Let us start by looking at the current state of European football.

The professional football league system was created in 1888 in England and adopted in various guises across the World.

The format is simple you play each team in your league twice, home and away, and you accumulate points, three points for a win and one point for a draw, originally it was two points for a win.

There are no limitations to how many players you can buy in order to achieve your goal of becoming champion and, in most leagues, you have no limitations to how much you can spend on your squad’s wages.

With most clubs on a level playing field, in the beginning, it was mostly a case of how each club would spend on players that would compliment or bolster their squad.

Then as the sport grew, certain clubs built sporting dynasties and with an insatiable appetite and no limits on their funds managed to create a never-ending cycle of winning.

In the era of communism, most clubs in the East would be funded by the government or the Army (or even the police force) which meant that those clubs were given “special” treatment.

In almost every case this allowed for certain clubs to evolve much faster than others.

In the modern era where sponsorship deals and commercial development bolsters clubs ten folds compared to the past.

Only recently has the governing body in Europe imposed what they call “Financial fair play” regulations to curb the excessive overspending from certain clubs.

This however has only seen a growing disparity between top clubs and smaller clubs in the top division.

The Bundesliga has now been won by Bayern Munich in each of the past 11 seasons.

The number is so ridiculous even fans of Bayern are questioning their league’s competitiveness.

The last one was won with a bit of luck as Borussia Dortmund failed to clinch the title on the final day allowing Bayern to win it on goal difference.

Yet in nine of the past ten seasons, Bayern have finished above second place by more than ten points.

In Serie A the pain has stopped but for a time Juventus had almost choked their league into submission winning nine league titles in a row from 2012 until 2020.

In France Paris Saint Germain has won nine of the last 11 league titles, only losing to Monaco in 2017 and Lille in 2021.

In less well-known leagues the level is much worse.

In the Austrian Bundesliga, Red Bull Salzburg has won 13 of the last 15 league titles and in Croatia, Dinamo Zagreb has won 17 out of the last 18 titles just two examples of the level of domination.

These numbers are beyond excessive and clearly unhealthy for competition generally, losing the general interest of the fans, these are worrying times for football.

For over a decade now Real Madrid president Florentino Perez thought about creating a breakaway league to help make the World’s biggest clubs sustainable.

He claimed that the Champions League was not good for the growth of the sport or the business.

His concerns relayed the fact that Real Madrid and other major clubs could miss out on the Champions League.

Whilst this may seem like a good thing, once in a while, football is driven more and more by commercial value.

What if Real Madrid fail to qualify for the Champions League?

One season would not affect UEFA or the tournament and would only slightly hamper Real.

However, Real Madrid missing five or six seasons could be detrimental because of the fall in viewership, consequently the fall in commercial value.

Real Madrid is not the only team to have this question constantly in the back of their minds.

The 12 club’s drive to succeed has created the gap between them and the rest and without any repercussions has led to the divide in quality.

The clubs in the Premier League benefit from global exposure that the other leagues are struggling to keep up, along with strong private financing throughout the competition.

This has created a safety buffer of some sort for the “big six” in the Premier League.

On the other hand, this has left the other top European leagues with a bit of a conundrum as they try and play catch up financially.

These concerns all together have led to this format of the Super League being created.

With financial backing from JP Morgan, the chairman of the League would be Perez of Real, and on the board would be Agnelli from Juventus.

The three remaining positions on the board of directors were given to American trio Joel Glazer of Manchester United, Stan Kroenke of Arsenal, and John W Henry of Liverpool.

This breakaway league would have guaranteed the financial security of the clubs as businesses.

They would have had guaranteed viewership and the competition would have been strong and enticing for fans of each club across the globe.

In a press release, Florentino Perez said he hoped the new competition would “provide higher-quality matches and additional financial resources for the overall football pyramid” appeal to younger generations of fans, and raise the standard and level of refereeing.

All 12 teams are in the top 16 most profitable football clubs in the world according to Forbes in 2021.

This was a move towards self-preservation and sustainability of twelve of the biggest clubs.

A move against the stagnating system UEFA has set up that could see these institutions falter and collapse and eventually lose the global interest in football.

When this format of the Super League was first proposed in 2021, the most flagrant point was the lack of relegation for the original 12 teams.

The system proposed included an extra three teams that would be considered the founding members of the Super League.

There would be five teams “invited” to qualify for the tournament, champions from the major domestic leagues in Europe.

The teams would be sorted into two groups of ten and the top three teams would qualify for a playoff with the teams ranked fourth and fifth playing a further round to qualify for the said playoffs.

The winner would be determined in a final.

A few months later Barcelona, Juventus, and Real Madrid released a statement saying that the Super League would be an open league with two divisions of 20 teams each.

That second option is much better and would be even better if they merged with UEFA to make the Super League the new top division in the league pyramids.

The Super League format would look like this: two or three divisions of 20 teams, like the latter proposition, with a qualification process from the domestic leagues to get promoted into the Super League.

There would be 55 national champions each summer trying to qualify to get into the Super League from the respective UEFA member states.

In the Super League itself, the top division ought to consist of the teams that finish in the top four of each of the top five leagues in the final season of the current format of UEFA competition.

The second division should include the Champions of the next 20 best leagues in the UEFA coefficient table.

That would essentially be the top 26 UEFA coefficient countries all sending a team to participate in the Super League.

The teams that finish in the bottom three would be relegated to the second division.

Whilst the teams in the top four to eight places would play in a playoff at the end of the season to determine the champions.

In the interest of winning the league, they could create a league shield.

In the second division, you could have a playoff system to determine the three teams that get promoted.

You could then have three teams relegated from the second division back to their domestic leagues.

The financial fair play would be governed by a system like that of the NFL or NBA in the USA.

The salary cap in use in those tournaments is for a team to use on all their players, to not exceed a certain number that would increase every two or three seasons.

So, in theory, a team can buy a lot of great players but if they exceed the salary cap limit for the overall squad then they get punished, with a points deduction, or a transfer ban.

This would keep the competition fair in the Super League, just look at the NFL or NBA.

The biggest Dynasties of the last 20 years in each competition have not won more than six titles in that time.

The Super League in theory could work. It could liberate whole League systems that are completely locked down by one or two teams whilst keeping the biggest clubs happy. The fear is that as football stagnates as a product, the younger generations will turn away and look elsewhere. The nightmare scenario is swathes of clubs going out of business because football could not keep up with the times. Unfortunately, it does mean caving into the elite clubs, letting them hog the sunshine in order to let the rest grow and compete fairly. in the end, what with consumer demands, who would not want to see a super league with the best teams constantly fighting for titles, we are almost there anyway with the Champions League.