In August 1998, a group representing an Italian media conglomerate arrived unannounced at UEFA President Lennart Johansson's holiday villa in Switzerland to pitch a radical alternative to European club competition.

Their plan to launch a European Super League failed, but it was a lot closer to happening than you might think. As Real Madrid and Atletico prepare to do battle in the final of the all-powerful Champions League in Milan, know it could have been a different story.

This is what might have happened had the Italians got their way in 1998.

May 28, 2001: European Super League Final: Real Madrid vs. Bayern Munich, Stade de France

And so, it comes to this, finally—the end of the beginning. After all the hand-wringing and dallying, the bickering and the squabbling, European football has arrived at its alleged destiny.

Were the labour pains, the writhing, the screaming and the kicking all worth it? Has football in Europe been born again?

Where to begin? The outward signs are that it is business as usual. The inaugural final in Paris this evening between Real Madrid and Bayern Munich will feel rich in pedigree. Both sides were finalists the last two seasons in the now defunct Champions League. Somehow that already feels like a moniker from another age, a fustian relic of a simpler time.

The age of European football that just ended was a time of consensus among clubs, fans and the suited men in Nyon, France, who are paid to try to secure the best deal for both. It was an age doomed the moment it became clear that Europe's top clubs were being lulled by overtures from Italian magnate Silvio Berlusconi's Fininvest media group, and it perished once the contracts were signed.

For "top clubs," read "most profitable." The self-appointed cartel of clubs that last year fought UEFA and the international courts for permanent membership in Europe's new showpiece competition, and failed, has nonetheless accomplished much of what it set out to achieve.

With guaranteed qualification on fixed five-year terms available but heavily slanted towards the big clubs, the likes of Real and Bayern have suitably protected their interests against the threat from top-flight rivals in Spain, Germany and Europe.

The wild-card entries are still available to clubs via their performances in the continent's domestic leagues, though making up half of the new Super League's 32-team annual intake, they represent a far smaller portion of its financial clout.

Real, reigning European champions, will go into tonight's final as favourites. They finished seven points clear at the top of the 16-team Super League Pool B—one half of the bloated 32-team group stage that put clubs through an exhausting 15-match round robin before the competition reached its quarter-final stage in March.

Sixteen of those clubs will enjoy protection in this league for at least the next four seasons; that only four of them qualified for this season's quarter-final is the surest sign that decisions have been made based on financial clout rather than success on the pitch—despite UEFA's protestations.

For its part, Europe's governing body remains vocal in the media about how it resisted the move by Fininvest and a consortium of clubs, Real and Bayern among them, to secure permanent membership of the Super League for Europe's highest earners. Less touted is the fact that its hand was forced by a ruling from the European Court of Justice, who blocked Fininvest's plans on the grounds that it would contravene European market laws on monopolies.

And so, the power brokers conceded, and now all memberships of the ESL are to be reviewed after five seasons. After that time, an aggregate of all points collected—weighted for appearances in the tournament's latter stages—will dictate who can remain.

By then, the 16 "founding" clubs will have had five uninterrupted years to strengthen their case; as for the rest, they must hope to qualify each year on merit through their domestic leagues, or else a precious season's worth of points will be lost, whittling away the likelihood of their making the cut.

Not that Europe's elite have found it completely smooth sailing in these unchartered waters. Negotiations between Bayern and insurance giant Allianz over naming rights to the German giants' planned new stadium have reportedly stalled, with the company reluctant to commit to a deal until Bayern have tied down their place in the ESL from 2005 onward, when the new ground is scheduled for completion.

For the rest, though, the problems are far more pressing. Tonight's finalists' domestic rivals—Atletico Madrid, Valencia, Borussia Dortmund, Bayer Leverkusen; sides with ambition on the European stage—are, for now, left with a fighting chance. But for how long?

Bayern received just over €12.5 million for reaching the Champions League final in 1999, 12 months before the changes were introduced. Whatever the outcome tonight, they are guaranteed a prize fund of at least €46 million, such has been the impact of TV revenue flowing in from the new Super League contracts.

Bayer Leverkusen, who fell to their compatriots at the quarter-final stage, will receive €31 million, but they finished fifth in the Bundesliga and will not be back next season to add to that windfall. Thanks to Fininvest's deal with UEFA, third-place Bayern will.

And this is where the age of consensus, of competition anchored in compromise, comes to a shuddering halt.

Bayern have always been a bigger earner than Dortmund, Real an easier sell than Atletico; until now, that financial power was only useful inasmuch as it could be converted into success on the pitch. Now, for the game's elite, that job has been done for them by their allies at Fininvest and elsewhere among an international media that stands to gain tenfold from the apartheid that has come to European football.

Bayern and Dortmund no longer play on two halves of the same pitch, no longer see the world the same. Bayern will be underdogs tonight in Paris, but it doesn't matter. The biggest battle has been a long time won.

Artwork by Rory Martin

April 9, 2004: European Super League Quarter-Final Second Leg: Chelsea vs. Olympique Marseille, Stamford Bridge

They've been used to supporter unrest at Stamford Bridge this season. June 2003 feels a long time ago now—since noises began whipping around West London that a Russian oligarch was lining up a takeover bid to try to haul Chelsea onto a level playing field with Europe's mega-elite. What the boys from the Bridge would do for a slice of Roman Abramovich's fortune now.

Defeat tonight for Claudio Ranieri's side in the second leg of their quarter-final against Olympique Marseille would mean a kiss goodbye to any hope of joining the ESL on a semi-permanent basis when memberships are renewed at the end of next season, as they have fallen so far behind in UEFA's coefficient rankings.

So too will go the chance to secure Chelsea's long-term future, with debts continuing to lash the club as it prepares for its second season in five without European football.

Should the Blues fail to overcome the 3-1 deficit from last month's first leg at the Stade Velodrome, they will no longer mathematically be able to climb high enough to make the cut in UEFA's coefficient table, used to determine which 16 clubs will make up the "Category A" teams for the period of 2005-10 and enjoy guaranteed membership in the ESL—and all its incumbent riches.

Instead, there will be five more years of scrapping season by season to secure the Premier League's one wild-card entry. It's small wonder that Abramovich went cold on the Blues.

This evening at least there will be the rare spectacle of a full house at the Bridge, a welcome change from the thousands of seats left empty for league games this season as the fans' protest against the Premier League continues to gather pace and slash attendance figures.

Those choosing to stay away have not forgiven the Premier League for reneging on its threat four years ago to expel clubs who accepted an invitation from UEFA to join what was seen then as a rebel league.

Fan groups claim that by withdrawing the ultimatum for clubs to choose between the riches of the Premier League and the ESL, league bosses paved the way for UEFA and its media partners to formalise the imbalance between Europe's moneyed elite and the chasing pack.

If any club has a right to feel aggrieved by the extent of the sweeping changes made to European football, it is Chelsea, on whom the golden ladder was pulled up at just the moment they were stepping foot on its lowest rung.

And so, Abramovich's millions will not be pouring into the Stamford Bridge coffers this summer, or at any time in the near future, after the multibillionaire was reportedly dissuaded by the perceived difficulties of navigating UEFA's stringent and complex criteria for securing full-time membership in Europe's top table.

Nor will there be European football at the Bridge next season, with Ranieri's side slumped in mid-table in the Premier League, having burned themselves out in a doomed bid to compete on two fronts. The likelihood of recovering to claim a wild-card entry seems remote.

Chelsea's hand appears doubly rigged when laid out next to that of the side that beat them at the Velodrome three weeks ago. Marseille are a protected Category A club, meaning their place in next season's ESL is already secured.

Having effectively dropped out of the race for the title in Ligue 1 after losing, 2-1, to reigning champions Paris Saint-Germain last month, the side from the south of France have little else to distract them from their European pursuits. And in the first leg, it showed.

Marseille were lithe and fresh in storming into a 3-0 lead before Frank Lampard scored a lifeline goal for a heady, burdened Chelsea, exhausted by their futile hunt for European privileges. It may not be enough to resuscitate an ailing season.

Lampard's Chelsea career too now hangs in the balance. Last summer, he signed a two-year extension at the Bridge, reluctant to commit any further with Chelsea's future unsecured. With that uncertainty set to continue, the England midfielder will likely look elsewhere next summer, like so many players around Europe unwilling to give guarantees outside of UEFA's peculiar schedules.

Attentions will turn now at Stamford Bridge to what happens next. If the team are eliminated tonight, then the long process of preparing for UEFA's next five-year cycle begins.

Realistically, that will require European qualification every season from 2005 onward in order to keep their coefficient figures up with those who are privileged to compete every year, or else there will almost certainly be more frustration to come for the Blues.

That frustration will mean more debts, £90 million and counting, according to the club's most recent published accounts, and with fans staying away en masse for domestic games, what started out as a protest against the spinelessness of the Premier League is quickly beginning to hit the club where it hurts: its pockets.

Add to that dangerous equation an absence of the ESL's lucrative TV riches, and it becomes hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel for this once buoyant but now lead-weighted club.

After the first leg, one club insider said: "Whether we make it to the semi-final or not, Chelsea will make it to the top table in Europe soon. There is a plan in place, and this won't be the end of the world."

No, but as the sun sets on West London and Marseille mosey into town, there will be those in the Shed End who will swear they can see it from here.

Artwork by Virgo A'raff

May 9, 2009: Final Day of the Premier League Season: Everton vs. Liverpool, Goodison Park

They'll talk about this afternoon's Merseyside Derby for years. But perhaps not with the same gusto as Gary McAllister's stoppage-time 40-yarder in April 2000 or with the same breathlessness as the 4-4 draw that marked the abrupt end of Kenny Dalglish's reign nine years earlier.

These are more sterile times, with football's modern mythologies just as likely to be written around bureaucratic hand-wringing as magic performed on the pitch. All the same, a piece of history will be penned today.

If there's one thing that everyone in the game wanted to avoid—from the Premier League's top brass to players and backroom staff up and down the country—it's the anti-spectacle that will unfold at Goodison Park.

It's difficult to throw your cap on exactly who will be the biggest loser from this, the strangest of the city's 210 derbies. Certainly Everton will stake a claim. But the integrity of domestic league football not just here but in the major countries of Europe is set to sweep the booby prize.

Under different circumstances, it would have had all the hallmarks of a potential classic. These cross-city rivals go into the final day of a frenetic season level on points, Everton marginally ahead on goal difference and just a draw away from claiming fourth place in the Premier League. If Liverpool win, they'll leapfrog their neighbours across Stanley Park and take fourth for themselves.

These days, though, league positions are not much other than trivial footnotes, paling in significance next to the number of zeros lined up on media contracts. Whoever wins today, Liverpool win. And football loses.

The Reds' European privileges—their cast-iron position as one of UEFA's Category A institutions and indispensability as one of Europe's biggest money spinners—mean that fourth place for Everton will count for nothing.

With Chelsea—English football's other losers in blue—sure of second and the Premier League's wild-card entry to the European Super League, the door is already slammed shut on Everton's hopes of making a first appearance in Europe in 15 years. The Blues have been turned away at the gate by avaricious guardians trained to recognise the glint of gold rather than the scuff marks of a hard slog.

The mechanics are nothing new to us, nor are the worn-out arguments that domestic football is being run into the ground by the relentless march of Europe's elite.

We've been here before, most recently 12 months ago when Arsenal slipped to sixth in the Premier League, meaning that Chelsea needed to finish second in order to join champions Manchester United and perennial underachievers Liverpool in Europe. Leeds United, a gallant third, missed out. But when did gallantry ever pay the bills?

And therein lies the great irony of modern, Kafka-esque domestic league football: The more the moneyed elite underachieve at home, the more the rest are punished for their performances.

With the Big Three given a free pass, the rest of the division are left to fight over the one wild-card entry available to the highest finisher. If United, Arsenal and Liverpool live up to their billing and occupy the top three spots, then the system works—just; fourth place takes the prize. Underperform, and we end up a with a situation, like last season, in which it is necessary to finish second in order to qualify.

Should the Big Three collapse completely into mid-table, then only the league champions would qualify for Europe alongside them.

The greatest fear now is not for the situation as it stands but for where it might lead. All three big hitters have been accused this season of prioritising European games over domestic fixtures. With the rewards for success in the ESL set to rapidly augment under the terms of new media deals yet to be agreed upon, it remains to be seen how long they will continue to take the Premier League seriously.

Both Arsenal and Liverpool have finished outside the top six at least once over the past five seasons—Liverpool thrice—and the motivation to compete on two fronts is set to be tested severely in the coming seasons.

Fans began voting with their feet a long time ago, attendances taking a consistent hit year on year since the effects of this two-tier top flight began to be felt. The boycotts began as a message to the Premier League that this kind of alteration of the competitive contract would not be tolerated. Now, that has translated into outright supporter apathy for a league that no longer respects the rules of competition.

Some will say the Premier League has brought this plague upon itself. In a bid to appease its biggest assets, it has alienated its core fanbase; its stadiums are haemorrhaging supporters, and in the eyes of the world, it is no longer in control of its brand. The organization stands on the brink of being defeated by its own greed.

And so, to Goodison Park. But what value are today's bragging rights on Merseyside when they will bear no translation into material spoils? After today, we may be some way nearer to knowing what the future of English football will feel like: emptied of its urgency and its consequence, reduced to a mere exhibition.

Yes, they will talk about today for years to come.

May 23, 2013: Emergency General Meeting of the Polish Football Association, Warsaw, Poland: Statement from the President

After prolonged discussions that have resulted in a unanimous vote, it is with deep regret that I confirm the resignation of the Polish Football Federation from UEFA effective as of June 1, 2013.

This comes after we at the PZPN came to the decision that it is no longer in the interests of Polish football to remain within the auspices of an organisation that treats certain of its members as expendable in the organisation of its competitions and its financial model.

Over the last 10 seasons, UEFA has deliberately and persistently limited access for Polish clubs to European competitions. Therefore, we feel it is no longer feasible for us to continue to compete under these terms and as such will be pursuing alternatives. We would like to place on record our thanks to UEFA for its support for Polish football over the last 60 years.

June 9, 2013: News report compiled by Wire Services, London

Plans have been unveiled for a new confederation to represent the interests of Eastern and Southern European football associations.

The Confederation of European Football Associations will have its headquarters in Budapest, Hungary, and will extend invitations for membership to those national associations that have resigned from UEFA in recent weeks.

The announcement comes after Romania and the Czech Republic became the fifth and sixth associations to withdraw from the European governing body in protest over the lack of access to UEFA's centrepiece competition, the European Super League.

In March, the European governing body announced that from next season, the champions from nations ranked 16th to 24th in its coefficient table would compete for just one place in the ESL, with Europe's lowest-ranked nations excluded entirely.

The decision is part of a wider movement to allocate more ESL places to clubs from the top-ranked nations.

Romania and the Czech Republic have joined Poland, Hungary, Serbia and Slovenia in turning their backs on UEFA, with all six expected to sign with the new CEFA to promote the interests of clubs and national sides.

UEFA are yet to comment on the plans, which originated as a joint venture between the Polish and Hungarian associations, but it is understood that they are open to a possible working relationship that would allow national teams to continue to compete in pan-European competitions.

It is not know whether FIFA will consider recognising the new confederation, but if not, it may jeopardise the affected nations' participation in future World Cups.

Aug. 17, 2019: Opening Weekend of the 2019/20 Premier League Season

Though the sun is yet to pierce it, the darkness seems particularly heady and stubborn for this time. In truth, it's hard to know which will be the most disconcerting aspect of the football season that is about to dawn.

This will be a season, the first in the modern history of the English top flight, with no relegation. For perhaps the only time in the drawn-out dismantling of the game in this country, the Premier League cannot reasonably be blamed for this devastating rupture in the football continuum.

That the league will lose its three most profitable clubs to the newly expanded, newly exclusive, newly ring-fenced ESL is out of its hands, which have been tied for a long time.

Just as the Football Association ceded the initiative to manage the game to the new league in 1992, so too have English football's guardians relinquished control to the media bosses that dictate the shape of football in Europe. Those clubs need replacing, and the league has nowhere to look but to the Championship below.

No disrespect to Blackburn, Burnley and Notts County—three fine institutions in the tradition of salt-of-the-Earth, gritty English football. Indeed, there are those who will argue, rightly, that the Premier League needs this fresh injection of the same working-class spirit from the industrial heartlands that inspired the growth of the great game in a simpler time.

But what will it mean for the long-term sustainability of this league for Manchester United, Arsenal and Liverpool to be replaced by three clubs that between them boast six top-flight seasons in 20 years?

The deals that will see English football beamed into pubs and homes across the world over the next five years are yet to be signed, and as such, for now, we can only speculate as to the damage. The most pessimistic estimates put the value of the new contracts at as little as 50 per cent of what they were in 2015.

This isn't, of course, just a reaction to the loss of the league's three biggest money spinners but rather the cumulative effect of a brand that has been in a downward spiral for almost two decades.

Exactly when the Premier League lost control of its global image is debatable and largely irrelevant. The league's integrity was compromised the day European qualification became unpegged from league positions, collapsed further each time a weakened team took to the field to contest meaningless fixtures and finally dissolved as attendances crumbled before the twin devils of apathy and protest.

One wonders if sleepless nights are still had by those who, back in 1999, gave the green light for England's biggest clubs to accept UEFA's lucrative offer of almost permanent membership of its suckling new European Super League. Back then, the Premier League was a force to be reckoned with, and as the world's most lucrative football league, it had a surefire bargaining chip.

They will argue in mitigation that they took a gamble, a punt on the assumption that appeasing United, Arsenal and Liverpool would be the best way to ensure cooperation and mediation between the clubs and UEFA.

They might also argue that where we are now is simply the natural destination at the end of the road paved by Jean-Marc Bosman in 1995, when control was transferred from clubs to players and the "3+2" rule was axed, limiting the number of foreign imports per team. Regulation has never looked the same since, the hand of capital no longer checked.

For those of us who imagined another outcome, perhaps we were being naive all along.

Back in 1999, then-chief executive of UEFA Gerhard Aigner voiced his concerns that the prototype model for the new European league was only the first move by Berlusconi to complete the transfer of the continent's biggest clubs into U.S.-style franchises. Aigner worried that the precedent set in Australia by Rupert Murdoch, who siphoned off the country's biggest earners and built a new super-machine that allowed him and his fellow media moguls to name their price.

And so, it came to pass. No more derbies in North London, on Merseyside or in Manchester. Instead, Arsenal and Paris Saint-Germain will contest bragging rights for Greater Brittany, Real Madrid will fight for supremacy on the Iberian Peninsula and Dynamo Kiev will revive Soviet-style ghosts with "derbies" against Spartak Moscow.

But the local is now gone from elite football. It will survive in some form, at Turf Moor and at Ewood Park, and who knows—perhaps it will be stronger for it.

These are new times for football all over Europe. How quickly we forget our past remains to be seen.

Then—UEFA general secretary Gerhard Aigner at the Champions League group stage draw in 2000.

Epilogue

It is 18 years this summer since representatives from Media Partners surprised Lennart Johansson at his holiday home. In that time, the same forces that made the super league seem attractive to clubs in 1998 have been magnified many times; the value of TV rights have soared as the game has completed its shift from a live event attended by a few thousand spectators to a fully media-driven product.

The case for a European Super League is stronger than ever. But the argument that these changes are inevitable somewhere along the line makes one bold, false assumption. Former UEFA chief executive Aigner, who was charged with examining that proposal in 1998, was against it from the outset.

"The proposals as they came to us [in 1998] were out of the question from a sporting perspective," he told Bleacher Report. "The idea had been simply to bring the best teams together and maximise TV revenue that way—but in such a way that would have killed the national leagues. They actually thought it wouldn't do any harm to the leagues, but it was out of the question from the very beginning—an illusion.

"National leagues live off of the explosive interest in the European competitions. The whole concept is built up on sporting merits, but that wasn't their concept. So I told them there and then that they could forget it. But that's what the clubs were thinking anyway."

At a meeting in London, Aigner was able to convince the Premier League "pretty easily" that the Gandalf project was a nonstarter. He met with them in the afternoon; the Italians had been in that very morning.

"The thing to remember is that these ideas came from Southern Europe, not Northern Europe," Aigner says. "In the northern sphere, we are more true to the sporting criteria, whereas in Southern Europe, they like to have their way, and money is important.

"There is more loyalty to the rules in the British and Scandinavian area than in the south. I'm not saying that they disrespected the rules, but the project had to be seen under these concepts. It wasn't true to the sporting criteria."

It's easy to become wrapped up in the idea that football bureaucrats are interested solely in maximising profits at the expense of all else. While it's true that modern football is a de facto cash cow when compared to 20 years ago, speaking with Aigner brings a reminder that football's governors have an innate appreciation for what makes their product valuable.

The competitive contract, the game's very DNA, dictates that privilege must be tied to performance. It is intractable, woven so deep within football's character that to try to extract it would be to tear at its very seams. The Premier League, UEFA and FIFA are not naive in this respect. The success of their products has been based on their enduring ability to maximise global interest in football.

It's no coincidence that the Premier League, the world's most profitable competition, is almost unanimously considered to be Europe's most competitive league. Even in 1998, Aigner says, the league's governors recognised that competitive balance was crucial to its market value, hence its threat to expel any side that took Media Partners up on its offer.

Steven Powell sits on the national council of the Football Supporters' Federation. In 1998, he was conscious of the conspicuous lack of consultation with supporters by the architects of the plans.

"I don't want to see my club in Europe every season just because we're a big club; I want to see us there on merit," he says. "This, though, had absolutely zero sporting merit whatsoever. I would have stopped going. I'd have gone to follow the non-league.

"It would inevitably have meant a downgrading of the national league system. Football is built on rivalries, and those rivalries are so ingrained in the game. In South America, teams regularly play reserves in the league on the weekends when they've got a big Copa Libertadores because it's given priority there."

In 1998, Rob Hughes wrote in the New York Times:

"[Manchester United have] so much to lose on the domestic front — full 55,000 houses whenever and whomever they play at Old Trafford in the tribal traditions of English league soccer. That, and the sky-high income from Sky Television, the British satellite arm of Rupert Murdoch's media empire, nets United upward of £2 million ($3.2 million) a match, and the club's envied global appeal claws in merchandising and endorsements that make Manchester United the market leader in turning the round ball to profit."

Likewise, the Economist wrote:

"Some in football argue that the game would be damaged by a permanent super league designed to minimise shareholders' risk. Promotion and relegation, they say, are essential to competition. Without the danger of relegation, clubs that realise they cannot win that year will stop trying, turn to some other contest and play dull matches. And without opportunities for newcomers to enter a league through promotion, hungry outsiders with new energy and new investment are kept out."

Aigner is a pragmatic man, but the threat to football from corporate greed is something that seems to trouble him deeply even after 12 years on the outside. 

The game's relentless pursuit of higher financial margins makes for a built-in fail-safe, however. Even without Aigner, UEFA's decision-makers recognise that the foundation of football's profitability is its competitive ethos.

Lead artwork by Mark Gisbourne. Photos courtesy of Getty Images.