Toward the end of last year, a movement toward creating a European Super League, where top teams from the major leagues clubs across Europe will play against each other weekly, garnered momentum, with several of the big clubs signing up.

On Sunday, 12 clubs jointly announced an agreement to commence the Super League competition. From England; Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United, and Tottenham: From Italy, Inter Milan and Juventus: And from Spain; Atletico Madrid, Real Madrid and Barcelona are all backing the plan.

“Twelve of Europe’s leading football clubs have today come together to announce they have agreed to establish a new mid-week competition, the Super League, governed by its Founding Clubs,” a statement issued by the clubs said on Sunday.

“Three more clubs are expected to join as Founding Clubs before the inaugural season, which is expected to start as soon as possible. In the future, the Founding Clubs look forward to consulting with UEFA and FIFA to work together,” the statement added.

Each of the Founding Clubs has issued a statement confirming their commitment to the Super League. All 12 clubs have quit the European Club Association.

According to their plan, the Super League will have 20 participating teams, and the games will be played during mid-week. It will start from August and end in May, having two groups of 10 teams; the first three of each group will qualify for the next round. Real Madrid’s president, Florentino Perez, will be the president of the new league. The clubs will receive €3.5 billion for their infrastructure investment plans.

American investment bank, JP Morgan, has confirmed it will provide the funding.

The move has thrown the world of football into disarray, as both football governing bodies, fans and other clubs kick against it, calling it “embarrassing,” saying the move was borne out of greed. Former Manchester United defender, Rio Ferdinand describes it as “a war on football”, “a disgrace” and “embarrassing” as it stands against everything that football is about.

UEFA said every player and club who participate in the Super League will be banned from UEFA and FIFA football tournaments.

“The clubs concerned will be banned from playing in any other competition at domestic, European or world level, and their players could be denied the opportunity to represent their national teams,” UEFA said.

“We thank those clubs in other countries, especially the French and German clubs, who have refused to sign up to this. We call on all lovers of football, supporters and politicians, to join us in fighting against such a project if it were to be announced. This persistent self-interest of a few has been going on for too long. Enough is enough,” it added.

French President Emmanuel Macron and UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson both issued statements condemning the new league and supporting UEFA’s position. Macron applauded the decision of French clubs to stay away from the breakaway.

“The president of the republic welcomes the position of French clubs to refuse to participate to a European football Super League project that threatens the principle of solidarity and sporting merit,” Macron said.

League bodies in Spain, France, England, Italy and Germany have all condemned the move, a stand Macron applauded.

UEFA has been working on a new plan that will see the Champions League restructured from 32 to 36-team, and plans to sign off on it on Monday. The plan will include proposal to collapse the group stage into a single table instead of the current groups of four teams.

Under the proposal, teams would play 10 matches each in the group stage rather the six currently being played, and there would be a playoff round before the last 16.

The breakaway has however, altered UEFA’s plan and would likely disrupt football as we know it if it succeeds. The Founding Clubs said there is plan to launch a corresponding women’s league as soon as possible.

Although the Super League has been in the pipeline for long, the Founding Clubs cited financial strains induced by the pandemic as part of the reasons for accelerating the plan, and also the objective of improving the quality and intensity of existing European competitions throughout each season.

“The new annual tournament will provide significantly greater economic growth and support for European football via a long-term commitment to uncapped solidarity payments which will grow in line with league revenues,” the Founding Clubs statement said.

The fear is that the Super League will greatly undermine the current structure of inclusivity and equitable financial distribution in football, thus creating an elite league that will make smaller leagues and clubs irrelevant.

Surprisingly, FIFA did not condemn the breakaway but urged all parties involved in the “heated discussions” to “engage in calm, constructive and balanced dialogue” for the good of the game and in the “spirit of solidarity and fair play.”

In yet another attempt to ward off a potential threat, Facebook announced on Monday it is delving into audio services.

Rattled by the popularity of Clubhouse, Facebook is taking, what is now a custom, step to clone the audio chat platform. It is similar to its moves into the services of other social media platforms such as YouTube, Snapchat and short-video app TikTok.

Social media audio has seen a growing acceptance as podcasts become a way of putting out contents. Live social audio on Clubhouse and Twitter Spaces have been taken to another level, attracting a growing number of fascinated people.

“At Facebook, we’ve seen the continuing rise of audio on our platforms, from audio on our platforms, from audio calls to audio messages on WhatsApp and Messenger. We’re working to make audio messages easier to record, and more fun – including the ability for people to send familiar sound clips to their friends that range from sound effects like crickets chirping to quotes from popular songs,” Facebook said in a statement.

The social media company said the live audio product, called Live Audio Rooms, will be tested in Facebook Groups. It plans to make the feature available to everyone on Facebook this summer and incorporate it in its messaging app, Messenger. Reddit also announced its own Clubhouse-like product on Monday.

Facebook wants to “treat audio as a first-class medium in the way that we treat photos and videos,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Monday in an interview with journalist Casey Newton on another group-chatting platform, Discord.

The Live Audio will be tested in Groups, to make it available to the 1.8 billion people using Groups every month, the company said. Another feature of the Live Audio are Rooms that will make live audio both accessible and discoverable so that public figures can share ideas with new audiences and create a forum for discussion without using camera.

Podcasts are also coming to Facebook. People will soon be able to listen to and discover new podcasts directly on the Facebook app, as they already can on alternative platforms like Spotify and Apple’s podcast app.

Facebook said more than 170 million people are already connected to hundreds of thousands of podcast pages on Facebook, and more than 35 million people are members of fan groups around podcasts, but until now, they all have to leave Facebook to listen to episodes.

“Within the next few months, you’ll be able to listen to podcasts directly on the Facebook app – both while using the app or when the app is backgrounded,” the social media platform said.

Another new product is called “Soundbites. They are audio clips that are short-form like TikTok videos but are instead audio-focused with captions. The feature will first be available to a select number of creators, including comedian Drew Lynch and motivational speaker Molly Burke.

“We’ll start testing Soundbites over the next few months with a small number of creators and refine the product with their input before making it available to everyone,” Facebook explained.

Facebook also announced plans for creators to be able to make money with these new audio tools. This would include charging for access to Live Audio Rooms and using Facebook Stars, its tipping feature. The company is also launching an Audio Creator Fund to support those using its Soundbites feature.

“Soon after launch, we’ll also offer other monetization models, like the ability to charge for access to a Live Audio Room through a single purchase or a subscription,” Facebook said.

Zuckerberg said Monday that he likes audio since theoretically people can more easily consume it while multitasking and also because the production is “more accessible.”

“A big part of the creator economy is that it’s empowering individuals,” Zuckerberg said. “I think that’s a positive trend in the world.”

Facebook said everything is being built together to help creators to turn live conversation into a podcast for everyone to listen to later.