Leeds United chief asks European Super League and Man U question after bold claim of key figure

Bernd Reichart has been hired by A22 Sports Management - formed to sponsor and assist in the creation of the proposed 12-team breakaway league. Plans for the European Super League were announced last April but the Premier League's ‘big six’ of Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur then withdrew after fierce opposition as the project sensationally collapsed.

But Barcelona, Real Madrid and Juventus continue to back the idea and Reichart believes it could be possible to have a European Super League in place for the 2024-25 campaign, saying: "That might be the first reasonable and realistic call but there are so many variables that I can't actually foresee. That is probably the first realistic call."

Asked about those comments at Wednesday's pre-Leicester City press conference, Whites boss Marsch launched a strong attack of the idea and questioned whether the game was imabalanced enough as it was. United made their position clear last April when warming up in Champions League t-shirts emblazoned with ‘earn it’ on the front in protest about disussions to form an ESL.

“I think this first came up when I was at Salzburg," said Marsch. "And I even remember seeing the (Leeds) players walk out to the match with the t-shirts. What did it say? It said fair play or open play is fair play. I can’t remember exactly what the t shirt said. But I thought that was a big statement for Leeds United to have that and I agreed and in Salzburg, I said this and I’ll say it here, no one wants a league that’s not about earning and deserving it and no one wants to see a league that’s just given.

"I think already in our sport, the world is imbalanced, right? Okay, you can argue clubs like Manchester United and Real Madrid and you can go down the list that over the years they’ve had a built in success and that’s helped them accumulate more and more interest and more and more value and more and more riches. But I’m an American.

"I come from American sports where parity is the most important thing to us. At the start of the season, anyone can win. And then I was a coach in the Bundesliga where Bayern Munich had made 30.5 times or spent 30.5 times the amount of Arminia Bielefeld. And it’s a league where when you start you say Bielefeld has zero chance of winning the league and Bayern Munich has 75 per cent of winning the league.

"That’s not competition to me. And that’s what I want to see. I want to see fairness. I want to see people have to earn whatever they deserve, or deserve whatever they earn and I think that any idea of the Super League is frankly totally ridiculous. Is that strong enough?!”