On the European "Super League" and Why It's Possibly a Red Herring

The Footballing fraternity erupted in outrage yesterday as twelve of Europe's top clubs, including the "Big 6" English clubs, announced they had signed up to a European Super League, a closed shop of elite clubs that would compete against each other. Now, this idea has been mooted for as long as I've been a passionate follower of the game, and there has been clear mission creep over the years as the European Champions Cup became the Champions League, which then admitted teams who weren't actually "champions". However, the fact that these clubs have now officially declared their intent has brought home the reality that maybe, just maybe, this thing might now be happening.

However, what will be the outcome, and has this been done as a deflection tactic? Will it turn out that this move is designed to get the fraternity to accept what it considers the lesser of two huge evils?

Initial Reaction

The bombshell agreement hit in time for Gary Neville and co to comment on it during Sky's live coverage, and the reaction from Neville was predictable in its passion and outrage.

For me, as a supporter of one of the "have nots" of the game, whose existence is driven by occasional player sales (that in itself denigrated by the EPPP formula that means the top clubs can cherry pick lower division talent for peanuts) and the odd trip to the top clubs in the cups, I labour under the forlorn hope that one day we will break through and become one of the "haves" of the game instead. The beauty of the game is that I've seen the players of little old Exeter go toe to toe, and indeed draw with, teams like Manchester United, Liverpool and Everton. On one memorable night in January 2005 I was stood on the Big Bank as Cristiano Ronaldo, Wayne Rooney, Ryan Giggs, Paul Scholes et al were run all the way before seeing us off 2-0 while we were a non-league side.

Yesterday's announcement threatens future generations from being able to experience the same euphoria. It shows that these six clubs care not for the machinations of the pyramid, rather whatever furthers their own ambitions.

Now, unlike others I don't begrudge them their ambition. However, they can't have their cake and eat it. If they are willing to take a draconian step to sign up to a new league, the reaction needs to be similarly draconian. The FA (and UEFA) need to step in to ensure that this European Super League operates in complete isolation - and while it may be thought that this could be a measure to cut off their nose to spite their face, I'm sure the FA would enjoy broad support were they to strip the "Big 6" of their FA affiliation. To that end, that would lead to the clubs being banned from competing in FA-sanctioned competitions, while I would go a step further and ban the clubs from signing players registered to FA-affiliated clubs. The clubs' players would also be banned from competing under the FA banner (i.e. for England) - something which would need to be done in tandem with UEFA and FIFA in order to make the players consider whether they wish to compete in their closed shop or in global competitions such as the World Cup. Many may choose the former - that's their prerogative and they're welcome to decide.

The Stalking Horse Approach

The reason I considered in the title of this piece that it's possibly a red herring, is that the timing of the European Super League announcement was very convenient, and the outrage generated could allow for something almost as heinous to slip through without fanfare. In this I'm minded of an episode of "Yes, Prime Minister", where Jim Hacker is trying without success to get the Treasury to agree to a tax cut of £1.5 billion. In order to get this through, he instead pretends to show support for a plan which would cost the Treasury £4 billion in tax revenue through taxing smoking into oblivion. The Treasury, spooked at the thought of losing £4 billion, decides to drop its opposition to the £1.5 billion tax cut.

So where does this fit in, and why is the timing so important? Well, today UEFA is due to announce planned changes to the Champions League format which, under normal circumstances, would lead to similar outrage. While I've not had the chance to go into the proposed format in detail, the basics seem to suggest a revamped group stage with extra teams and extra matches. Clubs involved would have to make decisions around whether they could compete in domestic cup competitions (for England this would mean probably withdrawing from, or entering their U23 team, into the EFL Cup), and there are further possible implications around the size of the Premier League and the ability to shoehorn 38 matches into a season where the top clubs are playing a stack of extra Champions League games.

As a result, there is a nagging feeling that what we have here is the Hacker tactic. The FA and their equivalents in the other major UEFA nations are faced with bad idea A or bad idea B. Bad idea A means the FA has to do some major reorganisation to accommodate the "Big 6", perhaps reducing the size of the Premier League, perhaps scrapping or totally downgrading the EFL Cup. Bad Idea B means losing the "Big 6" (and their revenue generation and support) totally. Which is, therefore, the lesser of two evils?

Either way, the biggest losers from this blackmail are the mugs who turn up week in week out at grounds up and down the country. Perhaps it's time the FA called the bluff of the "Big 6" and told them to go and play in their league and revoke their FA affiliation. Should this ESL be a failure, the clubs would be welcome to reapply for FA affiliation, but they'd have to start at the bottom of the pyramid. The thought of the Manchester clubs and Liverpool playing in the North West Counties league would be very funny indeed.

The Sinister and Cynical Framing of the Narrative - It's Good for the Ratings

Since the world was plunged into Covid-related chaos, I've developed a keen interest in the "Culture War" being fought in the US and which has, by proxy, transferred over to the UK. Quite frankly it's horrifying, and has laid bare the power and triangulation the US media and "Big Tech" has achieved. In writing this piece I'm grateful in particular to one individual in the US, whose journalism and nightly podcasts I've become an avid viewer of - Tim Pool was someone I'd not heard of this time last year, I'd describe him as someone whose politics generally tend towards the left of centre (yet he was described on his show as "far right" by a leftist guest) and anti-authoritarian, but who has been at the forefront of the utter madness that has descended on US politics and media. Pool's background in journalism saw him on the front line at the Occupy Wall Street rallies while working for Vice, amongst other things.

Despite the fact the country tends towards a right of centre trajectory, the overwhelming majority of the US mainstream news media (TV, print journalism) comes from a centre-left to hard left bent. This may have not been so obvious until recent years, but with the catalyst of a populist from outside the political fraternity finding himself in the top job, these news sources have decided that there's ratings to be had in divide and rule, painting said populist as the Devil Incarnate. 

By 2016, much of what has been called the "MSM" was in decline, while online platform Twitter was floundering. However, the advent of "Orange Man Bad" saw a resurgence, credited as the "Trump Bump". His prolific use of Twitter aroused interest in the platform, causing a spike in registrations. People started to tune in to the likes of CNN to hear the likes of Brian Stelter reporting on the latest words and actions of the President and why this is yet another case of him being Literally Hitler.

Not Rigged - "Fortified"

Fast forward to 2020, and the craziest election I can remember in a major democracy - had it taken place anywhere else and, more importantly, without an incumbent that had caused so much angst, it would have been widely derided as a farce. While most of the claims around election rigging have been discredited, it's no doubt that various shadow campaigns were being fought, mainly by those with enormous financial and opinion influences - indeed Time magazine ran an article in February claiming the election had been "fortified" by major corporations. While many changes to the electoral systems in several states which gave rise to suspicion were claimed to be incorporated as a result of Covid, documents suggest the changes were being legislated on at state level long before. 

Media Suppression of Bad News

One of the ways in which the campaign was manipulated came in the form of suppression of news, with one story in particular encapsulating this. In the weeks leading up to the poll, the New York Post broke the news of a particularly damning scandal involving Joe Biden's son, Hunter, which had massive implications for Biden. The main crux of the story centred around documentation around how Hunter Biden came to be appointed in a senior role at a Ukrainian company, Burisma, and how Biden potentially interfered in a criminal investigation into the company by blackmailing the Ukrainian government into firing its chief prosecutor and dropping the investigation. Biden himself is on video boasting about how he got the prosecutor fired (albeit not linking it to Burisma). Further news emerged about a trip to China on Air Force Two (the Vice President's plane) for Hunter to tie up a private equity deal, while e-mails implied that the "big guy" was due his cut.

How was this news treated? With a combination of indifference or disdain. If your news diet consisted only of CNN and the Washington Post, you probably never heard about this scandal before November - indeed polling after the election showed that many people hadn't heard of the Hunter Biden scandal, and a large number of those further said they wouldn't have voted for Biden had they known. Twitter and Facebook responded to the allegations by suspending the New York Post's accounts (surely in clear breach of Section 230), while claiming that the reports were unsubstantiated (the old chestnut "Russian interference" was raised too in order to discredit the stories). In short, it was a co-ordinated suppression campaign aimed at getting bad news about Biden out of the public domain.

It was only after Biden was safely ensconced in the White House that the same media outlets quietly admitted the stories were true and that Hunter Biden was under investigation by the FBI, incredulously asking why this story didn't break sooner - because you suppressed it, numbskulls!

Play the Man, Not the Ball

Shutting down the story is part of the puzzle, shutting down the storytellers is another. James O'Keefe heads up Project Veritas, an investigative journalism company known for its undercover sting operations. His latest sting saw a CNN executive admit on camera that the broadcaster had been engaged in a propaganda campaign aiming at ousting Trump, but also that their coverage of protests in the past year has been deliberately aimed at stoking the fires by race-baiting. Previous videos released by Project Veritas included ones showing ballot harvesting during the election.

The establishment hates O'Keefe and his methods, as he relies on methods to get his stories that are often considered somewhat nefarious - for example it's said that his CNN sting was something of a "honey trap" involving the use of dating app Tinder.

So what happens with O'Keefe? His Wikipedia profile is one long smear campaign, saying he specialises in "disinformation" and describes him as "far right" (he isn't). The establishment media also smears him at every opportunity, while last night it emerged that he has been permanently banned by Twitter, for apparently posting using multiple aliases, a claim he denies. The issue here is that O'Keefe is notoriously litigious, and he tends to win. He has vowed to sue Twitter, which could have far-reaching implications.

A Mass of White Noise

Tim Pool noted that at the time of Occupy Wall Street, the major corporations in the US decided they needed a diversionary tactic in order to turn people against each other - suddenly, and no doubt coincidentally race relations came to the fore.

A lot of this has come to a head in the past year, with the catalyst being the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis last May. The trial of the police officer involved, Derek Chauvin, is close to its conclusion, and it's anticipated that almost no matter what the verdict, Minneapolis will burn. However, Minneapolis is, and has been, burning anyway - exacerbated by the accidental shooting of wanted criminal Daunte Wright just outside Minneapolis last week. Riots have been taking place on a nightly basis - but you wouldn't know it if you don't look properly. The establishment media have taken it upon themselves to refuse to call anything related to Black Lives Matter and Antifa unrest in the past year as "riots" - indeed when the now former Chief of Police in the Daunte Wright case, Tim Gannon, called what was going on a "riot", he was roundly admonished by the watching media, telling him it's not a riot. His response was to say that he was actually at the scene, before unsurprisingly deciding to resign his post when he didn't receive support from the elected officials in the city.

And here is where further triangulation shows the lengths the establishment will go to in order to change the narrative. Pool's show on Monday night performed a search on Google for "riots", with almost all the search results relating to stories about the incidents in Washington DC in January. A similar search on the lesser-known search engine DuckDuckGo, and indeed Bing, yielded results about recent events in Minneapolis. In order to see any content via Google, they had to replace the search term "riots" with "protests".

Then there is the coverage of the Chauvin trial itself. In chiming with O'Keefe's sting with the CNN executive talking about race-baiting as it makes for good ratings-heavy news, the establishment media has framed the trial of Chauvin as being one-way traffic in favour of the prosecution, some coverage even calling it the "murder" of Floyd, which would surely contravene sub-judice rules somewhere along the line. However, for those following the minutiae of the trial they wouldn't recognise this at all, as the defence has built a more than compelling case casting doubt on whether Chauvin's actions actually caused Floyd's death - for example, one of the prosecution experts admitted that had they seen Floyd's body in isolation, they'd have concluded he died either of a drug overdose or heart disease. In fact, yesterday the judge came very close to declaring a mistrial. 

Could it be that, for the sake of ratings, organisations like CNN are painting the case as open and shut, only to stand back and film the riots (sorry, mostly peaceful protests) when the verdict comes back differently? Could it then provide a further narrative to run and run with about how the justice system is rigged?

It could all be rather fanciful of course, but the evidence is mounting, and it's compelling, about how the narrative is being framed partly to prop up news organisations that were in danger of floundering now they no longer have their panto villain keeping them afloat.