A UEFA committee member has predicted Chelsea and Manchester City will both be kicked out of this season’s Champions League due to their involvement in the European Super League (ESL) plans.
Both teams are through to the semi-finals along with Real Madrid, whose president Florentino Perez is chairing up the new breakaway league.
All three sides are due to feature in the last four of the competition, with Paris Saint-Germain making up the fourth spot – though the French club have rejected the chance to join the ESL.
Now UEFA’s Danish delegate Jesper Moller believes only PSG will keep their place in the competition, with the other three sides set to be given the boot.
(Image: Manchester City FC via Getty Ima)
“The clubs must go, and I expect that to happen on Friday,” Moller said (via
). “Then we have to find out how to finish (this season’s) Champions League tournament.”
Chelsea and Real Madrid are due to contest one semi-final, while PSG will meet Man City in the other tie, with the first legs currently scheduled to take place at the end of this month.
Neither look likely to go ahead now however, unless there is a sharp U-turn from any of the ESL rebels.
UEFA president Aleksandr Ceferin said on Monday: “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.”
If successful in its formation, the competition would directly replace the Champions League, with participating clubs still planning on contesting their regular domestic fixtures.
It comes on the same day UEFA announced reforms of their own to the Champions League, which are set to come into play from the 2024/25 season.
The founding members of the European Super League have snubbed those changes in favour of setting up their own competition, which would see each club take a larger share of the financial pot.
Their proposals would effectively create a closed shop of elite clubs, who will be protected from the threat of relegation or failure to qualify, and have been widely condemned by the football community and beyond.
Those clubs involved also includes Liverpool, Man Utd, Arsenal, Tottenham, Barcelona, Atletico Madrid, Juventus, AC Milan and Inter Milan, while the likes of Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund turned down the invitation.
The English representatives could well be excluded from the Premier League as well, as rule L9 stresses no team can sign up to a competition outside of those recognised in the league’s handbook without prior approval.
UEFA chief Ceferin added in his official statement: “I cannot stress more strongly at the moment that UEFA and the football world stand together alongside this disgraceful, self-serving project from a select few clubs in Europe fuelled by greed above all else.
“This idea is a spit in the face of all football lovers and our society as well. We must not let them take it [football] away from us.
“Not only the football world, but society and governments are united. It’s part of our culture. We are all united against this nonsense of a project.”
