Episode 28 Has European Super league gone rigor mortis? With guests Maccabi Tel Aviv FC Goalkeeper coach Dennis Gentenaar (BVB 05/06) and Colin Farmery (When Saturday Comes)

Thank you for your interest in the BvB London fan community podcast as every week the focus of the show will be on exploring a facet of Borussia Dortmund's life by talking to experts and former participants of the club's life.

People like players, fans and journalists who have covered the club and decision-makers and experts who know the world of all our club well.

The aim of the podcast is to make this wonderful football club more accessible to non-German speakers. The podcast may also be of interest to German football fans who want to learn or practice English.

Our guests are Colin Farmery who is a journalist (WSC When Saturday Comes, The Guardian) and football writer author of books including Seventeen Miles to Paradise and Legend: The Alan Knight story who is also a director of Gosport Borough FC (7th tier England) and a former director of Portsmouth FC from 2013-19.

Dennis Gentenaar is the goalkeeping coach of Israeli champions Maccabi Tel Aviv, formerly a goalkeeper who played 270 matches at elite level with Ajax, NEC and VV Venlo in the Dutch Eredivisie.

Gentenaar was reserve keeper to Roman Weidenfeller at BVB in 2005/06 under Bert van Marwijk in a season when 'Die Schwarz-Gelben' finished seventh players at that time included Metzelder, Rosicky, Dede and Sahin.

The topic of the show today is the proposed break-away European football league the European Super League which brings together 15 top European clubs including the two big clubs from Manchester, Milan and  Madrid clubs plus Juventus, Tottenham, Arsenal, Liverpool and Chelsea.

These clubs will under the proposed model play in an annual fixed pool of clubs plus a meagre 5 clubs who qualify playing a seasonal tournament with no relegation nor promotion.

The 'ESL' is a major challenge to the UEFA Champions League and Europaleague and could be highly damaging to the national leagues across Europe and is highly controversial amongst supporters.

Borussia Dortmund have issued a statement saying that they will not take part as have Bayern Munich and no other Bundesliga clubs have been invited but what will happen next? Will the ESL succeed? Will German clubs be drawn into the 'big business league'?    

1.  European Super League what is it about? Who is behind it? 

2. What impact will the ESL have on national leagues, cups and Champions League? 

3. Could this benefit top clubs in smaller national leagues like Celtic, Ajax or Anderlecht? 

4. How will players and the football industry react to the possibility of bans from playing for their national teams? 

5. Is the ESL nothing more than an exhibition league with no incentive for fans to follow it? Or an improvement on the Champions League? 

6. Could this proposal bring a benefit to historically big clubs in small leagues like Holland, Scotland and Belgium? 

7. What is the business sense for clubs taking part? Will the fixed income from the tournament make managing the business of running clubs more effective off-setting financial risk and giving clubs the chance to plan better? 

8. What is the current position of Borussia Dortmund fans and the wider community of supporters across football how should they react to this development? 

The European supporters federation, which this fan club belongs to, mentioned in the show is the FSE Football Supporters Europe whose position on the Super League can be found at:

https://www.fanseurope.org/en/news/news-3/2414-fse-condemns-european-super-league-plans.html  

Super League update following days of fan protests and legal action by UEFA 12 clubs including all the English Premier League teams have withdrawn and only Juventus, Barcelona and Real Madrid remain of the original 15 clubs. UEFA is promising reform of the Champions League, fans remain highly sceptical to be continued.... 

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