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Arsenal managing director Vinai Venkatesham, left, and head of football, Raul Sanllehi are committed to the Premier League
Arsenal managing director Vinai Venkatesham, left, and head of football, Raul Sanllehi are committed to the Premier League. Photograph: Stuart MacFarlane/Arsenal FC via Getty Images
Arsenal managing director Vinai Venkatesham, left, and head of football, Raul Sanllehi are committed to the Premier League. Photograph: Stuart MacFarlane/Arsenal FC via Getty Images

Arsenal hierarchy say club never pursued super league breakaway

This article is more than 5 years old

We will not weaken Premier League, says Vinai Venkatesham
‘We are in conversations, it doesn’t mean we support them’

Arsenal’s hierarchy say they are not about to abandon the Premier League in search of a European Super League breakaway. Although they were part of the group that had discussions about the prospect, the Premier League remains the priority.

“Arsenal aren’t or never have been interested in playing in any competition that weakens the Premier League,” the managing director, Vinai Venkatesham, said. “The Premier League is the world’s leading league in the leading sport; we don’t want to do anything to damage it. I see these articles that Arsenal want to break away – we never want to do any of that. But we also have to recognise we have to be in these conversations or we wouldn’t be responsible. We have to be in the conversations – it doesn’t necessarily mean we support them.”

Venkatesham’s colleague Raúl Sanllehí, the director of football who joined from Barcelona, emphasised that Arsenal wanted to position themselves in the highest echelons of the game and therefore feel compelled to be part of any debate, but he suggested that the manoeuvring between the top clubs that make up the European Club Association (ECA) is as much to do with posturing to push for the best possible deals with Uefa as any clear push to form a Super League.

“As [it is] responsible for top European clubs the ECA had to look to all the options for the future,” he said. “One of them, of course, could have been the possibility of a European Super League. We had a working team that participated – I was at Barcelona at that time, Ivan Gazidis [then of Arsenal] was there too. It was a conversation we didn’t hide from anybody, not even from the ECA smaller clubs.

“We knew that could be an option and we explored that option. We looked into that in two ways: a way of exploring the real possibility and also how it would help us to negotiate with Uefa under the new terms because every cycle we will negotiate. At the end of the day the outcome was the best possible because we got into a new deal with Uefa within the system that protected the domestic leagues.”

Sanllehí rejected reports that there was a genuine proposal recently that Arsenal signed up for. “The way it was explained may seem we were doing secret things but there is nothing secret,” he said. “There is one document that has been presented in an article that has Arsenal’s name; it also has Barcelona’s name. But there’s no signature and I can assure you in Arsenal and Barcelona we have not seen the document. It’s a draft, probably drafted by some proposal discussed with one of those clubs in that list that I don’t know about. It’s a real document – I cannot deny that – but I can assure I’ve not seen that document.”

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He is doubtful a European Super League is around the corner: “Not in the short term because we have an agreement with Uefa right now – but I don’t know what the future will bring because the future writes itself. I don’t envision, not in the short term or medium term, radical change.”

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