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European football has been in a state of Cold War for decades, with the threat of a breakaway Super League coming up every few years. Usually, it ends with more concessions and reforms or some other agreement that merely kicks the can down the road.
Last Sunday’s official announcement and statement of intent signalled an end to the posturing, rumours and threats.
Make no mistake about it, for 48 brief, dramatic hours, football was at full out war.
On the one hand, UEFA, the current governing body of European football and organiser of the Champions League, the most prestigious club competition in football.
Photo by Irina R. H. / AFP7 / Europa Press Sports via Getty Images
The Super League dropped a bomb on the world of football on Sunday night, then promptly vanished amid the panic, surveying the wreckage from a safe distance, hidden from prying eyes and inquisitive microphones.
But last night, Real Madrid president Florentino Perez, one of the ringleaders of this breakaway operation and who doesn’t believe UEFA have the power to ban teams for the rest of this season, hopped on Spanish television to explain his delusions of grandeur, as much as such things can be explained beyond just one word, “money”.
The Busby Babes & Munich Air Disaster: European pioneers who were denied their chance at glory
Manchester United players lined up for the final time in Belgrade | Aleksandra Grujic/Getty Images Oh, England’s finest football team its record truly great,
its proud successes mocked by a cruel turn of fate.
Eight men will never play again, who met destruction there,
the flowers of English football, the flowers of Manchester
- The Flowers of the Manchester
The story of the Munich Air Disaster in 1958 is well known around the world, a tragedy that resulted in the deaths of 23 of the 44 people on board a flight from Belgrade to Manchester that had stopped in southern Germany for a scheduled refuelling.