Over the past 4 days, an uprising occurred across the pond in Europe that we Americans could learn from. It was about that most serious subject: SPORTS, namely soccer.
On Sunday, it was announced that 12 of the best soccer clubs in Europe planned to leave their respective national leagues and form a new “Super League.” That would effectively demote the other teams in the Premier League (in England), Serie A (in Italy), and La Liga (in Spain) into farm teams. What’s worse, players participating in the Super League (presumably the cream of the crop) would not be allowed to play for their clubs in the already existing Champions League, or for their national teams in the quadrennial World Cup. Why would the owners of those clubs want to do that?
For the money, of course. By not allowing the club players to “waste time” and risk injury by playing in their national leagues and for their country’s national team in the World Cup, the owners would be better able to protect their assets (the players). The Super League would be like a Champion’s league season with more games- or, to be more precise, it would be like our NFL teams here in America (a cartel for sure). Which would be better for the owners’ bottom line, and presumably better for the players’ bottom line (at least the few lucky ones in the Super League).
But what those globalist, greedy owners forgot about something important: that sports is about HEART, not just money, especially the sport of soccer. Within two days of the clubs’ announcement, protests around England led 6 teams to back out of the deal. Fans of all clubs were furious at their owners for almost destroying the unique soccer social ecology in each of the various European leagues. The soccer clubs were originally started by young men who just enjoyed playing, non-professionally, and representing their neighborhood. Players grow up in the club system, improving their skills in a slow, orderly way in many localities. All that would likely have been changed. What’s more: the national pride of playing in the World Cup for Spain, for Italy, and even for England (they lose alot) was something the fans were unwilling to give up.
The big lesson from this is that corporations and globalist organizations are increasingly violating the principle of SUBSIDIARITY. Subsidiarity says that it is unjust “to assign to a greater and higher association what lesser and subordinate organizations can do.” A Super League would have unjustly denied teams in the lower sphere of an opportunity to participate, and would have emptied the higher inter-national soccer sphere of the World Cup of its talent. Pope Francis in Laudato Si warns about a similar kind of talent drain from countries by globalized corporations.
Even as an American soccer fan (we lose ALOT), I am proud to support my country in the World Cup.
So- thank God the Brits stood up for their soccer clubs and for soccer in its subsidiarity.
Ole!
The clever Germans never even took the Super League bait when it was offered to them:
https://fcbayern.com/en/news/2021/04/european-super-league-statements-by-hainer-and-rummenigge?fbclid=IwAR2t5spGoFeURkNrnd3JUIHuvPREqzihdDkXPJtZf1e8Mbqo3Pm6oSX4V-g
Chris, I read your story & I thought, ok, is this entirely about wealth beyond obscenity? Yeah, pretty much. Here's a link to the Forbes 50 sports clubs worth over $2billion. Eight are soccer clubs & of these, only the very wealthy FC Bayern refused this very stupid & immoral plan--they deserve your praise. (German clubs are majority owned by club members; before the late 90s, they were NGOs. This reminds us of course of Machiavelli's teaching on the freedom of the medieval German cities!)
Question for you: What does subsidiarity look like from the point of view of ordinary people? How do we talk about this to attract people who know what they're about, but they're not really interested in abstract statements of what they're about?
https://www.walesonline.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/who-12-clubs-european-super-20420082