Europe will have a football Super League within the next 15 years, former German footballer Paul Breitner predicts. The 1974 World Cup winner is in favor of a so-called Super League competition that would consist of the continent's best football clubs. "I’m supporting this idea because Europe has changed dramatically during the last 26 years," he said. "We need a European Super League, but not only one. We need three or four because we have more than 20 teams to form a Super League. We have 70 or 80 high level clubs. For me, we must have in the future, in 10-15 years, three or four Super Leagues." The idea for such a competition has been floating around since the '90s and was reignited by Bayern Munich CEO Karl-Heinz Rummenigge earlier this year. Rummenigge, who is also the chair of the European Club Association, said such a competition is needed to face the challenges of globalization. Breitner agreed with his former teammate that a Super League is "the right idea and the right way forward." The 64-year-old, who was in Charlotte, N.C., last week to promote Bayern Munich's U.S. summer tour as part of the Int'l Champions Cup, said that such a competition could unite Europe in a way that politics has failed to accomplish. "We have 28 [member states] in the [European Union]," he said. "We are united. We are some kind of the 'United States of Europe.' Let’s start to be a united Europe in football, in sport. We have to start the right way of thinking, working and living together, if the politicians aren't able to form a united Europe maybe sport can be able to achieve it." Major North American sports leagues such as the NBA, NFL, NHL or MLB consist of no more than 32 teams. Breitner, however, says that up to 80 clubs have the potential to join the proposed Super League and that is why one is not enough. "You can’t say to Chelsea or Arsenal, ‘Hey, you will not play in this Super League because there’s no space for you. Stay out,'" he said. "That’s why I think we have to form more Super Leagues and not just one. At the end, the first and second placed teams in these three or four Super Leagues will participate in playoffs for the European championship. It could be very easy."
STICKING POINT: The main issue regarding the creation of a Super League is the impact it would have on Europe's domestic leagues. The value of the various leagues would take a hit should their top teams leave to play in another competition. For Bayern Munich to join a Super League, the Bundesliga's 17 other clubs would have to give the green light. For Breitner, this highly improbable scenario would actually make Germany's top flight more entertaining. "Every non-Bayern Munich supporter already says the Bundesliga is boring and will be boring again next year," he said. "We just won our fourth championship in a row, and I’m sure we will win the fifth, sixth and seventh in a row."
