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The Big Six had one big weapon, to break away, and that has blown up in their faces

It was never anything but a vulgar land grab; a putsch that deserved to be quashed Expand

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It was never anything but a vulgar land grab; a putsch that deserved to be quashed

It was never anything but a vulgar land grab; a putsch that deserved to be quashed

It was never anything but a vulgar land grab; a putsch that deserved to be quashed

Jason Burt

The shallow, desperate, immoral, chiselling European Super League is dying.

And apart from a few self-obsessed, self-centred club owners who tried to force it through and destroy football as we know it, it will not be mourned.

It was a plot that deserved an ignominious end and how pathetic that less than 72 hours after it was exposed it looks to be over. Where was the real belief, the conviction that this was the right thing to do?

That it would save a sport rather than tear it apart? It was never anything but a vulgar land grab; a putsch that deserved to be quashed and, as so often with such unconvincing rebellions, it is failing.

For the Premier League plotters, now comes the reckoning. Manchester City and Chelsea - the two clubs who never appeared comfortable with it and who arrived late and under pressure to be involved - are withdrawing and one of the chief conspirators is quitting.

Ed Woodward has resigned as Manchester United’s executive vice-chairman and although sources have suggested he was going to go at the end of this season anyway, it sure is a strange coincidence. The truth is he could not have survived, particularly not when other Premier League clubs wanted his scalp.

Make no mistake, the architects of this plan still have moves to make and it will be interesting to see how the American owners of United, Liverpool and Arsenal take it from here. They have thick enough skins and a love of the dollar to try and brazen it out but that would be, not for the first time, a gross underestimation of the opposition they have now mobilised.

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In fact that is one of the positive consequences of this tawdry affair. The Premier League, as an organisation, needed to win a big fight, having stumbled through the pandemic and Project Restart, and now it has.

Hopefully there is no turning back for them. After all – and this is the most important point – the ‘Big Six’ had one big weapon they could threaten to use and that was always to break away and abandon the Premier League.

Well, now that weapon has blown up in their faces. They remain important, they remain the cash cows, but life goes on without them.

There should be one more significant outcome. This should not only be the end of the ESL but the absolute end for Project Big Picture which also so significantly threatened English football.

Around £4million has been wasted by the Premier League on a strategic review to appease the ‘Big Six’, to try and keep them happy and on-board.

But what can they now do? They cannot threaten to break away again because they now know the reaction that provokes. They should be told they no longer enjoy special privileges and that includes removing their representatives from the Premier League’s internal committees.

Will the fans of these clubs ever feel the same about them under their present ownership? It is unlikely. The owners have trampled on their dreams, their love, their bond and once that has happened it is hard to feel the same ever again.

Maybe the owners of United, Liverpool, Arsenal and Tottenham will give it another go. But there are just four of them and that feels a lot less threatening than the ‘Big Six’. Besides, the stance taken by Bayern Munich and Paris Saint-Germain means that, whatever happens, this will never be a Super League.

This was no way to behave, and no way to run a football club. It would be in everyone’s best interests if the Glazers, the Kroenkes and Fenway Sport Group just accepted that what they want to do – what they have tried to impose – will not work. They made their play and it has failed. Either they change or they go. (© Telegraph Media Group Limited 2021)

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Telegraph Media Group Limited [2021]

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