Analysis: Debt didn’t cause Super League fiasco but it accelerated it

Part four of our look at the financial issues that surround the Super League drama of the last few days examines how debt was the core influence to the hasty moves by Europe’s richest clubs

All of the clubs involved in the Super League found the €350 million or so on offer alluring for obvious reasons, but it was desperately short-term thinking. Picture: Getty

The collapse of the Super League has been so emphatic that the repeated statements of Florentino Perez, the Real Madrid president, have sounded like those of someone trying to destroy the competition from the inside. FloP, as football journalist Philippe Auclair has dubbed him, was worryingly serious with his Partridge-grade musings.

That kind of inability to read the room can come from excessive confidence but also from desperation. The richest clubs in Europe are not ...