Plans for a European Super League are just about the worst thing to happen to football, maybe ever, but if we’re to get any consolation from these dark and turbulent times, it’s with jokes about Pro Evolution Soccer.
PES is famous for its emphasis on how football plays, but it’s also famous for lacking the licensing firepower of rival FIFA, and so many of its teams aren’t allowed to carry their actual names, badges and kits, which are replaced by in-house approximations.
Liverpool, for example, could never be called Liverpool, so in PES had to be called Merseyside Red instead (though more recently they’ve simply been called Liverpool B).
(To our British and other football-savvy readers, I’m sorry I’m having to explain the joke here, but I have to explain the joke!)
Anyway, Liverpool are one of six Premier League clubs founding the breakaway European Super League, which carries with it all kinds of potential legal and competitive baggage, and so while they were getting ready to face Leeds earlier today, Leeds’ social media team had some fun with it:
???? We’re underway against the Merseyside Reds at Elland Road!
— Leeds United (@LUFC) April 19, 2021
Leeds also wore shirts emblazoned with “EARN IT”, a shot at the Super League’s obsession with locking themselves into an elite European competition whose place they don’t have to, well, earn.
Making things even sweeter on the night is the fact that Liverpool, a club who feel they should be guaranteed a spot among the 15 most prestigious and powerful sides in Europe, could only draw 1-1 with Leeds, a side who last year were in England’s second tier and had to bust their arse to get back to the Premier League after 16 years away.
FULL TIME: #LUFC hold Super League side Merseyside Reds to a 1-1 draw after late Llorente equaliser
— Leeds United (@LUFC) April 19, 2021
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