UEFA: Super League players would be ineligible for World Cup, Euro
Sports Desk, Apr 19 (EFE).- Players who compete in the breakaway Super League would be barred from international FIFA and UEFA competitions, the head of the Europe’s football governing body said on Monday.
“The players who will play in teams that might play in the closed league will be banned from playing in World Cup and Euros,” Aleksander Ceferin said.
“They could not represent national team in any matches,” the Slovenian added in his first public reaction to the announcement of a new tournament with Europe’s most powerful clubs, a plan that conflicts with UEFA’s Champions League.
Spearheaded by Real Madrid’s chairman Florentino Perez, who would become CEO of the Super League, the plan envisions an elite competition with some of the continent’s biggest clubs playing against each other on a weekly basis.
The Premier League’s Manchester City, Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea and Tottenham Hotspur; LaLiga’s Real Madrid, Atletico de Madrid and Barcelona and Seria’s AC Milan, Inter Milan and Juventus agreed to become the founding clubs of the Super League.
The tournament would comprise 20 teams, including the 15 founders, who would not face relegation, in addition to five competitors that qualify based on their performance in the previous season.
Ceferin said the new tournament is a “disgraceful, self-serving project from a select few clubs in Europe fuelled by greed above all else.”
“This idea is a spit in the face of all football lovers and our society as well. We must not let them take it away from us,” he added. EFE
ta/jt
