UEFA Champions League 2020-21: Will PSG be crowned champion following European Super League backlash?
Paris Saint-Germain is the current Ligue 1 champion, while it has qualified for the semis of the 2020-21 UEFA Champions League, along with Chelsea, Manchester City and Real Madrid. Meanwhile, the latter three are planning on joining the controversial European Super League.
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FollowThe football world, especially European football, continues to be under fire for the proposed European Super League. As a result, it has thrown the status of the UEFA Champions League into disarray.
What is ESL?
The ESL is supposed to be an elite European football tournament involving 15 top clubs from Europe, while five more teams are supposed to qualify annually. The 12 founding members of the ESL (AC Milan, Arsenal, Atletico Madrid, Chelsea, Barcelona, Inter Milan, Juventus, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United, Real Madrid and Tottenham Hotspur) cannot be relegated. At the same time, their domestic league performance would have no implications on their qualification.
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What about UCL?
The ESL has been proposed to be a breakaway from the UCL, allowing the top teams to compete against each other regularly. It means that the 20 teams participating in the ESL annually would not feature in the UCL.
UEFA's call
The Union of European Football Associations has not approved the ESL and has deemed that the clubs and players participating in the same could face the consequences. As a result, the current participating teams in the ongoing UCL and UEFA Europea League have come under the radar.
What about the ongoing UCL and UEL?
Some reports suggest that if any of the founding members of the ESL decide to go ahead with it, they could be sanctioned as early as in the ongoing season of UCL and UEL itself. Paris Saint-Germain, Chelsea, Manchester City and Real Madrid are the current semi-finalists of the UCL.
With PSG being the only team that is not a founding member of the ESL, it could be automatically crowned the champion if the remaining teams are sanctioned/suspended by UEFA. Similarly, in UEL, Arsenal and United are the two ESL founding members participating in the semis. Consequently, they could be sanctioned/suspended as well, leading to a straightaway final between Roma and Villareal.
Reactions
Jesper Moller (Danish Football Association chief): "The clubs must go, and I expect that to happen on Friday. Then, we have to find out how to finish the Champions League tournament. There is an extraordinary executive committee meeting on Friday."
Aleksander Ceferin (UEFA President): "We're still assessing our legal team, but we will take all the sanctions that we can and we will inform you as soon we can. My opinion is that as soon as possible, they have to be banned from all our competitions and the players from all our competitions."
