Sports
European Soccer’s Super League Faces Legal Tangle at Kickoff
- Proposal could be seen as an anti-competitive ‘closed shop’
- Threatened retaliation by UEFA also poses legal concerns
Photographer: Paul Ellis/AFP via Getty Images
European soccer’s biggest and most controversial upheaval since the post-war era is riddled with legal pitfalls for its creators as well as critics trying to kill the plan, sports lawyers warned on Tuesday.
The proposed Super League risks violating European Union antitrust law by forming a “closed shop” without relegation or promotion, said Katarina Pijetlovic, an associate law professor at Manchester Metropolitan University, whose neighbors City and United are among the project’s dozen founding members.