Former Manchester United defender Gary Neville has said the European Super League proposal could be back on the agenda, a view backed by UEFA president Aleksander Čeferin.
The project was launched just less than a year ago and was backed by the big six in the Premier League, but met with fierce resistance. There were protests outside Old Trafford after United and Manchester City withdrew from the scheme within 48 hours, along with the rest of the Premier League clubs involved.
But Real Madrid, Barcelona and Juventus were the three clubs never to pull out of the scheme and now Neville believes those European giants are involved in plotting a renewed attempt to create a breakaway league.
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"The ESL is back on the table. Real, Barca and Juve are pushing," the former United man said on Twitter.
"It’s critical we accelerate the Fan Led Review recommendations through Parliament with legislation to protect English football and allow any new proposals to be viewed with independence."
Čeferin, speaking at the Financial Times' Business of Football Summit, again slammed the club bosses behind the plans and accused them on plotting during a 'war', having used the pandemic last April to launch the first attempted ESL project.
"I am tired of talking about this nonsense," Ceferin said.
"First they try to launch during a pandemic, now we hear that they are trying to launch in the middle of a war. Do I have to speak more about these people? They obviously live in a parallel world.
"While we are saving players together with other stakeholders, while we are working to help in a terrible situation they work on a project like that.
"Honestly speaking, they can pay whoever they want to write that this is a nice project, that they are full of solidarity and give some charity to small clubs. This is a complete nonsense and everybody except them knows it.
"One of them even called me after and apologised. Now they go again.
"To them fans are customers, for us fans are fans. It is interesting that they are criticising UEFA and ECA, one of them (Agnelli) was chairman of the ECA. Fans aren't important to them as fans launched a petition, they don't care about that.
"Let me just say that they can play their own competition, nobody forbids them that. But if they play their own competition they cannot play our competition. It is completely different thing.
"We are discussing with all our stakeholders, we are discussing with the leagues, we are discussing with the clubs, the ECA. It is not 'Super League-ish', it is everything but the Super League.
"We have not clarified the final decision, but for anyone to compare the reform of the Champions League to the Super League is not serious.
"We have 32 teams in the Champions League now and the plan is to have 36. It will be more places for smaller and mid-sized teams."
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