Pérez: Super League being created to ‘save soccer’

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Pérez, the first of the club presidents to speak publicly after the proposed new league was announced on Sunday, said clubs were “ruined” financially by the coronavirus pandemic and the Super League was the solution to “save soccer in a critical moment.”

“We are all going through a very difficult situation,” Pérez said in an interview broadcast after midnight on the Spanish television program El Chiringuito de Jugones. “When you don’t have revenue, the only way to change that is to try to have more competitive games, more attractive games.”

“Soccer has to evolve, just like businesses have to evolve and everyone has to evolve,” he added. “Soccer has to adapt. We felt that we needed to change something to help make soccer more attractive.”

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“With the way the revenues are now in the Champions League, all clubs will die,” Pérez said. “The big ones, the medium ones and the small ones. By 2024, when this new format is supposed to begin, the clubs will all be gone.”

“This is what is profitable, and this money will end up reaching everyone,” Pérez said, noting that the big clubs are the ones that will keep buying players and will have the solidarity to keep helping everyone in soccer.