The sports world was heavily affected by the onset of the pandemic. While numerous sports were impacted, the sport that was affected the most was soccer. In soccer, typically, there are numerous separate leagues in each country in the world. However, because of the pandemic, teams have lost large amounts of money as fans have not been allowed to attend games in-person for over a year now. This has led to financial troubles for Europe’s top teams. These troubles are so concerning that team presidents and owners are seeking out every single source of potential income. Many of these top team presidents and owners recently made the decision to create a brand new league. 

The Super League was announced on April 18th, 2021 and it said that 12 of the biggest teams across Europe were going to leave their domestic leagues to play in this exclusive league. Three of the teams were from Spain, six were from England, and three were from Italy. The teams from Spain were Real Madrid, FC Barcelona, and Atletico Madrid. The six teams from England were namely, Chelsea, Manchester United, Manchester City, Arsenal, Liverpool, and Tottenham Hotspur. The three teams from Italy were Inter Milan, AC Milan, and Juventus. Some of these teams are in debt and by joining this league, those debt-riddled clubs would be able to take part in the splitting of a grand total of 4.17 billion dollars. That would be about 123.7 million to 431 million dollars per club. This money would be provided by the Global Leader in Finances, JP Morgan. In order for this Super League to work, these teams would have to leave their domestic leagues and would be removed from the Union of European Football Associations Champions(UEFA) league otherwise known as the UCL. The UCL is currently the most prestigious soccer competition in Europe. It was created in 1955 and every year since the top teams have competed to win the tournament to be crowned best soccer team in Europe. The three leagues that would be affected would have been The Premier League from England, Serie A from Italy, and the La Liga from Spain. Each of these teams would be removed from their own domestic leagues to make the Super League. That would result in each of the three losing money, from decreased viewership to fewer fans to fill the stadiums. 

  The man who was behind the Super League was the president of Real Madrid, Florentino Perez. He was able to convince all the other owners and presidents of these teams to join the league thinking that the fans would love and embrace it. However, the fans and the soccer community did the exact opposite, protesting against this idea and rejecting it almost immediately as the news broke. Two prominent soccer players, Gary Neville, a soccer legend who played for Manchester United, and Jamie Carragher, another soccer legend who played for Liverpool spoke out against this new league. These two men helped spark a successful protest all over the world by uniting fans regardless of race, gender, and age. Many fans showed that they were against this new league by changing their profile pictures on their social media account to the logo of the Super League with an X on it, symbolizing their disapproval. Fans did more than just change their profile pictures, they also went out to the stadiums of the teams that were going to join this Super League and protested by chanting and hanging up banners. The banners said that these teams had died and therefore had ruined the sport. These protests had thus caught the notice of the team owners and presidents.

After a lot of backlash and protest from countless fans, all six teams from England decided to leave the Super League. With the membership of the Super League sliced almost in half, the other remaining owners put a pause on this project. There are still protests from the fans who want the owners of these Super League clubs to be removed from their positions, so they do not ruin this beautiful game.