Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United and Tottenham are among 12 clubs who have agreed to join a new European Super League (ESL).
In a seismic move for European football, the Premier League clubs will join AC Milan, Atletico Madrid, Barcelona, Inter Milan, Juventus and Real Madrid.
The ESL said the founding clubs had agreed to establish a “new midweek competition” with teams continuing to “compete in their respective national leagues”.
It says the inaugural season “is intended to commence as soon as practicable” and “anticipated that a further three clubs will join” the breakaway.
The plans of the ESL also include launching a corresponding women’s competition as soon as is possible after the men’s tournament starts.
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Uefa and the Premier League condemned the move to launch a European Super League when news of it broke on Sunday.
World governing body Fifa has previously said it would not recognise such a competition and any players involved in it could be denied the chance to play at a World Cup.
Uefa reiterated this warning on Sunday when it said players involved would be banned from all other competitions at domestic, European or world level and could be prevented from representing their national teams.
After the Super League was announced, Fifa expressed its “disapproval” of the proposed competition and called on “all parties involved in heated discussions to engage in calm, constructive and balanced dialogue for the good of the game”.
In a statement, the ESL said: “Going forward, the founding clubs look forward to holding discussions with Uefa and Fifa to work together in partnership to deliver the best outcomes for the new league and for football as a whole.”
The league will have 20 teams – the 12 founding members plus the three unnamed clubs they expect to join soon and five sides who qualify annually according to their domestic achievements.
It will start in August, with midweek fixtures, and the clubs will be split into two groups of 10, who play each other home and away.
The top three in each group qualify for the quarter-finals, with the teams in fourth and fifth playing a two-legged play-off for the two remaining spots.
From then, on it will have the same two-leg knockout format used in the Champions League before a single-leg final in May at neutral venue.
On the financial front, the ESL predicts the new competition’s “long-term commitment to uncapped solidarity payments” will be “substantially higher than those generated by the current European competition and are expected to be in excess of 10bn euros (£8.65bn) during the course of the initial commitment period of the clubs”.
There will be a spending framework for the founders, who will receive “3.5bn euros (£3bn) solely to support their infrastructure investment plans and to offset the impact of the Covid pandemic.
Source: BBC
