The threat by 12 of Europe’s biggest football clubs to create a closed competition is a betrayal of the world’s most popular sport
In 1954, the Hungarian football masters of Honvéd were invited by Wolverhampton Wanderers to play a novel international friendly at the club’s Molineux stadium. Featuring the famous Ferenc Puskas, Honvéd were beaten 3-2, and the Daily Mail promptly anointed Wolves “champions of the world”. The watching editor of the French sports paper L’Équipe disagreed: “Before we declare that Wolverhampton are invincible,” wrote Gabriel Hanot, “let them go to Moscow and Budapest”.
Within a year the European Cup was up and running, fulfilling Hanot’s romantic vision of new horizons for the winners of national leagues. The competition, later re-branding as the Champions League, made sporting institutions such as Manchester United and Liverpool world-famous. But its ethos has just been comprehensively trashed by those clubs’ current owners, along with the directors of 10 other leading teams from England, Italy and Spain. Their threat to establish a closed Super League of 20 teams, unveiled at the weekend by Joel Glazer, the American owner of Manchester United, has struck at the integrity of the game.
