Aleksander Ceferin has stressed that the potential departure of the three European Super League rebels – Real Madrid, Barcelona and Juventus – would not be a worry for UEFA.
The UEFA president explained that he can’t understand their decision to form a new European league while also being willing to feature in the Champions League this season.
“I would not mind if they left,” Ceferin said in an interview published this weekend in Der Spiegel.
“It is very funny that they want to create a new competition and at the same time they want to play in the Champions League this season.
“[These three clubs] simply have incompetent leaders. Those guys [Florentino Perez, Joan Laporta and Andrea Agnelli] have tried to kill football.”
Ceferin hit out at Real Madrid president Florentino Perez by making reference to Los Blancos’ failed move for Paris Saint-Germain forward Kylian Mbappe.
“[He] is criticising [UEFA] and saying that the club can only survive with a Super League and then is trying to sign Kylian Mbappe for 180 million euros,” Ceferin noted.
The UEFA president also revealed that he was threatened during a call with a Super League advisor, who suggested that UEFA could organise the new competition.
When Ceferin rejected the idea, he was told that the interested clubs had a lot of money and influence and that they were going to sue him if he did not give in.
Ceferin also proposed some reforms to the Financial Fair Play regulations, with mandatory payments being imposed on clubs that exceed a certain limit when it comes to spending, and he suggested that the proceeds should be shared among the other clubs.
“In the future we want to talk about a competitive balance rather than [financial] fair play,” he said.
