I didn't quite understand everything; however, on the principle... what a load of bollocks.

A European league as you mention would lead to the destruction of all European domestic competition.

This sort of thing was first mentioned by Bayern Munich when the G13/14 (whatever it is) first developed... the primary reason for them doing so was they could see that the German League was losing its appeal and Bayern were going to lose out... which they have.

Now it's being mentioned again by the owners of top european clubs, most recently Senor Perez. The reason for this is they see the domestic league as an inconvenience. All they see are 17 other clubs in the league taking money that could be theirs, so they want rid of the other 17 clubs, have all the big clubs join together and get richer together.

One: What player is going to stay at a club if they never have opportunity to play in this European league? If Liverpool, Chelsea, Man U, and Arsenal never get relegated from this competition, when will Everton, Villa etc ever be able to be promoted? They won't.

Two: Our club's rescources will drop. TV revenue will fall, sponsorship will fall, many many revenue streams will stop. It would lead to the collapse of many a great club.

So basically, No, what a load of bollocks. If it did happen, I’d just start following my second team... Palmeiras in Brazil, and forget about football in Europe altogether.

Stupid idea that will kill football (apart from the superdooper money league) stone dead.

Tony Anetts - good one for sticking your neck out...but I don’t see how it would work.

As Tony W says it would kill other football - all the money would float up to the uber 25!!

What a load of shite, do you even know anything about football? Well you certainly haven’t done your homework here, because off the top of my head — Rubin won the Russian league not CSKA, AS Roma didnt even finish Top 4 in Serie A, PSV didn’t even finish second in a piss poor Duch league, Hamburg did not finish Top 2, Werder did not finish Top 4 — so what is your logic, Aussie Rules?

If a lot of these teams you list haven't even qualified for Europe''s top club competition, what gives you the right to state that they should automatically go into some European super league???

Everton’s current set of players are considerably better than a number of the teams listed here but the top four in our division are vastly superior to 90% of the teams proposed.

This is weird. There are 8 teams in the list who would over a full season struggle to get into the top half of the Premier League, 3 would be relegated.

More Summertime madness.

Talk about sign your own death warrant.

I know you are down under, but your thinking is upside down!

I think it is a great idea — but with one addition: all the clubs left in the national leagues agree that any person or coach or manager who has played for the teams in this European League will not be allowed to ever play in the National League or manage in them. And if they do, the sanction is to be thrown out of the league.

So what 18-year-old star is going to sign up to a big European team — don’t make it, career over. Any 22-year-old knows that, 4 years from now — career could be over. Manager fails, get sacked... out of work until another idiot club in the European League signs him. Only people playing are 28-year-olds looking for a final payday or the salaries will need to be so big that one contract is enough for the rest of your life.

OK, it will take 10 years but by then all these 25 teams will have gone the way of Bradford Park Avenue and Everton will be 3 years away from having won more English titles than any other club.

Like it, Like it...

This was brought up to Uefa about 8-9 years ago by a media company (owned by Berlusconi the AC Milan owner), and Uefa responded by creating the Champions League as we know it today to combat it.

It's resurfaced again due to Real Madrid’s chairman banging on to the media about how good it would be. The only reason he thinks it would be good is all down to greed. He has spent close to £200mil in this transfer market and now needs to recoup that money. He sees an elite European League as a way of bringing in more money, as the Spanish League still doesn’t have the financial rewards like the Premier League does.

If a ’Super’ league was ever created, it would be the death to the majority of national leagues and many major clubs who aren’t in the new league. Clubs like ourselves, Villa and Spurs would probably go under due to the lack of funding from television and prize money. Just look at Leeds (and hopefully Newcastle :) ) the drop into a lesser league after spending big, nearly killed them.

Lastly, how many players like Lescott, Arteta, Cahill & Jags etc.... would want to stay with us, instead of playing in the new league?

There would be no relegation in that league. It’s all about money and franchaises. Take a look at the yanks.

It’s not a case of IF, it’s a case of WHEN.

However, not sure about the number of teams or who will be in it. It’s likely to be more 16 teams than 25 and dominated by the big leagues. For example, England, Spain & Italy will all have four teams and Germany and France two teams.

The European league will kill the PL, just like the PL is currently killing Europe. That is what Platini and UEFA want.

However there will have to be some form of relegation/promotion but it will probably only be one team, and it will be a play-off final against the ’national championships winner’. This is because some teams do come and go. Villarreal have only been a big team for about the last five years. Roma are a team on the way down. Even Everton were considered a big team 20 odd years ago.

RE Mr. Anetts - Oh yes, and Villarreal did not qualify for CL either.

I can’t see this ever happening myself. However if it did, I would simply lose interest in football as a competitive sport. This would simply be a monopolised travelling circus.

Tony what on earth are you on?

The idea is self-defeating nonsense. That aside, I love the emphatic opening statement that "It should consist of the following 25 teams on day 1:"

Firstly 25 teams is a ridiculous number for any league, nevermind a super league. Then I did a quick scan of some facts & find that you compound your own nonsense by nominating:

- The teams who finished 2nd, 5th & 10th in Germany
- The team who finished 4th in Holland and the team who won the league for the first time in 30 years and only the 2nd time in their history.
- A small team who finished 5th in Spain and have never won anything
- A team who finished 3rd in Spain and who’s only glory is winning the UEFA cup in 2006 & 07 and one championship over 50 years ago.
- One Russian team that finished 5th in their league.
- The team who finished 2nd in Greece and who have won 18 fewer titles than Olympiakos.
- Ukraine’s 2nd team

Might one ask what you are on about? Your proposal is stupid. If sport is not a meritocracy then it is nothing. There is only one measurement of success and that is success itself.

One can only speculate on your criteria for the bizarre number of 25 qualifiers. Are these just the teams that Tony knows? are these Tony’s personal favourites? is it based on something equally obscure, like attendances, or turnover, or how many shirts they claim to sell in a year?

The idea has no merit in sport and the detail is, how shall we say, preposterous.

Ismael - the list of teams is based upon the current European coefficient/ranking (performance over 5 years rather than 1), modified to limit the number of teams from one country to a set number, so maybe I have done at least an ounce of my homework. You are under no obligation to agree with me - in fact it would be a dull off-season’s musing if you did.

Should a European League drive you from football due to be a ’monopolised travelling circus’ then you are close to departing my friend — as the Champion’s League and the EPL are already monopolised and exclusively contested — and those contests don’t include us and won’t into the foreseeable future. Hence, I would rather watch us play football in an open and contested league, be it a revamped English 1st Division or in the European League, than in the one-sided and monopolised farce we currently compete in.

As to Aussie Rules, it has some merits in the way it is run. Teams that finish at the bottom of the league get first pick in the draft and there is a salary cap, so all teams go through the cycle of success and failure. Good for all as you are treated to success and required to understand disappointment.

So, thanks for your thoughts, they may well be as loopy as mine. But what else would we do with our off-season?

Allan K - see above. As to the propensity, it’s probably coming to a store near you sooner than we would all wish. What am I on — the couch, my bum, anti-depressants to treat the off-season blues (no pun intended) and some fine ale from Belgium!! Cheers mate.

Could someone explain to me how any superleague would be financed? I know about advertising, sponsorship etc but have never really worked out how it all stacked up (ok so maybe I am a bit thick) but I certainly would not pay to watch any league which did not feature EFC and I presume 16/20 of EPL fans would not either. (I appreciate that the Sky 4 have proportionally more fans than the other 16 but if we let the barcodes back in and some other reasonably well supported teams we would not be that far away from what we have now.)

The money stream from Sky would continue for the EPL — the Sky4 (what would we call them then?) can then do what the hell they like but we would not let them back into our league. I have often thought over the last few years how exciting the EPL would have been if we did not have the Sky4 - mostly involving us with either Spurs or Villa with a few others not far off and ready for a slip.

What we would have to guard against is how we pay for Sky (something that I feel we should be doing now) so that we only pay for EPL and not some shite Euro superleague. I only watch the ECL because I have either already paid for it or it is free on ITV and only in the (unfortunately most often forelorn) hope that the RS will get the stuffing that they so richly deserve. I would certainly not bother if I had to pay for it.

If our own league and FA Cup is not enough for us, we could then organise a European competition with other European clubs of similar standing — I would personally favour an old cup style competition with no away-goal bollocks. The fans of Sky4 and the other super16 would soon get bored of losing to Barcelona and so the league would crumble and so they would be left with nothing to do.

So, to sum up I think it is a great idea if the Sky4 leave and have no wish to try to follow them. As people have pointed out, in the past, great clubs such as Leeds and Burnley (happily back) have left the top league and the league has continued... it's like the old cliche that no player is bigger than the club; well, no team (or 4) are bigger than the league (in my opinion).

Jeff Magee:

Sky make most of their money from advertisements and selling of Sky accross the world... if the Sky 4 left, Sky would have no interest in the Premier League. There is a reason why Man U and Liverpool are on television virtually every week while Everton, Bolton etc will be on 5-7 times in a season.

Also, a Euro league would create an unbelievable amount of media coverage, thus making people interested.

50 years ago, you wouldn't see many Man U shirts or Liverpool shirts on the streets of Telford, Devon, Weymouth etc but now they are everywhere.

The creation of this league would lead to more and more kids following Man U and Co, while smaller clubs would lose their fanbase.

Even smaller clubs also often depend on money coming in from the League Cup and FA Cup, these cups will lose all interest and monetary value...

Also smaller league clubs depend on money trickling down from the Premier League clubs to survive. Currently not enough money is going to the Football League from the Premier League, this needs to be rectified; however, the creation of the Euro League would never see such distribution.

You may have a competitive Division 1, but you would lose Division 2, 3 and 4.

What actually needs to happen is the opposite of what is being proposed: one team in the Champions Cup... the Champions.
one team in Europa Cup (2nd place) plus qualification via league and FA Cup.

Both compettions should be knockout competitions, thus making it unpredictable, entertaining and having less games (thus stop managers complaining and stop the stockpiling of players).

This would lead to a much more competitive league, and stop a few clubs accumulating vast amounts of money while the rest wallow in debt.

The only way to make it more competitive though, is to take the money out the game...

Tony, you put up a stout defence of your pitch, so credit where it’s due. Afraid I still view the concept, as you present it, as nonsense. However...

I know that whilst there are greedy self-serving bastards like Florentino Perez, Peter Kenyon and the new up & coming knob-head, Gary Crook at Man City, such things will be floated and, ultimately may become a reality.

It is worth mentioning that, whilst some clubs think they are worthy of only playing Barcelona, Milan and ManU every week, other big clubs are more in touch with reality and morality. Uppermost herein is both ManU and Liverpool. It’s a pity that Ferguson is so close to retirement because, while he has faults, he also has virtues and never forgets his roots.

In a perverse way, this might be the saving of football. If the whole of the European football infrastructure was to lose 20 clubs then that still leaves one hell of a lot of clubs. Furthermore any ship-jumpers would be banned from all other competitions, leaving them to play each other 3 or 4 times a year. Meanwhile the 2 European competitions would be opened up and we would still have the FA Cup and the Meaningless Cup to challenge for.

I’d be very surprised if Arsenal would countenance such a move. I believe they have more style than most clubs. Chelsea would be off (with our blessings), but Liverpool and ManU would need some convincing. Then again, Man City would be breaking the door down (and good riddance).

So maybe they would end up with a league that was SO elite that, rather than build the brand, would bore the arses of people. I mean, when all is said and done there really is only a handful of mega clubs with huge fan bases. Try as you might, you are not going to have much of a bidding war to stage Shakhtar Donetsk v AZ Alkmaar.

So we are really talking about: the Sky 4, Madrid & Barca, Milan & Inter, Bayern, possibly Lyon... and then you’re struggling. Fans of the Sky 4 will be far more interested in playing Everton than AZ Alkmaar or Panathinaikos. And if the biggest argument for this circus is purely & simply TV audiences, then it’s a lot more complicated than many believe.

The G14 was set up purely out of greed and its whole mission was about making & keeping more & more money. Sooner or later the penny will drop that fans need success and, by definition, almost all the clubs in any super league will not be successful. In fact some will have to get used to the idea of losing a lot more than they win. I wonder how long fans of Inter Milan will stomach watching their team finishing in the bottom 6 of some super league each season, whilst little old Bologna are waltzing away with the Scudetto and playing in the UEFA Champions League.

Could be wrong. Just seems to me there’s so many pitfalls that haven’t been considered. But I enjoy a bit of change & excitement, so I’m more than happy for all clubs who consider themselves to be "massive global brands" to be cut loose to see how they get on. And even happier for Everton to be English League Champions, FA Cup Winners and Champions League Winners in their absence.