Report: Some Super League Clubs Could Face 2-Year Champions League Ban amid Talks

UEFA could levy a two-year ban from European competition for clubs that "have yet to sufficiently distance themselves" from the proposed breakaway Super League, according to ESPN's Gabriele Marcotti and Moises Llorens.

AC Milan, Barcelona, Juventus and Real Madrid are the clubs in question. Marcotti and Llorens reported the other eight were working with UEFA "in an effort to agree a lesser sanction and extract a formal definitive commitment not to pursue the Super League effort."

By now, the short-lived history of the Super League is well known.

On April 18, 12 of Europe's most notable clubs announced they had formed the Super League as an alternative to UEFA's Champions League. Within days, the concept had unraveled after receiving almost universal condemnation.

The six representatives from the Premier League (Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur) all walked away, thus making the Super League in its current form unfeasible. Atletico Madrid and Inter Milan followed suit.

The conversation quickly shifted to how those involved might be punished. UEFA President Aleksander Ceferin needs to thread a difficult needle where the clubs receive adequate sanctions but don't feel unduly chastened, thus potentially pushing them away from the organization all over again.

According to Marcotti and Llorens, the four holdouts are under the impression they can avoid any serious punishments from UEFA because the original Super League documents didn't explicitly state the competition was going to be a breakaway entity separate from UEFA.

Were it to happen, a two-year European ban would significantly hit the bottom lines of AC Milan, Barcelona, Juventus and Real Madrid because the Champions League is club football's cash cow.

In the case of Barca and Madrid, many believe their desire to launch the Super League was fueled largely by their ballooning debt. Their finances would be in an even more dire state if the European revenue well dried up.