Manchester United, Manchester City, Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea and Tottenham are already targets for sections of the Spanish media, having pulled out of the European Super League.
News broke about the ESL on Sunday, with Ole Gunnar Solskjaer quizzed on it after his Manchester United side beat Burnley. Some of his players, specifically captain Harry Maguire, were said to be so angry their manager had been left to answer questions about something he didn’t know much about, that they confronted Ed Woodward.
Bruno Fernandes, Marcus Rashford and Luke Shaw took to social media to slam the idea, and Manchester City’s Pep Guardiola, and later Kevin De Bruyne and Aymeric Laporte, made clear they weren’t keen.
Liverpool’s Jurgen Klopp was clearly furious that he’d been put in the spotlight, and that was clear after the Leeds match, with Jordan Henderson and James Milner leading the opposition from the players at Anfield.
Tottenham managed to add to the drama by sacking Jose Mourinho on Monday and then putting Ryan Mason in charge, and at Chelsea there was a protest which perhaps pushed the whole ESL idea over the edge.
Hundreds of Chelsea fans turned up outside Stamford Bridge, to make their feelings very clear, and not long after that the dominoes started to fall.
Real Madrid president Florentino Perez has been left looking rather silly. He saw the ESL as a way to save the finances of his club, and there wasn’t the same level of opposition in Spain as has been seen elsewhere.
Therefore, a backlash against the Premier League 6 was inevitable, and it’s already starting.
Ana Rosa Quintana, a well known TV presenter and journalist in Spain, is quoted by Mundo Deportivo as saying: “I was not at all clear about it, but when the presidents of different governments opposed it, I was in favour.
“I think the project they have presented was a bit in the shadows and there were still very important issues to be resolved. The British teams are cowards, they sign a document and the next minute Boris Johnson says I don’t like this and they get off the boat.”
Let the games commence.
