Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola said a European Super League in which 15 clubs cannot be banished was not sport and has called on those behind the project to interpret themselves.
City, toward with Manchester United, Liverpool, Chelsea, Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur, are the six Premier League clubs signed up for the new 20-club league declared on Sunday.
Fifteen clubs would be stable , rather than have to qualify on merit like for the Champions League. Widespread blame has repeated from within the game and beyond, but Guardiola said the lack of information has left him, and other managers of the six clubs, in an uneasy situation.
Without commenting his own club, Guardiola made it clear that Europe’s biggest football teams should not be protected from failure on the pitch. If you ask me about these teams that have been selected I don’t know why,” the Spanish told a news convention on Tuesday. “Sport is not a sport when the relation between the exertion and the success, the exertion and the reward, doesn’t subsist .
So it’s not a sport. It’s not sport when the success is already guaranteed. It’s not sport when it doesn’t matter if you lose.
Asked if it was unfair that he was the first person from within Manchester City to speak about the European Super League in public, Guardiola said he needed more information. The Spaniard is an devotee of the competitive nature of the Premier League and said it was wrong if clubs such as Leicester City or West Ham United, both challenging for qualification to the Champions League this season, could be denied that dream.
“That’s why I said many times I want the best competition as strong as possible, especially the Premier League,” he said. “It’s not fair when one team fights and fights and arrives at the top and it cannot be qualified because the success is already guaranteed for a few clubs.
” Guardiola said he had only been told of the European Super League a few hours before it was declined . But since then he, like everyone else, is waiting for the powerbrokers behind the polemic plan to offer more detail. “Once I have all the information I can give you a desire. I can give my desire of what I know today but I don’t know more so that’s the fact ,” he said. “I would love the president of this committee to go out all around the world and say what is the reason why they took that decision.
Why some teams will play and the others not. Why Ajax Amsterdam who won four or five Champions Leagues is not there. “They have the obligation and the duty to refine as soon as possible, today better than tomorrow.” Guardiola said six clubs should not be demonized, though, adding that all clubs and UEFA have self interest at heart.