa and Fifa by more powerful entities.

After all, the most influential powers in the club game now are club owners and key executives, primarily in the form of state-linked funds and officials, and US institutional money. And none currently look as powerful as Perez or Al-Khelaifi.

Far from having “lost”, the Madrid president might well reflect on how the Super League's various legal challenges have led to this situation, where he is now close to the top of both Uefa and Fifa.

So, if a previous agitator is now this satisfied, does that have any meaning for the post-2030 cycle? How will the Club World Cup feed into this?

Could the Champions League be further expanded, split into two conferences?

Multiple sources believe that Madrid “must feel something is in the works”.

It’s just one other area where European football could do with more transparency, not least as regards where power really lies between Uefa and the EFC.