How about the debacle that is breaking the New Coke record for fastest brand-wrecking can’t-shove-into-the-memory-hole-fast-enough follies?
That would bet the European Super League Monumental Fuck Up.
All six English Premier League Teams are now out, with varying degrees of abject apologies to their fans. The rump of the planned new league is still wandering around, a cross between the Black Knight and the “Not Dead Yet” plague daddy:
In a statement released late Tuesday, the Super League said: “We are reconsidering the appropriate steps, in order to reshape the project” despite the exit of the English teams.
“Despite the announced departure of the English clubs, forced to take such decisions due the pressure out on them, we are convinced our proposal is fully aligned with European law and regulations as was demonstrated today by a court decision to protect the Super League from third party actions,” it read.
Yay! It’s legal!
I guess this is a good thing for the sport, though it’s fair to say that in a Superleague vs. UEFA cage match I’d likely be rooting for injuries (to the execs, not the players). But mostly I like watching when the outrageously rich step on their own appendages.
Open thread.
Image: Umberto Boccioni, Dynamism of A Soccer Player, 1913
craigie
Some background may be required for some viewers of this blog.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Also, Tucker Carlson made a pre-emptive strike against a story coming about about his high school yearbook. Must be bad.
craigie
It’s hard to imagine anything that Tucker/FOX would consider bad, unless his college girlfriend had, you know, an afro or something. Or was a boy.
egorelick
“appendages”? Is that what the kids are calling it now?
Jeffro
Tucker just melted down on his own (police vet!) guest, so hey, let’s not worry too much about him.
Instead…let us savor.
Another Scott
Neat painting. Thanks.
This is my shocked, shocked face.
Cheers,
Scott.
Damien
Tucker Carlson’s college Che Guevara Rasta phase. Calling it
NotMax
“Super League?”
“Hmm. I think I’ll take the soup.”
(works better as a jape when spoken aloud) :)
That particular futurist painting is 100,000 times more impressive in person than in any photo of it I’ve ever seen. Six-plus feet long in both height and width. One of the ones I look forward to seeing in MOMA at every visit.
Tom Levenson
@craigie: Some blokes who own franchises that employ other blokes to kick a ball around a lawn tried to set up a system where other blokes who aren’t as special as them can’t siphon off sweet, sweet media dollars that by right should only go to the most implausibly wealthy among them so that they can ramp up the competition to see whose wallet is fatter.
Every other owner…and every fan and many of the players/managers basically said this is a totally fucked up scheme that will wreck the year-over-year pleasure so many take in the current sequence of competitions. Basically everyone who actually cares about the game said feck yerselves with oxidized agricultural implements.
And the rich gobshites caved.
Clear now?
HumboldtBlue
@Jeffro:
Yeah he did. If anyone wants some basic details about the perfesser’s Super League stuff ask away, there are several folks who can chime in.
In short, 12 of Europe’s most profitable and successful clubs — six from England, three each from Spain and Italy — gathered to a form a closed league of their own that would exclude and skirt around European soccer’s traditional pyramid of competitions.
It’s a blatant case of absurd greed and horribly poor execution that has led to the fanbases across Europe to expressing their outrage in ways only football fans can.
It’s very, very, very personal.
Tom Levenson
@NotMax: Sorry my retinal projection system is still on back order.
We do what we can with the materials at hand…
craigie
@Tom Levenson:
Oh I already got it. I was just asking for some friends ;-)
NotMax
@Jim, Foolish Literalist
He was voted Most Likely To Suck?
//
Another Scott
Hubris is a hellofa thing.
Cheers,
Scott.
Anya
Greedy club owners tried to benefit from the pandemic with this naked power grab. They woken the fans and I am not sure if they can survive this without some sort of regulation. Something has to change.
The most offensive part of this is these clubs were built by poor people and now they’re owned by the worst of society.
HumboldtBlue
In case anyone needs some cute stuff for a quick break here ya go.
cain
@Tom Levenson:
I actually thought Tony Jay wrote the front post. :D
Jeffro
@Anya: even the not very good person Henry Olsen was having a chuckle about it in the WaPo earlier today…something about populism beating capitalism. Um not really, not usually, Henry. But we’ll take it. =)
Anya
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Is this why he had that maniacal laugh during his “isn’t shooting black people legal?” segment?
I wonder what is he getting so nervous about? It can’t be something racist because he’s open about his white supremacy.
mrmoshpotato
Rump. That is all.
mrmoshpotato
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
We all know he was even more of a POS douchecanoe in high school. That can’t be actual news. :)
Prometheus Shrugged
I like the artwork, but Nicolas de Stael’s Parc de Princes might have been even more perfect, given the theme of the post!
Anya
@Jeffro: Honestly, it’s heartwarming how all the fans were outraged about this, specially, the teams that joined the super league. I just hope they continue to direct their anger towards the greedy asshole owners and not the players.
Another Scott
‘night all.
Cheers,
Scott.
NotMax
@mrmoshpotarto
One-man minstrel show on talent night?
//
mrmoshpotato
That was sarcasm?
SiubhanDuinne
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Tucker Carlson has been taking potshots at Erik Wemple for at least the past four years. Have no idea what first started the feud, but if it means Wemple’s looking for things that will embarrass Carlson, it’s fine with me.
Steeplejack
@craigie:
I haven’t read the comments yet, so I apologize if someone has provided a cogent, detailed explanation that makes it all clear.
The simplest, stupidest way I could explain it to American non-soccer fans is that the proposed Super League is as if 20 powerful college football teams decided that only they could be in the Top 20 and only they could compete for bowl-game slots and the national championship. Everybody else, fuck off and enjoy your piddly seasons.
Villago Delenda Est
Seriously, what else do you expect from the sooper-geniuses who are behind FIFA?
Cheryl Rofer
I barely follow sports at all, but I couldn’t miss this Super League stuff coming into my Twitter timeline. I barely paid attention. Here is my summary of the action:
That’s it. Glad it went so quickly. It must not have lasted more than 24 hours.
burnspbesq
A richly deserved comeuppance for Florentino Perez. Let him slink away in disgrace, never to be seen again.
Fuck Real Madrid, an organization that combines the worst qualities of the New York Yankees, the University of North Carolina, and the Texas Republican Party.
mrmoshpotato
@NotMax:
Again with the “sarcasm”!
mrmoshpotato
@burnspbesq:
As a wise man once said, “Fuck the fucking Yankees!”
Not sure about UNC, but fuck the entire Rethuglican party!
Villago Delenda Est
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: “Mentally unbalanced man finds Tucker’s yearbook”.
So, Fucker found it after it went missing 35 years ago?
Just One More Canuck
Any “super league” without teams from Germany and France was doomed to fail. The German league has strong rules giving the fans a lot of say and the owner of Paris St Germaine is also a minister in the government of Qatar where the World Cup is next year. The arrogance of the president of Real Madrid (we’re doing this to save football) didn’t help the cause but this was a non starter and more of an attempt at shaking down UEFA than any real attempt at a new league. It just blew up in their faces a lot faster than anyone thought
BigJimSlade
@Tom Levenson: Hey Tom – different era painting for this post! Fwiw, I appreciate all the paintings you use with your posts :-)
Jeffro
YEOWCH!!!1!!
Roger Moore
@craigie:
To understand you need some background. Professional leagues just about everywhere except the US are built around a system of promotion and relegation. At the end of the season, the bottom teams in a league are relegated to the next lower league, and the top teams are promoted to the next league up. In the top league in each country, there’s nowhere for the top teams to be promoted to so they instead get a chance to play in a regional champions league the next season*.
A dozen of the top teams in Europe challenged this idea by declaring they were going to form their own super league that bypassed promotion and relegation and would go head to head with the existing champions league. The European governing body told them to go fuck themselves, and threatened sanctions against the teams for joining. The international governing body did the same and also threatened to ban players who participated. The teams are now rapidly backpedaling.
*The US doesn’t have promotion and relegation, but it does take part in a regional champions league.
Uncle Omar
@Steeplejack: Or, in baseball terms, imagine the NY Yankees, NY Mets, Boston Red Sox, Chicago Cubs, St, Louis Cardinals, and LA Dodgers decided to secede and form their own league with their own TV rights and networks and said “fcuk off” to the other 24 teams. Only to the 23rd power.
Jeffro
OT but reminder to all that tomorrow is Prince Day: there should be nothing going on your Spotify or YouTube or CD player (what’s that?) that isn’t purple through and through.
Ken
When I read Tom’s post I thought “This will be some sport thing it’s impossible for me to understand, like how they decide when a cricket game is over”. But congratulations to the commenters — you made it simple enough for me.
HumboldtBlue
@Cheryl Rofer:
That’s an excellent take other than this is just another flare-up of an ongoing issue.
Make no mistake, however, the supporter power is real. For one example, Germany mandates that every club be at least 50-plus one fan ownership for instance (Red Bull aside) meaning supporters have very real input into how the club operates and the clamor for that to be a European standard is unceasing.
There are a lot of parts involved but one part remains the key cog and that’s the grassroots level supporters.
burnspbesq
The owners of the six English clubs involved are an interesting lot:
American shopping-center developers (Manchester United)
Wal-Mart heir by marriage (Arsenal)
American hedge-fund managers, who also mismanage an iconic baseball team and who recently sold 10 percent of the business to LeBron James at what appears to be a scandalously excessive price (Liverpool)
Russian oligarch (Chelsea)
Gulf sheikdom’’s sovereign wealth fund (Manchester City)
Gazillionaire currency trader who ran away to the Bahamas one step ahead of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (Tottenham)
Just One More Canuck
@burnspbesq: that’s harsh about Real Madrid, and when I say harsh, I mean completely accurate
mrmoshpotato
@Uncle Omar:
Does Chicago get a third baseball team again under this idea? Go Whales!
HumboldtBlue
@mrmoshpotato:
Look up the story of what white supremacist North Carolinians did following a losing election compared to Jan. 6 except they won and overturned the results of the election.
They named the football stadium after the father and son who led the effort.
phdesmond
good painting!
mrmoshpotato
@Jeffro:
So we party like it’s 1999, and throw Florida out of the Union as a precaution?
ETA – scratch that. We just “gerrymander” the hell out of Florida, ie. split it up into several states, most of them Democratic.
NotMax
Cuervos! Cuervos! Cuervos!
:)
(Ignore that date at its end, it’s a preview trailer from a couple of years ago.)
Mary G
@HumboldtBlue: I have been skipping posts and tweets about this all day. I have only a vague idea of what happened and no interest at all in the outcome. So here’s a sweet pair of cats:
Yutsano
Saag murghee, samosas, garlic naan, and mango hibiscus tea. My only issue right now is lack of utensils.
My day was a bit of a saga. May regale the legend after consumption of much foods.
Omnes Omnibus
The people who run F1 are looking at this and saying, “My god, that is shockingly corrupt and greedy!”
HumboldtBlue
@Mary G:
Perfect.
Lymie
James Corden explains:
https://www.polygon.com/tv/22393852/james-corden-european-super-league-soccer-manchester-united-real-madrid-barcelona
MisterForkbeard
@Jeffro: Well, I feel like I both do and don’t want to know more.
sanjeevs
The Super League is a much worse debacle than New Coke.
The owners announced the League but had no Public Relations at all. Literally nothing in a sport that people talk about obsessively.
There was no start date – not even an idea if it would be months or years.
The owners had not informed the players or the coaches (who effectively act as spokesmen normally) of the plans (and certainly not the fans). The players had no reason to support it since there was no real plan, lots of fan anger and a likely salary cap.
The owners had no political cover. This was an easy win for Boris Johnson.
The funny thing is watching so many people realise these billionaires are actually morons. Maybe they’ll begin to ask why the Glazers, Kroenke etc were allowed to inherit such wealth instead of just taxing it to pay for hospitals and schools.
mrmoshpotato
@Yutsano:
Too soupy for the naan to be your utensils?
L85NJGT
The problem with the current system is the depressing regularity with which clubs fall into receivership.
FC Barcelona is in bad fiscal shape. Like missing payroll, broke-ass broke. If a club of that stature and global branding reach can get to that point, something has to give.
craigie
@Ken:
I think that one’s easy – it’s when the team that’s ahead says “that’s enough, we win”
Patrianakos
Isn’t that what the “Power 5” conferences did with the college football playoff?
LeftCoastYankee
The more you know about European soccer, the stupider this scheme is logistically (aka beyond the obvious blatant greed and disregard for the fans):
mrmoshpotato
@LeftCoastYankee: The More You Know
L85NJGT
@Patrianakos:
Basically. But more ham fisted, with less crumbs to the little guys. Also, they have to pay their players.
It scans reactive. A bad COVID year, plus no cartel rules to limit talent costs. Next up will be taking hatchets to payrolls.
LeftCoastYankee
@mrmoshpotato:
Fitting! It’s obviously stupid w/o knowing more.
But it’s almost beyond Trumpian stupid. Almost….
Yutsano
@mrmoshpotato: Quite the reverse. The naan was quite a good vessel to carry from container to mouth. The big issue is the restaurant also gave me rice. Oh well. I have other things to order over the next couple of days.
LeftCoastYankee
@sanjeevs:
And American Morons.
sanjeevs
@LeftCoastYankee: There were Spanish, Russian, Italian, British and Abu Dhabian (?) morons too.
Plenty to go around.
Mart
I love that painting. It looks a lot like how I played, always stoned. I was horrified recently reffing a game and the other ref got there early, called the cops, and got the kids busted for smoking weed before the game. I told him I usually played stoned. Didn’t mention that I usually reffed stoned too.
Roger Moore
@Ken:
That’s easy. There are three ways a cricket game can end:
In cases 1 and 2, the team that has more runs is the winner. In case 3, it’s a draw.
The trickier bit is how you decide when an innings is over. They can end either when the team is all out (10 of their 11 batters are out) or when they declare (they decide to end their turn early). Why should a team decide to end their turn at bat early? Because they’re afraid the game will exceed the time limit.
Mary G
Socialism rocks!
James E Powell
A while ago, I was musing on this very blog about purchasing a 12 string guitar. I mused for long enough that the guitar was sold before I ever made up my mind. Last weekend, another 12 string caught my eye. I didn’t dither, I dealt. It arrived yesterday and I am quite pleased with the guitar and myself.
Cursorial
I’ve always loved that painting. His Dynamism of a Cyclist is great too, even if it’s off-topic for this incomprehensible thread.
Steeplejack (phone)
@James E Powell:
What did you get?
billcinsd
@burnspbesq: It’s really more a Duke move than UNC
mrmoshpotato
@James E Powell: 12 string, eh?
piratedan
@billcinsd: Bill he’s correct, UNC has some less than awesome history, both in its recent past and not so recent past. It’s administrators throughout the years have been Confederate apologists and it’s had a sketchy past when it comes to blending athletics and academics. I should know, I went to school there.
There’s also a deep and abiding antipathy between Duke and Carolina that won’t be mended anytime soon, that’s wrapped up in State School versus Private School and even old money versus new money.
and while there are a score of its (UNC) alumni who are ratfink racist bastards, not everyone who came from there has used those tenets as a cultural lodestone. So I take Burnsie at his word about the institution itself, but not about everyone who matriculated there. YMMV
James E Powell
@Steeplejack (phone):
A 2015 Taylor 458e
Tony Jay
@cain:
Heh.
On the issue of this whole self-inflicted splatterwhack of bowel-sourced greed, I think most everything that can be said has been said.
evodevo
@HumboldtBlue:
Thank u…my knowledge of European/English soccer extends to knowing what Bundesliga means…lolol
SFAW
@mrmoshpotato:
He’s been gone almost 14 years now. I still miss him.
I thought of him yesterday when Rev. Sharpton was speaking, post-verdict.
SFAW
Has anyone done a wellness check on Amir? I imagine he’s OK now, but the initial bullshit could not have done him any favors.
Baud
@SFAW:
What happened?
SFAW
@Tony Jay:
I don’t know where to nominate you/this for the Nobel Peace Prize for Sheer Fucking Poetry, but if someone tells me, I’ll attempt to do it.
SFAW
@Baud:
I’m talking about the Soccerball clusterfuck. I wasn’t being serious. Sorry for not choosing my words better.
Baud
@SFAW:
Gotcha. He’s in the COVID thread FWIW.
SFAW
@Tony Jay:
Oh! OK, now I see. Thanks for clearing up my confusion.
Tony Jay
@SFAW:
What can I say? The man met the moment. 8-)
SFAW
My town generally has pretty good soccer teams, often state-tourney-qualifying level for both girls and boys. I’ll keep a lookout for Super League agents trying to get some of the U-10 teams and players to sign on.
Tony Jay
@SFAW:
Given how grievously toxic the whole Super League brand has become in just a few glorious days it’ll probably be the same two slightly shabby looking guys in a beat up People Carrier leaking oil and crumpled energy-bar wrappers from one Kidz Soccer Tourney to the next, frantically trying to get half a dozen names down on their subscription forms before they get run off by concerned parents.
A most fitting match for an astonishingly crass idea.
SixStringFanatic
@Jeffro: I will certainly being listening to lots of Prince today but, if we’re going to have an official Prince Day, where we celebrate the man, his music and his legacy, I would personally much rather that day be his birthday (June 7th) than this sad and awful anniversary.
Hoodie
@Tony Jay: As big as a fustercluck as this was, I wonder about the game plan of someone like Abramovich. There are rumors (planted?) that he wasn’t hot on the idea from the start. I wonder if he and some of the others were going along knowing it would implode, but the see the failure as a way to grease the skids for further emoluments, such as more money for the Champions League. Chelsea pulls out first, Abramovich gets to play good guy listening to the voice of the people (does Boris give him a green light on the visa if Chelsea pulls out?). IIRC, Barcelona and Real both have financial issues, so they would have been useful idiots for forwarding this plan.
evodevo
@Tony Jay:
OMG that’s a wonderful analysis and I’m not even a soccer fan
Tony Jay
@Hoodie:
If any of the club owners involved in this catastrophe, including Abramovich, ever intended to use the Super League fiasco so cunningly then they (and their team of crack socio-financial advisers) were smoking something culled from the droppings of Balinese pygmy elephants in the run up to and immediate aftermath of the announcement, because once they’d done it they were fucked sideways with a spinning canoe if they didn’t get right the fuck on the phone to every single journalist they ever filmed snorting charlie off an underage escort’s rigid member demanding that they include their heartfelt and entirely genuine misgivings about how everyone else involved was mishandling the situation in their coverage.
I think they all just convinced themselves that their franchises were sooooooooo important to the commercial success of European football that the lesser mortals running the game would buckle before their superior confidence, so they didn’t have to do anything more than announce their new hypercool brand was coming to the market in order to win the war over All The Money in one swell foop.
Didn’t work out that way for them, and I don’t think that the immediate resignation of Ed Woodward from Manchester United (God knows I’ll miss his pea-headed incompetence) is going to be the end of the blame-shifting blood-letting. Popcorn and beer, stat!
OTOH, I was surprised that Mourinho’s ousting as Spurs boss wasn’t revealed to be one of his patented PR moves. I was sure he’d be on the News ASAP, multi-million euro severence check in pocket, telling everyone how he’d been sacked because he couldn’t possibly betray the fans by going along with such a scheme and wasn’t he a hero for
bailing out of his team’s collapsing seasonstanding up to the Big Money Mob?Evidently not, though.
Tony Jay
@evodevo:
Nice to be able to rant about something other than politics for a change. 8-)
realbtl
@James E Powell: Congrats. I love the growl of a 12 string tuned to D or C.
burnspbesq
@Mary G:
Paxton will sue by COB Friday.
Villago Delenda Est
@Tony Jay: Tony, those were glorious rants. A great pleasure to read.
Tony Jay
@Villago Delenda Est:
Your nym, forevah and evah.
Remember when you used to get ribbed for being over-furious at those people? Such innocent times.