UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin has spoken out on the proposed new plans for the European Super League.
The rebel breakaway league was given a boost by a court ruling on Thursday morning when the European Court of Justice ruled that UEFA and FIFA were found to have acted against competition law in blocking its creation in 2021.
The binding ruling handed out marked the latest stage in a legal process initiated by the European Super League Company after clubs who participated in the breakaway plans were threatened with sanctions by the governing bodies, while they faced a barrage of overwhelming criticism.
The new format – which was revealed by A22 CEO Bernd Reichart in a presentation – was immediately rejected by clubs including Manchester United, Bayern Munich and Atletico Madrid.
However, Ceferin refused to be drawn too deeply on the new proposals and urged the breakaway competition – which has continued to receive strong backing from Real Madrid and Barcelona – to go ahead.
He said: ‘I am so happy that we saw the presentation and that it is clear now that they are offering a closed competition which we knew all the time, but they tried to present publicly that it’s not true.
‘We will not try to stop them. Even before we never tried to stop them and we said that publicly many times.
‘They can create whatever they want. I hope they start their fantastic competition as soon as possible… with two clubs.
‘I hope they know what they are doing, which I’m not sure they do.
‘Football is not for sale. We can show that many times, we did that many times with all of football stakeholders and European society (in 2021) and absolutely nothing can change that.’
