**HOW THE SUPER LEAGUE CAUSED THE DEPARTURE OF LIONEL MESSI**
So, together with other giants with feet of clay, the Bar?a directors embarked on the SuperLeague project. For months, together with Real, Atletico, Juve, Milanese clubs and six English teams, they put together a colossal and immensely profitable dossier. At the time, when the deal was made official last April, there was talk of a payout of between 4 and 6 billion euros per year and up to 300 million in bonuses for each dissident team. All financed by an American investment bank and with funds from all over the world. Far, far away from the few tens of millions of euros given to the participants of the Champions League. On Bar?a's side, creating the SuperLeague and taking part in it also meant saving its accounts, solvency and stabilizing its finances. And therefore, and above all, to keep Messi in his squad, finally having the means to extend him. A reasoning that is quite simple to understand. However, after 48 hours of popular and political rebellion, after the direct threat of UEFA, the SuperLeague project has been abandoned. At least, abandoned... Let's rather say suspended, while legal and institutional legitimacy tracks are exploited. Because, for these clubs, and more particularly for Bar?a, staying in the bosom of UEFA and, to a lesser extent, of the Spanish Liga, is not/no longer enough. On the one hand, last month the Iberian justice gave reason to Bar?a and Real in their desire to create an independent and private league, demanded the removal of the sanctions and, above all, asked that the case be pleaded at the European Court of Justice, so that European law recognizes the application of strict competition and the freedom of enterprise.
For a good season now, it was known that Bar?a needed money and that the club, beyond its management mistakes, had suffered a lot from the coronavirus crisis, between the economic slowdowns and the closure of sports venues. Clearly, the losses were accumulating dangerously and the situation was reaching a point of no return... but Lionel Messi had to be extended. The six-time winner of the Ballon d?Or, the club's nugget, the jewel of the Masia, saw his huge contract expire and, if nothing was done, the club risked seeing him leave for free. However, to keep his number 10, the club had to pay a minimum of 50 million euros per year, not counting a probable signing bonus for the extension. Even though the Catalan press kept saying that the Pulga brought up to 200 million euros per year to the club, between marketing, commercial and ticketing revenues, it was not enough, the economic situation was too heavy.
**A hope named SuperLeague**
So, together with other giants with feet of clay, the Bar?a directors embarked on the SuperLeague project. For months, together with Real, Atletico, Juve, Milanese clubs and six English teams, they put together a colossal and immensely profitable dossier. At the time, when the deal was made official last April, there was talk of a payout of between 4 and 6 billion euros per year and up to 300 million in bonuses for each dissident team. All financed by an American investment bank and with funds from all over the world. Far, far away from the few tens of millions of euros given to the participants of the Champions League. On Bar?a's side, creating the SuperLeague and taking part in it also meant saving its accounts, solvency and stabilizing its finances. And therefore, and above all, to keep Messi in his squad, finally having the means to extend him. A reasoning that is quite simple to understand.However, after 48 hours of popular and political rebellion, after the direct threat of UEFA, the SuperLeague project has been abandoned. At least, abandoned... Let's rather say suspended, while legal and institutional legitimacy tracks are exploited. Because, for these clubs, and more particularly for Bar?a, staying in the bosom of UEFA and, to a lesser extent, of the Spanish Liga, is not/no longer enough. On the one hand, last month the Iberian justice gave reason to Bar?a and Real in their desire to create an independent and private league, demanded the removal of the sanctions and, above all, asked that the case be pleaded at the European Court of Justice, so that European law recognizes the application of strict competition and the freedom of enterprise.
**Investment funds to arbitrate**
Except that on the other hand, Javier Tebas' La Liga, aware of its economic difficulties, has negotiated an agreement to sell 10% of the shares of its commercial company to a wealthy investment fund and specialist in sports investments, CVC Partners, for 2.7 billion euros. The aim is, in exchange, to give up the management and monetization of digital data, to recover a significant amount of money to redistribute to clubs, including Bar?a and Real. Basically, in Tebas's mind, this meant enough extra money to compensate for the losses and manage to finance, for example, the extension of Lionel Messi.
But putting 2.7 billion dollars into a championship whose two main teams remained in favor of a dissident competition could have upset - at the very least - CVC Partners. The latter, as in Italy where they had proposed a deal before it was rejected, most certainly imposed a clause in the contract forbidding any participant, and therefore any beneficiary of the money injected, to participate in another championship. In other words, "you'll get the money, but above all, don't go play in the SuperLeague." Thus, Messi may have been a collateral victim of the desire to create this new competition, may even have been instrumentalized for a broader purpose. It is explained: the Spaniards, in the first place Real and Bar?a, who want this SuperLeague, did not want to lock themselves into a national championship that would not be remunerative enough and too closed locally. That is why they rejected the agreement in principle with CVC Partners and wrote off the potential 2.7 billion euros.
**Would too much regulation kill regulation?**
This is how we arrive at the current situation: as it is, without SuperLeague and without an agreement with CVC, Bar?a has no money to sign Messi. One of the best players in the history of Bar?a will not stay at the club and will not finish his career in Catalonia. All this, in some way, to satisfy the greater desire of internationalization of the leaders. Then, beyond this single, very significant case of the SuperLeague, another point reflects how much the two Spanish giants want to secede: the regulation of Iberian football. Since 2008 and the subprime crisis, Spanish football has been deeply controlled and legislated, with an a priori salary cap, based on a limitation and a cap on the ratio of the "wage bill to the anticipated budget for the coming season". This is what blocked the approval and validation of Messi's contract and therefore led to his departure. And this, Real and Bar?a do not want anymore. They no longer want an additional, superior and independent authority, the Liga of Javier Tebas if necessary, to decide for them and prevent them from being able to do what they want, without constraint and without control. Hence their wish to create a SuperLeague and to leave, definitively, the national authorities and regulations.
So it was already historic to see Messi leave Bar?a, and it could be even more historic, with his departure, to see a football revolution accelerate. A football that would move towards a globalized model, out of the ground and totally disconnected from economic and economic realities. All this after the departure of a man, Lionel Messi, who probably left to join PSG, a club that had, last spring, refused, by conviction or by interest, the Super League. Comical?