AGI – In just 48 hours the #SuperLega was announced and then aborted due to the abandonment of some of the participating teams, after very strong and immediate resistance from fans, international football institutions and politicians.
The private limited number competition alternative to the Champions League that brings together the 20 best European teams, strongly desired by Juventus and Real Madrid to increase the economic revenues for the clubs, has stalled in the face of the strong hostility of the fans who have deemed it unacceptable , considered elitist, penalizing for medium and small teams, and above all contrary to the values of sport.
A project on which some of the most important presidents of European football led by Andrea Agnelli (Juventus) and Florentino Perez (Real Madrid) had been working for months.
The reaction of UEFA and its President Aleksander Čeferin was extremely severe, threatening millionaire lawsuits against the clubs that want to move from the Champions and Europa League; even the exclusion of their players from national teams and from all Uefa and Fifa competitions was feared.
I fans, especially those of the English clubs belonging to the SuperLeague (Liverpool, Chelsea, Manchester United, Manchester City, Arsenal, Tottenham) took to the streets to protest, and a few hours later the Premier League teams announced their withdrawal from the project, officially apologizing.
The SuperLega is not completely off yet, some clubs such as Juventus, Milan and Real Madrid have not yet officially come out, but basically it will not have any concrete implementation, at least for now.
On social media and on the web, the initiative sparked controversy and thousands of conversations in a few hours; in Italy on Twitter there are over 130 thousand tweets with very high interaction rates, at 2.3%, well above the internal political issues usually debated.
When it comes to football on the web, the involvement is very high, able to stimulate a flow of conversations and threads especially focused on Juventus, Milan and Inter, the only three Italian teams participating in the new sporting competition.
In Italy, the world of politics has sided against the birth of the SuperLega, and on the net the positions are clearly polarized: the fans of all the clubs are 80% against for reasons inherent to the values of sport, the risk of compromising competitiveness leagues, making football a sport increasingly divided between rich clubs destined for closed competitions, and clubs with fewer resources engaged in less attractive matches. The end of the dream and the narrative according to which even a small team can win against a top team, the penalization of the sporting and managerial merit of those who have been able to keep balance sheets in order, containing debts.
The supporters of the SuperLeague, on the other hand, share its economic sustainability, the considerable increase in revenues, and the pyramid structure capable of generating positive, cascading effects, even for less wealthy clubs.
I wake up and find the #SUPERLEGA. But are they crazy? An elite competition with almost fixed seats. Already now they tend to always win the same. Instead of solving the problem, it is institutionalized. Had they done it years ago we would have had a century of Pro Vercelli. No thanks!!!
— Carlo Cottarelli (@CottarelliCPI) April 19, 2021
Seeing how politics judges the sports market, mixing paternalism and crass economic ignorance, is a perfect test to evaluate its poor analytical and discerning capacities. Entrusting the country to people no better than its bar comments is announced suicide.
– CA Carnevale-Maffè (@carloalberto) April 20, 2021
The idea of a #SuperLega for the richest European clubs in ⚽️? Wrong and definitely untimely. In Europe, the NBA model cannot work. In football and sport, strength lies in diffusion, not concentration. And in the beautiful stories like Atalanta, Ajax, Leicester.
– Enrico Letta (@EnricoLetta) April 18, 2021
Regardless of the economic rationale of the project and the discussion on the economic sustainability of the current model and the “football industry”, the sentiment of Italian fans on the #SuperLega and on the three participating teams, Juventus, Milan and Inter, analyzed with the artificial intelligence of * Kpi6, has clearly deteriorated after the announcement. Transversal hostility also coming from the fans of these clubs themselves. Disappointment, anger and sadness are 83% of the emotions present in all published content, compared to a modest 14% of admiration and joy.
By tightening the focus on the clubs, we observe how Milan, Juventus and Inter worsen their respective sentiments by up to 20 percentage points in a few days, a very high value.
Inter is the team that has suffered the most, the analysis examines a large representative sample of all the fans and fans and in the conversations where Inter is mentioned, the greatest opposition to participation in the initiative, strongly desired by Agnelli and Perez.
Conversations regarding possible sanctions for clubs that continue to remain officially registered in the SuperLeague have also been growing in the last few hours (Inter have officially distanced themselves). Within UEFA, the possibility of a disqualification from the next Champions League for Juventus and Real Madrid is being evaluated. Currently, however, the prevalence of comments does not seem favorable to sanctions or penalties in the standings, precisely in order not to favor a possible reconciliation of the group of clubs still in favor of the new sports competition.
* Analysts: Gaetano Masi, Marco Mazza, Giuseppe Lo Forte
Journalist, content editor: Massimo Fellini
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