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Extended Clip - Juventus Quit Super League: Is It Dead?
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After Juventus decide to all but quit the European Super League, Nima Tavallaey and Carlo Garganese discuss if the ESL project is dead and what impact this means on the Serie A and European club football.
This is a clip from the weekly Thursday episode of the Italian Football Podcast.
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Transcript
Juventus Exits European Super League
00:00:02
Speaker
Welcome to the Italian football podcast. Juventus have dropped the turn in the punch bowl of the Super League after they confirmed they planned to pull out of the European Super League this week. Juventus revealed on Tuesday that they have written to Barcelona and Real Madrid and the two other sides, Romanian sides from the original Super League, which collapsed in 2021.
00:00:27
Speaker
So they wrote to them and they told them of their plans to withdraw from the project.
Juventus and UEFA Ban Controversy
00:00:34
Speaker
They put out a press release. They also denied in a press release, which is really interesting the way it was worded, that they have been denied that they've been threatened by UEFA with a multiple year ban from European competition if they didn't withdraw from the Super League. So I'm going to go through a few things.
Leadership and Passion at Juventus
00:00:52
Speaker
First of all, what do you make of all of this, Nima, generally?
00:00:56
Speaker
I think it's bad. I mean, we have to wait and see what the case that it's brought for, you know, when it's decided by the European Court of Justice, what that says. September now, apparently. Yeah. I really, you know, this is exactly why Andrea Nieli shouldn't have done what he did and shouldn't have been
00:01:17
Speaker
shouldn't have been forced to resign by doing what he did. Because now, again, Juventus are in the hands of people who don't care about Juve and Italian football. The Elkan's don't look at them. Can I just add to that? One person in particular doesn't care about Juventus, and that is John Elkan. All he cares about is just making things as simple as possible. He doesn't want the stress, he doesn't want the fight. There's one thing you can say about Agnelli, but all the mistakes that he made
00:01:45
Speaker
on and off the pitch, especially in the last few years, which were a disaster. He did care and he was a fighter. He was a fighter. He wanted to succeed. He wanted Juventus to be the best club whereby hook or by crook. He wanted Juventus to be successful.
00:02:02
Speaker
There was a fight, there was fight and determination there. We've got John Elkin. Again, it's again tying back to the discussion we had before. Johan Elkin is a corporate douche, just like Jerry Cardinale. He doesn't want the hassle. He doesn't care. It's no, no vision, no nothing. Just make the plus and minus add up. And he addresses like a corporate douche as well.
00:02:22
Speaker
stop bothering me with your annual nonsense of more money, Andrea. We don't really care about this so much. We have other assets that we care more about. And there is no soul at YUVA anymore, just like there is no soul at Milan anymore. There is no soul. It's dead. It's gone. I don't think there's any soul inside John Elkan at all.
00:02:49
Speaker
Well, I'm not, you know, I'm not I'm not saying that Andrea Nieli is some sort of a, you know, but at least he had there was a there was a Juventus soul, whatever that is. There was a soul. There was a interest in making you were successful. He understood how Italian football worked and he understand what was good about Italian football. And he wanted to modernize that. That was good. Same thing with Maldini as well. And my Maldini, Ricky Massara, they
00:03:13
Speaker
There is a Milan soul with Maldini there, and a competent person as well. It's not just that he was Paolo Maldini, it's the fact that whenever he walked into her, every door was open to him and he was a classy guy, he was a competent person. Of course he made mistakes, everyone makes mistakes.
00:03:29
Speaker
But this is now, Juventus and Milan are now in the hands of corporate tools who don't understand what they own and how to run it. And it's such a shame because it comes at a moment when Italian football was actually recovering.
UEFA Coercion Claims
00:03:46
Speaker
And these two are the three biggest brands. And then you have Inter, who, if it wasn't for Beppe Marotta, would also not have a soul, because Steven Zhang
00:03:56
Speaker
is inculcated. We're going on a tangent now, but coming back to the actual Super League, A22, who are the group that are in charge. We don't know what they are. I mean, they don't even want to define what they do. They represent the Super League, but not really. I mean, let's just say they're the spokesperson. Yeah, let's say that. I think that's the only way we can. Okay, let's say that. Well, they told us AS newspaper in Spain, and I quote,
00:04:25
Speaker
The Super League and A-22 will not stand by and consider abuse against one of its members, Juventus, whom UEFA has urged to abandon the project with threats and coercion of which there is irrefutable and unequivocal evidence, who had asked to report in the A-22 will bring this evidence to court. And they will. I'm trying to understand what they mean by that. Do they mean to the European Court of Justice when they're... Yes, I assume so. And that will be used to what? To win the court case?
00:04:54
Speaker
I don't know if they're going to use this in a separate legal proceeding or if they're going to use it in the ECJ case. I don't know what they mean by that. They don't define it. But what they are unequivocally clear about is that they have evidence that there is threats and coercion, evidence of that towards Uwe.
00:05:19
Speaker
and that they're going to
Financial Threats and Strategic Patience
00:05:21
Speaker
use that. And that's basically, if you ask me, my opinion here is that Mr. Andrea Angeli has simply saved every single email and every single correspondence and just forwarded everything to his lawyers, to their lawyers. That's what that is. Or a BCC every time they've gotten an email or gotten facts or anything from UEFA.
00:05:41
Speaker
and every message has been sent forward and they're just collecting evidence. He no longer has a role with Yuba. Obviously, I'm angry that Juventus have folded here. I'm obviously very angry and I'm sure everyone else, but I want to just want to say in defense of the current people at Juventus now, including John Elkan, even though he obviously doesn't care at all,
00:06:08
Speaker
I can understand it for the reason that Juventus have obviously been threatened, I mean, according to the people I've spoken to, with a multi-year ban for at least three years. Some have said five, I don't know, but multi-year ban by UEFA. But that will financially cripple Juventus. They're already going to suffer financially enough just from being one year out of the Champions League. So you're talking like three to five years banned by UEFA.
00:06:29
Speaker
that financially cripples them. We're talking hundreds and hundreds of millions before you even get to the knock-on effect on sponsorship, on the brand, on the transfer market, on players. That's before you even get to that. It's gonna financially cripple them. Now, if there are no guarantees of a super league being imminent,
00:06:46
Speaker
You know, you can't blame them for making this decision that they can't be the only public face of the super league. Well, they're not. Well, they're at the moment, they're the only ones they would be the only ones taking the risk if they'd have no Barcelona Real are there as well.
00:07:01
Speaker
But what are Barcelona doing to help them? Barcelona and Madrid, financially, they're fine. They're going to be in the Champions League. I mean, if Barcelona and Madrid had threatened to pull out of Europe, if you, they would... Well, not really. Barcelona could be thrown out. Well, we'll see if they are. But what I'm saying is Juventus can't be the only ones that take the...
00:07:18
Speaker
Yeah, I'm sorry. I'm not buying that. He's a rat, and he's a rat. No, no, no, no, no. If Andrea Nieli was still there, Juventus would never have done this. They would have fought this. They would have appealed this. They would have fought this to the wire, and they most likely would have won. They probably would have gotten one season banned. So what would you have done then? You would have taken the ban and then appealed it. Is that what you're saying?
00:07:42
Speaker
Of course I would. And just like with City and PSG. Like City and PSG did. Exactly. Well, that's fair enough. That's another side of you. But that's not what's happened here. What's happened here is that you have that side of the family who don't really care about you for Italian football and they just want this problem to go away. They like to turn up to the VIP room on big occasions and, you know, smile for the cameras.
00:08:06
Speaker
They don't care about football. This is what I meant when I said about I think that Barcelona Madrid needed to do more I think rather than let Juventus kind of fight this alone You know Juventus are getting threatened with a ban or Barcelona Madrid behind closed doors or publicly whatever however it is
00:08:23
Speaker
They needed to do something. They couldn't have done that because again, you seem to forget that Juventus put themselves in this position with the stupidity of what was revealed in the Prisma investigation. Barcelona and Real Madrid can't interfere in that.
00:08:40
Speaker
because it's so dumb. But this is why Juventus have been thrown out of Europe. This is why Juventus are being... You can't forget this. The reason why Juventus are being thrown out of Europe is because of the nonsense uncovered in the priestly investigation. Yeah, but we're talking about threats for three to five years back. Yes, but that is why. That is also part of the equation. Had they not done this, UEFA would not have had anything on them.
00:09:06
Speaker
Yeah, that's the issue. Again, we have to remember that this was, you know, they did this to themselves, similarly to Barcelona and that ridiculous thing that they've done with the, with the payments to the former head of the referee's company, which is just so stupid. It is so dumb. But this has, but this has become a political, this has become political. So if it's going to become political, Barcelona and Madrid need to play politics as well. If they want, if they believe in their super league as much as they want, they need to do something, not just sit back and do nothing. And I'm sure they will.
00:09:35
Speaker
If you sit back and do nothing, what happens is, is what's happened now. You've entered into a political- I'm sure something will happen. I just think that what Real Madrid and what the Super League want to do is to basically win the legal battle and show the judges and the courts deciding that they are not trying to be involved in anything shady, but UEFA are the ones that are being shady. And as such,
00:10:00
Speaker
that's what they are doing, by not saying anything publicly, and because that would be stupid from a strategic point of view, there would be absolute suicide. But what Juventus should have done was to fight this, but it was clear that they weren't going to as soon as Danieli left, and Elkan took over because he doesn't care about football, he has other things he wants to work with. This was again dropped in his lap by the cousin
00:10:24
Speaker
which he didn't want to have to deal with. And he was already pissed off because they had to do cash injections of what is it, 700 million euros over three years. They're not happy about this. They're not happy about this at all. So it is what it is. But it's it's it's a combination of there's a lot of like there's a lot of blame to go around. But the end result is that you and Milan are now in the hands of complete corporate stooges.