UEFA President Says Liverpool “Have to Be Banned” From Europe

The battle between Europe’s top earning clubs and UEFA is escalating following news that 12 sides including Liverpool, Manchester United, Chelsea, Real Madrid, and Juventus intend to form a European Super League.

Earlier, there had been reports UEFA was so enraged that they would seek to expel those clubs from their competitions—and to potentially also block players at those clubs from playing for their countries at the Euros.

Those reports have been confirmed by way of a statement from Aleksander Čeferin, with UEFA’s president saying the European football governing body will move to ban the involved clubs and their players as soon as possible.

“These are so-called big clubs, it is clear that the big clubs of today were not always big clubs,” said Čeferin. “Juventus were in Serie B, Manchester United before Sir Alex Ferguson was I don’t know where”.

“We will do the sanctions we can do within the law, of course We will try to use all the sanctions against the Super League clubs. As soon as possible they have to be banned from all our competitions, players too.”

The formation of a closed Super League outside of UEFA’s control would all but kill the Champions League. It would also significantly hurt the domestic leagues by removing any incentive to battle for the European places.

As such, threats of European bans for star players and sides as big as Madrid and Liverpool carry real weight given that if UEFA and the leagues can’t block the formation of a Super League they stand to lose even more.

Meanwhile, the Super League is proving hugely unpopular with many of the club’s most loyal fans and supporters, with Liverpool fan groups issuing statements against it and removing flags from the Kop in response.