European Super League: Young people go in on Florentino Perez comments

Some young fans have torn into Florentino Perez’s comments.

BBC Sport followers have reacted angrily to claims by Real Madrid president Florentino Perez that young people don’t care about football anymore.

Defending plans for the highly controversial European Super League, 74-year old Perez made some big claims on behalf of young people.

Speaking to Spanish TV show El Chiringuito de Jugones, Perez said that that appetite for the game among young people had been ruined by “a lot of poor quality games”.

“Young people are no longer interested in football. They have other platforms on which to distract themselves,” Perez said.

He even went as far as to put a figure on it, claiming that 40% of fans aged between 16 and 24 are disinterested in football now.

Well, just taking a small sample as evidence, those comments have caused a bit of a backlash on our own BBC Football Instagram account.

Football is clearly still important to this young person. A happy customer. Passionate.

In the same interview, Perez seemed to claim that young people have shorter attention spans these days and suggested that format changes could help make ESL games more exciting.

“Young people say the game is too long,” Perez said. “If young people don’t watch an entire game it is because it is not interesting enough, we will have to shorten the games.”

That would be quite a major upheaval for football. Not everyone agrees with Perez’s wisdom.

Another strong reaction.

A lot of commentators online have also made the point that, if young people really are turning away from football, perhaps the issue could have more to do with the prohibitive costs of attending live games at elite level.

Perez claims that proposals for a European Super League have been made at a critical point, in order to “save football”, including by recouping money lost by clubs during the pandemic.

However, critics have argued that the move is driven by greed, would harm the domestic football pyramid and jeopardise the integrity of competition.

‘Football is meant to be on merit’ – fans react to European Super League proposals

Meanwhile, Uefa confirmed plans on Monday for a revamped, 36-team Champions League.

There is lots of talk of change afoot, then – not all of it universally popular.