Real Madrid, Juventus and Barca not giving up on Super League

UEFA President Aleksander Ceferin attends the qualifying draw event for the UEFA EURO 2024 football championships, on October 9, 2022 in Frankfurt, Germany. (Photo by Daniel ROLAND / AFP)

The main advocates of the Super League are not giving up.

Barcelona chief Joan Laporta on Sunday followed Real Madrid president Florentino Perez and their Juventus counterpart Andrea Agnelli in defending the project to his club’s supporters.

“It’s a competition that’s necessary, to choose our destiny. We, the clubs, will rule,” Laporta told the club’s annual general meeting.

“I’m optimistic. Given the inaction of UEFA, regarding the distortion which the financial doping by state-owned clubs generates, we have to react.”

Perez led a group of 12 major European clubs into the Super League project in April 2021 but it vanished a few days later after pressure from fans and authorities.

Real, Barcelona and Juventus are the only clubs that have tried to keep alive a project that would be direct competition with the Champions League.

Last week, Perez compared European football with tennis.

“What is the point of depriving the fans of the big matches? Nadal and Federer met 40 times. Nadal and Djokovic, 59, is it boring? Liverpool and Real Madrid have faced nine times in 67 years,” he told Madrid’s members’ assembly.

A court decision in 2023 will be crucial in determining the project’s future.

The Super League project came back to life in July, when litigation for an alleged abuse of a dominant position by UEFA was brought to the European Union Court of Justice, at the request of a Madrid judge to whom the Super League chiefs turned.

‘Healthy and beautiful’

UEFA President Aleksander Ceferin responded to Perez, telling a news conference in Rome: “Once again