After nine of the twelve founding clubs have announced to have officially withdrawn from the European Super League, Barcelona, Real Madrid, and Juventus still technically remain. Although the UEFA club competitions have resumed, as usual, the three clubs pose complications.
All the English clubs followed Chelsea and Manchester City in backing out from the breakaway league after major backlash from the fans along with the government, who took no time to get involved after the official announcement regarding the league’s commencement was out in the open. The activity around the issue has been silent ever since.
The UEFA are in a state of willingly accepting the clubs who express their desire of returning. However, they will be compelled to give up 5% of the UEFA revenue they receive per season for the immediate next season that they play in any of the UEFA club competitions. Since, the three remaining clubs have refused to oblige, they remain out of the mix as of now, and could potentially be banned by UEFA.
On the other hand, Atletico Madrid, AC Milan, and Inter Milan have officially agreed in a deal that they will only be participating in the European competitions under UEFA. Meanwhile, the nine clubs will be making a total of 15 million euros in contribution to the welfare of children, youth, and grassroots football. This is being labelled as a “gesture of goodwill“ by UEFA. A potential fine of 100 million euros is decided if these teams ever attempt to partake in any unauthorized competition in the future.
During all of this, Real Madrid, Barcelona, and Juventus have released an official statement in a quest to make their points clear. The gist of the detailed statement is that the clubs understand the issues with unauthorized activities. However, they claim that the issues that they were originally meant to combat against through the ESL still exist. In light of the recent developments, they would be accommodating to hold talks in order to conjure a feasibly possible solution to this.
Since the three of them don’t seem willing to drop out of their objective, noticeably due to the significant financial debts, they wish to come to a mutual agreement with UEFA over their motives. In a case where the nine clubs get back and join them in their Super League plans, it could somehow move forward. However, as it stands, the clubs are preferably leaning towards the deal that UEFA proposed.
If this were to carry on, Madrid, Barca, and Juve will be left with little choice and will have to follow the rest of their ESL compatriots for their immediate survival. Right before that, they have a partial solution to get a fix about the debts. All the founding members had signed “binding contracts” (as stated by Florentino Perez) before stepping in for the formation of the league and will have to pay a certain amount as the fine for abandonment. This will pose as part of the recovered debt for the remaining clubs before they can get back as the others did. The current scenario points to this as the most probable outcome of the developing situation.
