Juventus chairman’s sack is blow to European Super League
The departure of Juventus chairman Andrea Agnelli from the club is being seen as a serious blow to attempts to revive the European Super League.
Agnelli, 45, and the entire Juventus board of directors resigned after an investigation by Turin prosecutors into alleged false accounting.
Aleksander Ceferin, the Uefa president, told the Council of EU Sports Ministers on Tuesday that “they [the ESL clubs] are the first to flee when things get rough.”
The decisions by the owners of Manchester United and Liverpool to put their clubs up for sale is also seen as a tacit acceptance that the Super League idea is dead – the two English clubs had played key roles in setting it up before its launch and swift collapse in April 2021.
The timing of Agnelli’s resignation will dismay his allies at Real Madrid and Barcelona, who had joined Juventus in a legal challenge against Uefa to try to force through a breakaway competition with a European Court of Justice (ECJ) judgement due on December 15.
In his departing message to Juventus’s employees, Agnelli said the resignations were necessary because “unity has been lost”.
He added: “When the team is not united, then that opens the way for opponents to hurt you and that can be fatal. Better to leave all together giving the opportunity for a new team to overturn that game.”
Agnelli said he would remain comforted by a phrase by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche: “And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.”
The three rebel clubs had launched a concerted drive in favour of an ESL and claiming Uefa has a conflict of interest as both competition organiser and regulator. The company behind the ESL, A22, last month appointed a new chief executive, Bernd Reichart, who this week has been attempting to push its claims in Brussels.
“My objective is to understand how we can improve the governance of European football in such a way that solidarity, transparency and anti-corruption will remain non-negotiable,” said Reichart.
The anti-corruption message rang hollow given the investigation into Juventus. Agnelli, the vice-president Pavel Nedved and chief executive Maurizio Arrivabene are among 15 people who could face a trial for alleged false accounting and irregularities in player transfers.
Cristiano Ronaldo’s £86 million (€100 million) transfer from Real Madrid in 2018 and his annual salary of about £26 million are at the centre of the probe. Turin prosecutors have reportedly discovered secret payments to Ronaldo that were not reported by Juventus.
The case is also exploring if Juve shareholders were misled with invoices being issued for non-existent transactions to demonstrate income.
There are also governance issues surrounding Barcelona and Real Madrid – they are facing demands to pay back millions of euros in illegal state aid after the ECJ ruled last year that Brussels was right to declare that beneficial tax arrangements they enjoyed for a quarter of a century were illegal.
Spain’s La Liga has issued a statement demanding “immediate sports sanctions” be applied to Juventus by Uefa. Transfers involving Juventus and other clubs are also the subject of a parallel investigation launched by the Italian Football Federation in October which has powers to sanction clubs with a range of punishments from fines to being kicked out of the league.
