UEFA “has confidence” in the compliance with European law of its new rules on competing competitions such as the Super League, it explained Thursday in a press release, minimizing the impact on the form inflicted on it by the European justice.
“This judgment does not mean an approval or validation of the so-called Super League. It rather highlights a pre-existing gap” in UEFA regulations, “a technical aspect which has already been recognized” and corrected in June 2022 with new texts, affirms the body in a press release.
When twelve major European clubs, Real Madrid and FC Barcelona in the lead, announced in April 2021 their intention to set up a private elite tournament competing head-on with the Champions League, UEFA and Fifa threatened to exclude them from their competitions and sanction their players, based on a few lines in their statuses.
If the project collapsed in less than 48 hours, under pressure in particular from English supporters hostile to this ultra-rich club, the promoters of the Super League challenged the threats then made by the two authorities before a judge in Madrid, considering that they amounted to “abuse of a dominant position”.
The European Court of Justice, seized by the Madrid judge, also ruled on Thursday that the rules of the UEFA era were contrary to European competition law, since they were not governed “by any criteria ensuring their transparent, objective, non-discriminatory and proportionate.
However, UEFA considers that it has filled this gap in the meantime, since it adopted in the summer of 2022 a 24-page regulation providing for an authorization system for “international interclub competitions”.
The body based in Nyon (Switzerland) “remains determined to defend the European football pyramid”, jointly with “national federations, leagues, clubs, supporters, players, coaches, EU institutions, governments and partners,” she added.
The Football Supporters Europe organization, for its part, felt that there was “no room” for a relaunch of the Super League project, promising to “continue to fight” to prevent it.
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