In the spring of 2021, the world of soccer turned upside down. After months of rumors, the European Super League burst onto the scene with 12 high-level clubs pledging their membership.
It was a very quick rise and fall for the ESL. After just 48 hours the league collapsed after nine of the 12 teams pulled out due to fan backlash.
Any football fan can recall the insanity of that 48 hours. The protests both online and in the streets dominated the news cycle. During that time rival fans fought for the same goal and they succeeded.
But what if I told you that a super league may already exist?
As the January transfer window is coming to an end one domestic league has spent 250 million pounds more than the other four leagues in the big five.
This domestic league of course is the English Premier league. In the January transfer window, Serie A spent 5.9 million, Ligue 1 Spent 9.3 million, the Bundesliga spent 14.8 million, Laliga spent 16.7 million and the EPL spent a whopping 315.7 million. This spending has raised questions on spending limits for all teams.
The problem is that in the sport of soccer and in any sport for that matter spending does not always equate to winning. An EPL team has only lifted the champions league trophy on three occasions since 2010. On top of that, this trend is nothing new to European football. If you were to include the eternity of the 2022-2023 season EPL is 2.54bn euros with the runner-up being Serie A with 763.27m euros.
However daunting this spending discrepancy may seem for the purity of European competition it is not time to sound the alarm just yet. To calm the nerves of fans I would cite the English club Everton as an example. The club currently placed 19th and is the Premier League’s fourth biggest spender with a gross of 536.5 million pounds. That leaves them with an average of 55 million per season.
Everton is a perfect example that spending money doesn’t always point to more success but the spending discrepancy is certainly something for fans to look out for in the future.
