Fair-weather football fans appal me. But sooner or later they will get their Super League

I have very much enjoyed the farce of the European Super League’s announcement being swiftly followed by its collapse. I wish I had the urge to dance in joy with every other right-minded football fan, but I don’t, because this thing is far from over. The central idea behind the Super League was born a long time ago and it hasn’t died with the ignominy of this week’s pantomime. Sooner or later, in some form or other, it will be with us. The rich and famous clubs will get their wish to play only other rich and famous clubs. To stop them will require a cooperative, transnational legislative effort akin to that needed to stop multinational corporations dodging tax. And look how well that’s going.

There are clues in some of the heart-rending apologies issued by our “super” six clubs that they regard all this as unfinished business. Consider this from Arsenal: “When the invitation to join the Super League came, while knowing there were no guarantees, we did not want to be left behind to ensure we protected Arsenal and its future.” Protect Arsenal from what exactly? Missing out on the lucre even if the whole project stank? This is corporate Fomo of the lowest order. Even better, the statement goes on to say that the intention was also “to support the game you love through greater solidarity and financial stability”. Really? I’ve yet to hear anyone explain how it would have been to the benefit of the wider game. Oh, hang on, here it is: “Stability is essential for the game to prosper and we will continue to strive to bring the security the game needs to move forward. The system needs to be fixed.”

Related: Agnelli’s Super League insights suggest battles with Uefa are not over

And here is the key point: what they think needs fixing isn’t what most football fans think need fixing. Their idea of stability and security is different from mine. The system that we have is already rigged in favour of the rich and famous. The bigger you are, the more money you’ll make from broadcast rights, the more money you’ll get to spend on players, and the bigger you’ll get. People like me think these riches should be redistributed throughout the game to help create a bigger, wider, fairer contest. People like them reason that since their clubs are the ones more people want to watch, they should get more of the money. In fact, between them, it looks like they want not just more of that money, but all of it. One way or another, I fear they will get their way eventually. Lawyers everywhere, as usual, will trouser a fortune making it happen.

I have a good friend who, he assures me, is a quite brilliant QC. Here’s his view on the principle of a Super League: “I think it’s great. Ninety-five per cent of TV fans want to watch the elite clubs. That’s why they make up so much of the coverage. Defending the status quo is like supporting paper letters instead of email. As a fair-weather football viewer, I applaud anything that cuts through the never-ending dross matches on TV and guarantees top stars and the highest-quality football on the rare occasions I have time to watch a match. Let’s have some honesty about what most people want to watch and pay for. It won’t put small clubs out of business, unless nobody wants to watch them. In which case, why should they be in business?”

I may have to ask him for a temporary break in our friendship while I recover from this. The problem is that he’s right – in the sense that, increasingly, the game has come to belong to fair-weather armchair fans like him. By definition, they watch their football on the television, and television is where the money is. There’s a good deal less to be made from fans like me, who traipse around the country paying for our seats in stadiums. We can’t be squeezed any more than we already are, but the casual fans have more to give. These are the people who say things like: “I haven’t really got a team as such” and “I just watch the big games”. They baffle and appal fans like me, and now, it seems, the game is all about them, not us. The irony is gruesome.