Andrea Agnelli reveals Super League stance has alarmingly not changed
Juventus chairman Andrea Agnelli has continued to state his support for the failed Super League concept and still insists that Juve, Barcelona and Real Madrid will refuse to give up as they are acting for the good of football as a whole.
Quite how Agnelli and the others can justify such a claim, when the Super League stood to make the rich even richer whilst additionally enforcing an almost closed door policy on elite level club football, is unclear and highlights how alarmingly out of touch the whole project has been.
Of the 12 clubs that initially signed up to join the Super League, nine withdrew within a matter of days of it being launched amid a furious public and media backlash. Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal, Tottenham, Chelsea, Manchester City, Inter, AC Milan and Atletico Madrid all later accepted sanctions from UEFA in the form of fines. But Juve, Barca and Real refused to back down.
They twice released joint statements in May doubling down on their Super League stance and are threatened with being expelled from the Champions League if they still refuse to drop it.
“For years I have tried to change European competitions from the inside, because the signs of crisis were evident even before the pandemic,” Agnelli said as he addressed the media on Friday.
“The Super League is not a coup, but a desperate cry of alarm for a system that, knowingly or not, is heading towards insolvency,” he added.
One of the major criticisms of Juve, Barca and Real in the wake of the Super League collapse and such claims is a failure to get their own houses in financial order, which has made chasing further income and revenue beyond critical to cover out of control costs.
“The agreement between the founders was conditional on UEFA's prior recognition of the competition. The response was deafening, with offensive terms and arrogant methods, and then it turned to three clubs,” he continued.
Agnelli: "Juventus, Barcelona and Real Madrid are determined to achieve a complete reform of the competitions, and above all, in the interest of the clubs that show us fear for this situation."
— JuventusFC (@juventusfcen) June 4, 2021
His insistence that the Super League is in the best interests of the clubs that fear it is utterly bizarre.
“Juventus, Barcelona and Real Madrid are determined to achieve a complete reform of the competitions, and above all, in the interest of the clubs that show us fear for this situation,” he said.
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