Real Madrid strongman Florentino Pérez reiterated his push for a European Super League, speaking at a general meeting of the members of the European champions, saying that efforts to create a closed league of twelve or fifteen major teams, five or at most six of Europe’s top leagues, are not were abandoned, despite the initial general condemnation of this undertaking.

“European football is sick, and only the creation of the European Super League can revive it,” said Pérez, who even abandoned the interim argument of the initiators of the project about open clubs, an open format and solidarity of all teams and openly admitted. that the main priority is to increase the income of top European teams, which attract the interest of fans and on which the improvement of the football product exclusively depends.

According to Florentino Pérez, small countries cannot play with one voice the same significant role in making decisions about European football as, for example, Germany with its 83 million population, while he did not hide his position that always increasing the representation of countries in European competitions degrades the quality of the product.

At the same time, UEFA’s main defense in its legal battle against the European Super League is that football has spread to every corner of the continent, with a record 36 countries having at least one group stage team in the past two years. . This year alone, teams from 28 countries are represented at the conference!

“UEFA is increasing the number of matches between… unimportant teams,” said the Real Madrid leader.

Notably, Florentino Pérez has spoken out against the new UEFA European competition format for the 2024-2027 three-year cycle, which aims to further increase participation.

The 80 teams in the group stage until 2021 have grown to 96 in the current triennium with the introduction of the UEFA Conference League, which has provided a path for teams from Estonia, Latvia, Kosovo and more, as well as numbers in the main stage competition after the summer qualifiers, the number of teams will rise to 108 (from 36 in each competition) in a new format, with even more qualifying opportunities for countries like Greece, but also for others…small and medium below the five or six developed football countries.

“UEFA is increasing the number of matches between … irrelevant teams (he used the term “irrelevant teams”),” said Florentino Perez, apparently referring to teams from such leagues as Greek, Serbian, Czech and others, considering that their participation is degrading. football events.

According to the Spanish agent, football will only regain its commercial value if the number of matches between the twelve to fifteen top European clubs increases over time, ignoring the less commercial teams, which of course is in complete contradiction to UEFA, which believes that the principles football solidarity is served not only by the expansion of European competitions, but also by the increase in the income of all its member teams and federations.