The Rich Get Richer: The European Super League.

Leon Trotsky suggested that “any future revolution in Britain will inevitably awaken in the working class through the most unusual passions” listing sport and specifically football, as a potential catalyst of societal change. With the damning announcement of the dozen leading “big clubs” — Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal [yes, Arsenal], Chelsea, Tottenham — and their breakaway Super League, fanbases with a boiling fury inside them called for their condemnations.

The backbone of football, the beautiful game, the sport for the people, has long become disenfranchised with the evolution of modern football clubs and their ownership.

Let us not forget the formation of this footballing entity: major clubs agreeing to break away to build a paradigm of profit and commercialization.

Let us not forget the Premier League, how it opened its doors to the commercial behemoths and sports-washing consortiums that monetized on fanbases’s love and loyalty.

Let us not forget football capitalism, how it has become a playground for the braggadocious emperors and sugar daddies that we call oligarchs and billionaires. Let us not forget how clubs were allowed to become PR campaigns for oil backed regimes.

Let us not forget UEFA’s failure to protect clubs from dubious external backers and reckless investment, or it’s long standing corruption. Let us not forget FIFA’s 2022 World Cup, one for worker and migrant exploitation.

The myth of competitiveness is sustained by Leicester’s 5000–1 Premier League title win, but the staggering imbalances in football have long given anyone but “the elite” a chance at glory that didn’t involve a cash cow injection from a wealthy new owner.

So to concentrate on the individuals here, the owners in question, as the greatest manifestation of Disney villains is a refusal to look at the bigger picture. This is systemic, this is capitalism and it’s definitely going to plan.

It’s concentrating the riches on a select elite, and the farcical sense of their god given right to remain elite. For what? The answer’s quite simple, it’s always been and always will be: money.

The decline of grassroots football and the continued struggle of women’s football to gain equal recognition and support is a direct consequence of this. It does not fit the agenda because it isn’t a piggy bank you can keep stuffing.

Across England, the most successful businesses in world football grow ever richer — while long-established community clubs from Bury to Bolton and Wigan slowly die in their shadows.

In the world of Porsches and Pradas, the working class have been left out of their own sport. So many protests and campaigns we now mourn for — #GlazersOut, #LevyOut, #KroenkeOut, I could really go on forever — as a result of fans becoming detached with the clubs they grew up watching for decades.

So, perhaps, fans had enough, had enough of being priced out and silenced from their own sport. Perhaps fans have had enough of watching their new and shiny stadiums displace them. Whether it be that these clubs are camouflaging their greed for the “benefit of the entire European football pyramid,” the fact that this competition’s format’s sole intention is remove all merit from the English game and engineer profit, the fact that they have slipped in the Women’s league as an afterthought, the fact that all that is thought about during a pandemic with club workers furloughed and grassroots football damaged is: private gain, or even the chaotic combination of it all, but fans have had enough.

Neoliberalism and capitalism has glorified the egotistical narcissistic behaviour that we now see has emboldened these owners to not only suggest a super league [that is in fact not so super] but announce it ever so comfortably, ever so shamelessly.

Of course, this doesn’t apply to all of our lovely “founding leaders.” Both Manchester clubs, hiding behind their veil of shame were too cowardly to even announce it on their social media, afraid of the backlash.

It gets worse. Some of those involved have called traditional supporters of clubs “legacy fans” — the lifeblood of a football club has been described as a mere outgrown article of clothing tossed aside.

This is bigger than the European Super League. This is bigger than the Premier League. This is bigger than UEFA. This is bigger than football. Because, like it or not, the monopolization of this sport sees us trending towards this one way or another.

So while the natural coping mechanism for fans to see this sport ripped into shreds and sold for pieces is to make memes and come up with slick punchlines, the outrage is there. The shame is there.

Liverpool fan groups have demanded the removal of all their flags and banners from Anfield in protest at FSG’s Super League. The red of the seats at Old Trafford is expected to be welcomed by outrage. There will be more.

Just as we have allowed flippant parasites to sleepwalk their way to successful ownership fitness tests, the trends towards finance capitalism will be gradual until we find ourselves waking up in a hot sweat one night in ten years wondering how our sport has been sold for an empty bag of crisps, or rather, billions.

The rich will get richer.