Football is dead. Long live Football.

On the supposed death of equity in the world's game.

Upon a more concrete announcement of a potential European super league, the veracity and seeming intentionality of the proposition sent the football media world into a frenzy. Talking heads and blue checks alike whipped into a fury, calling the potential move away from the current system a disgrace, citing an unprecedented sense of 'greed' as the only possible motivation for such behaviors. 

The issue I find with much of the reactions is the implication that the current system exists in direct opposition to what's being proposed. As it stands, the ESL would more closely resemble an American model of sporting competition, with guaranteed inclusion to clubs that have deemed themselves the owners of elite-level Football. By effectively erasing any chance of missing out on a premier competition, the twelve clubs in question intend to calcify their grip on the revenue and relevance afforded to them by participation in that which has been and will be marketed as the world's best competition. In my mind, the mistake is assuming this to be a meaningful departure from how things currently stand.

When Leicester City won a Premier League title in 2016, it was a veritable miracle. For a club lacking the means consistent with those who typically compete for an English league title, Leicester's fairytale story- as it's often referred to- stands as the glittering example of what fans really watch the Premier league for. An often over-exaggerated sense of equity stands as the neoliberal fantasy we idealize and yearn for at every corner. Poverty fetishization through the personal lives of the athletes who compete in these competitions, the underdog upset. They're all but the faintest whispers of what we want to believe about the world we live in, but that we nonetheless understand isn't true. We want to believe anyone can do anything. That any socio-economic barrier is traversable if we just try hard enough. And that's how our structures of entertainment function. To relay that story back to us because we so desperately need to see it. That is until now. 

We often forget that when we reduce perceived value for monetary value, the value said thing once held is annihilated once codifiable, economic value is introduced. An overly complex way of saying money ruins things. We expect the 'traditions' of Football to be respected in an era where tradition has been reduced to its value in the monetary dimension. Long has the sense of place, belonging, and community that football clubs once fomented been exploited to sell us an idea of authenticity. From fan-made media to the very passion people hold and ascribe onto their clubs, it has all been used to create a clear and packageable product that has a price. Those prices have slowly but surely made the distribution of wealth across the football landscape so extreme that no longer are we witnessing fair competition, but the simulation of what we once understood as such. 

For a small sect of football clubs to be able to take advantage of a financially vulnerable situation like the one provided by the coronavirus pandemic is not the signal of the beginning of the end, more the end of the end. It's simply the logical next step of a system that already exists in practice. For example, as great as the fall of Manchester United has been since the departure of SAF, the lowest they've finished in the league is 7th. They still rank among the highest earners in club football and maintain and stable of incredibly talented and extraordinarily marketable players. The concept of actual change, or at least perilous financial failure is an idea of the past for these teams. It's a possibility, but not a probability. And all they're really looking to do is eliminate the infinitesimally small chance that it could happen. Thinking the clubs wanting to create the ESL (and a few others) don't already have a stranglehold on the state of competition is to live in a fantasy, clinging on to the shadows of equity found in an Aston villa upset or a once in a lifetime season. 

Putting a stop to the ESL is like bandaging a broken leg. It might stop some surface-level bleeding -it may even prevent worsening damage- but it's far from fixing the issue. Wealth inequality in society, let alone Football, is an issue that has long since threatened our very way of life and requires systemic change. The folk reading this, the ones involved in the comings and goings of their club on a day-to-day, even hour to hour basis, the ones who will inevitably make the loudest noise in opposition to what's already in motion, are not in the majority.

When Football is what it has become- a product- the majority are those who don't have time to worry about what's equitable and what isn't. They use Football as a release. As a disconnect from the toil of their lives and jobs, jobs that have given them less and less over the past fifty years, and they'll spend that ever-dwindling amount of free time on what is marketed to them as the best possible football product. To look down upon those who unknowingly prop up said system is to misunderstand the privilege of our position.

In short, stopping the ESL is only the beginning. Football, production, society, and the spectacle all need be reworked if we’re to truly make a difference.

Football has long since died; now it's just starting to smell.