Bohr – the PSG-backed Super League that never saw the light of day

Whilst Paris Saint-Germain were – and continue to be – an ardent opponent to the A22 Super League plans, which first saw the light of day in 2021, L’Équipe have revealed that the French club had worked on their own Super League. 

Codenamed Bohr, former Juventus president Andrea Agnelli first evoked the plans for the creation of a Super League. The Italian revealed that he travelled to meet PSG president Nasser Al-Khelaïfi in Paris back in 2020, at the height of the Covid pandemic in order to discuss plans for an alternative competition to the UEFA Champions League – a competition that in the eyes of the two executives, did not supply sufficient revenue for clubs to survive. 

L’Équipe have not only consulted a comprehensive ~30-page document on the Bohr plans, but Al-Khelaifi’s entourage have also confirmed the existence of the plans. The plans would have seen 24 clubs competing within six groups. Each team would compete in a minimum of 32 games per season, with a total of 413 games overall in the competition. 

Such a commitment would have made it impossible for clubs to compete in their domestic leagues, and a line in page 10 of the Bohr document stipulated that teams would have to leave their domestic separate entirely from their domestic leagues in order to maximise revenue. L’Équipe, however, understands that clubs would have instead allowed their B-teams to compete in the domestic league, rather than leave entirely, in fear of inciting considerable backlash. 

Whilst the A22 Super League plans are still alive, the Bohr plans are dead in the water. Due to Al-Khelaifi’s and Agnelli’s disparate stance on the plans for the creation of the Super League, the two are no longer close, and PSG, alongside Bayern Munich and UEFA,