 So as I'm sure you're aware by now, late last weekend we heard an announcement from the top of European football of a new European Super League, the ESL, which was being touted as something of a replacement for UEFA Champions League. It would now be the most elite club competition in European football. It was set to have 12 founding members, six from England, three from Spain, three from Italy. Not all the biggest names in European football there, PSG from France, Bayern Munich from Germany, you could say Ajax from the Netherlands or Porto from Portugal. They weren't all there, but most of the household names in European football were involved. You had Real Madrid, you had Barcelona, Manchester United, Liverpool, AC Milan, Juventus, historically big clubs who've won multiple European titles between them. Now that was a bolt from the blue. People have talked about a Super League or a competition beyond the Champions League for a very long time, for decades in fact. But the manner in which this was done, sort of press release late on a Sunday, was entirely unexpected. But even more surprising, I think, was the fact that it collapsed in less than 72 hours. And while those involved probably saw or expected some pushback from fans, I suspect they didn't expect it to come back from players, but more importantly, politicians. Boris Johnson said he would drop a legislative bomb on the clubs involved from England. You had the leader of the opposition here, Kerstarma, get involved, even Prince William. I don't think the likes of Joel Glazer and Florentino Perez expected that. And so very quickly the whole thing was pretty much mothballed. That's not for sure. Still three clubs in the original 12 haven't actually given it up, but it's effectively at best on ice. Now I'm making this video, not to talk about that. Because even though the ESL hasn't happened, there are really, really important lessons to learn from this. And I think it's really critical to talk about the fundamental reason, the real reason, why the European Super League was happening at all. Because it wasn't about creating a better game, a more sustainable game. It wasn't being done in the name of progress, because of course the European Cup was initially quite controversial. It was replaced by the Champions League, and this was now being pitched as merely the latest inevitable evolutionary step in the story of European club football. Nonsense. Complete crap. I mean, that would be a wonderful fairytale if it was true, but it isn't. The real reason the European Super League was not just being touted, but on the verge of being delivered, contracts had been signed, we're told, was because there is a huge debt crisis at the top of European football. And fundamentally, a range of clubs who increasingly can't walk away from this. Now it's increasingly something they have to engage with this debt crisis, viewed a potential European Super League as effectively a bailout. Even with its failure, Andrea Agnelli, the chairman of Juventus, said he remained convinced of the beauty of the project, while before the Super League imploded Real Madrid's Perez, claiming his intentions were purely noble. We are doing this to save football at this critical moment. But as always in journalism, it makes sense to follow the money, and to ignore the PR guff of people like Perez and Daniel Levy and Joel Glazer. So let's follow the money, let's look at the numbers. Here are the accounts of the clubs involved from KPMG in 2020. Tom Hotspur comes first in terms of debt. It's in the red to the tune of £591 million. Second is Manchester United with £452 million. Third is Juventus with £336 million. Fourth is into Milan with £278 million of debt. Fifth is Barcelona with £274 million of debt. Sixth is Real Madrid with £146.8 million of debt. That's just six of the 12 clubs involved, others include Arsenal, Atletico Madrid, Liverpool. They have varying amounts of debt. Arsenal actually have significantly more than Liverpool, but they're nowhere in the league of the six that I just mentioned, who between them have accumulated a collective debt of around £2 billion. And then you've got other clubs. You've got Chelsea, Manchester City, who are in just a fundamentally different financial situation to the other clubs involved in the European Super League. They're certainly more similar to Paris Saint-Germain in that they're owned by extraordinarily wealthy individuals, Roman Ramovich in the case of Chelsea, Sheikh Mansour in the case of Manchester City. And while they want to make more money, you know, they're not just in this for the love of the game, they didn't need to bail out like Tottenham. Manchester United, Real Madrid, Barca needed this. You know, they could have carried on, you know, the survival of some of these clubs, particularly Tottenham, particularly Manchester United, does appear to hinge, I think, on something like the European Super League. They simply cannot continue business as usual, particularly after COVID-19, with what they already have. Now we can tell something about this from how the bailout, as I like to call it, was going to be paid. The FT reports that JPMorgan Chase was set to finance the deal by offering an infrastructure loan of £2.8 billion. I wonder how they arrived at that number. Secured against future broadcasting rights for the ESL. This would have given each founding club around €300 million. Now that €3.25 billion obviously is a huge amount of money, but you have to understand it was guaranteed against 23 years of broadcasting rights for the new competition. Now if you want to know who's driving all of this, you don't need to look any further than Ed Woodward, the CEO of Manchester United, very close to the Glazers. What we're seeing with the ESL, how it was going to be financed, the incentives being put forward for other clubs to participate, is what I like to call the Glazification of Modern Football. Because just as the Glazers bought Manchester United between 2003 and 2005 through what you would call debt leverage takeover, this is a very similar formula. You're saying to clubs, you can have money today based upon future performance. And by the way, they were going to pay interest on that infrastructure loan. The bank involved was JPMorgan, guess who was the previous employer of Ed Woodward before he entered football? That's right, JPMorgan Chase. And so this is the expansion of a model which has already caused Manchester United immense problems. It's important to say this. When the Glazers bought Manchester United in 2005, it wasn't just successful in a sporting sense. It was the most successful club in English football. Won the European Championship in 1999, was competitive in the early 2000s, was unlucky not to make another final until a few years later. It was also hugely profitable. It was making huge amounts of money. Had the biggest stadium in English football, Old Trafford was far ahead of anywhere else. What's happened since? In the 15 years since they bought the club, the Glazers have taken out a billion pounds of money. The sporting performance has just gone south, particularly since Alex Ferguson had obvious reasons, but they weren't interested in maintaining that position. And Old Trafford is nowhere near the leader in terms of English football stadia that it once was. They haven't invested in the club in a bunch of ways. Now, people can point to big transfer fees and so on, but that's because it's still generating huge amounts of money. The point is they got this hugely profitable club and they paid for it through loans which were guaranteed against the assets of the club. So they haven't invested any money into Manchester United. They've taken money out, like I say, a billion pounds has been taken out by the Glazers in the last 15 years and they took it over with finance based upon future growth. This is glazification and this was the offer with the European Super League. So you can see why the likes of PSG and Bayern didn't want to participate. After all, they have a far more sustainable business model. They're not clubs that are built on debt. PSG of course has hugely wealthy owners. Bayern Munich is something of a fan ownership model. As does Brüscher Dortmund. They weren't interested either. And you can also see why Chelsea and Manchester City, the two clubs most similar to PSG, owned by very wealthy people rather than built on this debt-based model, were the first English clubs to pull out. That makes total sense. Glazification, carrying on this model for Manchester United, for Tottenham, who are in even more debt because of this huge stadium they have, for Real Madrid, for Barcelona is necessary. They need to bail out Man City and Chelsea less so. So of course they pulled out. So you see a cleavage here in European football between clubs whose growth and success is built on debt and financialization and those which aren't. And it was the ones that were built on debt and financialization, which were pushing this. And it's not just limited to the kind of Hollywood leagues of La Liga and the Premier League. It's also really central, increasingly in Serie A. If you look at the the debt of all Serie A clubs put together, I think it's more than double in the last 10 years. So debt and financialization is increasingly at the heart of the choices being made by people in European club football. So when Real Madrid chairman Florentino Perez said the Super League will, quote, save football at this critical moment, he was half right in so much as the only means by which Barca Real managed to unite it. Another elite club can continue to operate in the manner they presently do is buy something like this. More games generate more TV revenue. While the risk of failing to qualify for the Champions League, well that's removed because the whole point of the European Super League is these 12 founder clubs compete every year regardless. Now from a financial perspective, this is amazing. There is no downside. But from a sporting perspective, that makes no sense because what's good for a bank manager they want to guarantee on return isn't good for a fan because they want risk, suspense, emotion. Two separate things and that's precisely what the people involved at the top of this project failed to understand. When asked on Twitter what he thought of the proposal, Alexi Lalas, the former US footballer replied, owners are trying to do what they think is best for their business. If they produce a better product than the insisting competition in the market, then I'll be a customer. Now putting aside the claim that people support a football team because it's the best product, which very few people, if anyone, thinks, apart from Alexi Lalas, that statement is clearly untrue. In English football, no team other than Manchester United was significantly profitable during the 1990s, even after the advent of the Premier League. In fact, the only teams that initially challenged the Manchester club were Blackbone Roe and Newcastle United, both of which were owned by wealthy businessman Jack Walker and John Halls who were happy to lose money in order to compete at the highest level. Call that what you like, but it wasn't running football clubs as businesses and it certainly wasn't fixated on making profits above all else. And that's the context within which we have to understand the European Super League. It is not an inevitable outgrowth of European club football over the last 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 years. It is very much a reflection of the role of debt and financialization in club football, which is a remarkably recent phenomenon. You're looking really at the last 15, 20 years. This idea, this ideological point made by Alexi Lalas that football clubs have to be run as businesses. Nobody thought that. Nobody thought that until the early 2000s. At the earliest, people maybe put money into football clubs, but it was because they support the football clubs not to make money. This is a really recent phenomenon and we shouldn't lose sight of that. And so European Super League by extension should be recognized as something which is responding to something that's only really been around for 20 years, which makes the strength of the arguments behind it that much weaker. However, the dynamics I've just talked about this debt, which is just driving a stake through the heart of football, whether it's Tottenham, whether it's Manchester United, Bayern, Real Madrid, because of course, the more debt means the more necessity to further financialize and to get new revenue streams, which of course takes these clubs ever further away from their founding purpose, which was community support and creating fundamentally an outstanding sporting spectacle. That's not going to go away. And so debt to be paid off requires more debt. Financialization to be addressed requires more financialization. That's why the ESL was happening in the first place. And so while the ESL has died this time, it's critical to understand that it's going to come back. As long as we have this economic model driving Europe's biggest football clubs, it's inevitable. It will not just be forgotten about. It's kind of necessary given the dynamics at work. Now, the good news is that there is an alternative. And actually, that's reflected by the fact two clubs who are huge clubs by Munich and Brücher Dortmund didn't participate. Why didn't they participate in this absurd spectacle? Because German clubs more or less have a huge amount of fan ownership involved. Now, you might agree with complete fan ownership or what in Germany is called 50 plus one, where there's a controlling stake held by a supporters trust, for instance. But I think there's no argument against fans having some equity, some ownership in football clubs, because frankly, football teams without supporters without the fans are nothing. And so I think they have to be what is called stakeholders in a meaningful sense. They have to be in the room for big decisions like whether or not there should be something called a European Super League. They can't just hear about this in a communique on a Sunday night, they have to be participating in those decisions. For my money, I think you want something like 50 plus one. You want to prioritize low ticket prices, financial stability and football clubs serving their communities above shareholder value and a quick resale price. That for me is the project I think for football fans everywhere, but I think particularly in England over the next 10 to 20 years, there is no future for the financialized debt driven model so adored by the Glazers and Florentino Perez. In short, another football isn't just possible, it's necessary because sooner or later what we've got is going to break.