Florentino Perez: The Interview & The Outcome

After only two days of the announcement of the ESL, the fans and the clubs of football have already defeated the 20+ year project.

After 20 years of research and planning of this breakout league, the huge project is already over after reaction from fans and players.

It has recently been announced that the Super League is suspended according to BBC Sports, and all Premier League teams have left the ESL according to Sky Sports, a massive win in footballing history. Arsenal, Liverpool, Manchester United, Manchester City and Tottenham all out of the ESL with all clubs announcing on their social media. European clubs are reported to continue with the ESL if they don't opt for the same direction though.

A reason why the string of teams withdrew is that UEFA was preparing a counter-attack on the ESL. They did this by working on a new investment fund and come up with a new UCL. The new UCL could have a starting budget of 4.5 billion Euros that could reach up to seven Billion Euros. UEFA have ultimately changed the format with a different UCL concept and risen their prices to be able to challenge the ESL.

With this comes a new UEFA Champions League format. Instead of 32 teams in the Champions League, there will be 36. There will be a new spot for elite clubs if they fail to qualify through their domestic league. Instead of groups it'll be a league what is closely related to the ESL itself. The best eight will reach a knockout round. Other teams will qualify through new rounds of play-offs and finally every club guaranteed 10 games, increasing revenue. The problem with this is that UEFA is a administration that has a large amount of haters and as this format is closely related to ESL this could cause further issues.

Stan Kroenke played a huge part in the funds and creation of the ESL. Arsenal fans have hated Stan Kroenke for a while now, and due to the American investor playing a big part in the ESL, Arsenal fans will now be protesting outside the Emirates to get him out of the club on the 23rd of April at 6 PM.

A big group of players from all over the world have come out to voice their opinion on the ESL with most disagreeing with the idea. Jordan Henderson most notably called for a Premier League captain meeting where almost all captains disagreed with the ESL. He posted on Twitter a post saying: "We don't like it and we don't want it to happen, this is our collective position. Our commitment to this football club and its supporters is absolute and unconditional. You'll Never Walk Alone."

Marcus Rashford and Patrick Bamford's words also were much praised by people of football. Rashford recently posted a photo of a banner on the stands of Old Trafford saying: "Football is nothing without the fans - Sir Matt Busby." Patrick Bamford talked about how the owners care more about money than racism: "It's amazing the amount of uproar that comes into the game when somebody's pockets are hurt, it's a shame it's not like that with racism." Leeds United wore a Champions League T-shirt with the caption 'Earn It' printed on the shirts in the build-up of their Premier League fixture against Liverpool.

The funniest of them has to be when Florentino Perez mocked Gary Neville for only being the Valencia manager for three months, so in retaliation, after all this news broke out, he posted a picture of him drinking wine with the caption "To the super league."

The number of footballers coming out about the current situation with Kevin De Bruyne, Daniel Podence, Bruno Fernandes, Luke Shaw, Aymeric Laporte, Harry Maguire, James Milner, Jamie Carragher and much more individuals in the footballing world releasing statements on the current events. More and More footballers are releasing their statements as time goes by.

Recent news has also broken out that Manchester United's Vice-Chairman Ed Woodward has stepped down from his position. As Ed Woodward has backed down. Graeme Souness describe Woodward quitting as "just the beginning" amid the ESL shambles.

Fabrizio Romano also reported about Juventus president suspected to be resigning, with Bein Sports confirming this. Andrea Agnelli is also the vice-chairman of the ESL, so this shows that Juventus could be another team to leave the ESL in the next coming days.

Manchester City leaving the ESL was much respected by UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin: "I am delighted to welcome Manchester City back to the European football family. They have shown great intelligence. Man City is a real asset for the game and I am delighted to be working with them for a better future."

Now all Premier League teams have left this means a lot more thoughtful words will be coming from Ceferins mouth in the upcoming days and will ultimately be glad about the outcome.

Fans sticking together on social media platforms and having a say in the ESL has helped massively in the deterioration of the ESL, but there is still far more steps to be tackled before ESL and Florentino Perez will be defeated.

As a lot of Premier League owners supported and were involved in the creation of the ESL, a lot of Premier League top 6 supporters are planning to protest against their owners as they're the people who tried to get the clubs involved with the greedy competition.

All the recent reaction and decisions from fans, clubs, players and pundits have come from the first interview on Spanish TV Channel El Chiringuto at 11 PM, where Florentino Perez gave all his reasonings to why he planned and created the ESL.

During the interview, he said a lot of brutally honest things and told the 100% truth, but from this, a backlash has taken place and the current reaction today shows this. He firstly described how this is the perfect time to start the ESL due to the current pandemic: "Many important clubs in Spain, Italy and UK want to find a solution to a very bad financial situation. The only way is to play more competitive games. If instead of playing the CL, Super League helps the clubs to recover the lost earnings."

"Here at Real Madrid, we've lost a lot of money, we are all going through a very bad situation, when there is no profit, the only way is to play more competitive games during the week. The ESL will save the clubs financially."

He then pointed out how football is losing interest and how football has to adapt to how we live now, basically saying the game is outdated: "Football must evolve like everything in life. Football has to adapt to the times we live in now. Football is losing interest, TV rights are decreasing. We wanted to do the ESL, the pandemic has given us urgency: now we are all ruined in football."

"Football needs to change to be more attractive globally. Instead of making the Champions League because it lost interest as he had in 1950, change comes and even at the time FIFA and UEFA was against it. But that's how football changed."

He made a few comments on UEFA saying: UEFA is a monopoly but it needs to be more transparent. We want to save football for the next 20 years, it is a time of serious danger. If you win, you receive £120 to £130m from UEFA but with ESL we will earn much more" In this statement, Florentino Perez is pretty much admitting it's all money and business and not about the beautiful game.

He then contradicted himself by saying: This ESL is not for the rich, but to save football. If this continues, football will disappear by 2024 we would already be dead. This is the only way to save everyone: big, medium and small clubs."

He forefronted his seriousness with the project as well by saying: "If we can't find an agreement with UEFA, we will NOT back down. If they want to wait for 2024 to make the reform, they can wait. We're not waiting for anyone because we need the ESL." Perez throughout the interview used manipulating words and people described him as the biggest dictator in football.

He related the decision a lot to the age range of 18-24 saying: "If young people find football matches too long it may be because they are not interesting enough... or maybe we might have to make the football matches shorter." From this quote, people described Perez as 'mental' and 'the wrong man to be in charge of such a big decision.'

From the interview, it is clear he has an idea and has planned it out well, but the public reaction showed that people didn't sit well with the interviewed pitch and saw it as another reason to take action against the idea of the ESL.

Ever since the 11 PM interview with Florentino Perez, a lot of news has broken out and, football Twitter has been bigger than ever. But even with the money, the interview and all the research of the ESL, the fans, players and clubs have won and, football will remain the same. A big win in the footballing world after two days of stress.

Fans of teams have gone from not caring about their team and their upcoming fixtures to once again noticing how important their next fixture is in a matter of two days. Football has changed so much over 48 hours and, people are unaware of what will happen next.

Now the ESL is suspended and, teams are dropping like flies, Florentino Perez will have a lot to say about the reaction of clubs and people of the footballing world.

Florentino Perez follow up interview will be tomorrow on El Larguero and the Super League will be releasing an official statement tonight explaining how the competition will be moving forward without the English clubs. A lot more to come over the next few hours and days.