It feels like a long time ago that the European Super League project was launched, and more details continue to filter about what led up to the announcement.
In fact, it was was back in 2021 that 12 of Europe’s top clubs had launched the creation of a new ‘Super League’ which would be self-governed.
The plan was that it would replace their participation in the Champions League, and while it was met by the threat of severe sanctions from UEFA, the idea of a relaunch has been constantly mentioned.
Today, the French newspaper L’Equipe (via Radio Rossonera) talks about the meeting that took place in 2020 between the Juventus president Agnelli and the president of PSG Nassir Al-Khelaifi.
Last January, in an interview with the Financial Times, Agnelli mentions the existence of this project, inspired by the Danish physicist Niels Bohr, who worked on the atomic bomb in the twentieth century.
For the first time the two talked about it in a private meeting, in which they discussed the possibility (and the concrete desire) of creating a new continental competition with the features of a closed league.
L’Equipe reveals that this discussion took place at the end of 2020, a few months before the storm that broke out in the world of football in April 2021. In that case, the proposal involved Juventus, Barcelona, Real Madrid and nine other major clubs.
As far as the ‘Bohr’ project is concerned, however, it was promoted by the president of PSG and then developed by a British company. To simplify, there were two difference Super League projects on the table at the same time.
Calcio e Finanza explained that this tournament would have featured 14 clubs with the highest incomes plus some invited clubs including Milan and Lyon and, as in the better-known Super League, some clubs coming from European competitions and not directly from their league.
The 24 teams would have been divided into four groups of 6 each, but the biggest curiosity is that participants in the ‘Bohr Plan’ would no longer play matches in their respective national leagues.
Instead, they would have their B teams play there. L’Equipe writes that the idea was, verbatim, ‘total secession from the domestic leagues in order to maximise revenues’.
