Opinion: US owners find American-style greed doesn’t play well in European soccer
Stan Kroenke, John Henry and the Glazer family learned the hard way that just because they play football in England, you can’t run a Premier League team as if it was in America.
It’s one thing to be greedy. It’s quite another to be so blatantly obvious about it.
The owners of Arsenal, Liverpool and Manchester United, respectively, saw their grand plans for a new cash cow – sorry, an in-season tournament featuring a dozen of the world’s most prestigious soccer teams – blow up in their faces just 48 hours after it was announced. After widespread and unrelenting condemnation from players, fans, sponsors, politicians – even the future king of England – Manchester City confirmed Tuesday afternoon that it was withdrawing from the European Super League. Chelsea, Tottenham, Liverpool, Manchester United, Arsenal and Italian team Inter Milan all have said they are negotiating exits.
The Super League, as it turns out, is neither super nor is it likely soon to even be a league.
MLS Cup, playoff teams, MVP, Golden Boot picks
But Kroenke, Henry and the Glazers, believed to be the ringleaders of the Super League fiasco along with Real Madrid’s Florentino Perez, badly miscalculated.
The Americans in the Super League figured they could ignore traditions and thumb their noses at fans and league officials and, as with money grabs in U.S. sports, everyone would eventually go along with it. Kroenke, after all, watched the Rams wallow in mediocrity in St. Louis for half a dozen years, but he eventually got the NFL to let him move to Los Angeles, where his fancy new stadium spits out money like an ATM.
