Don’t know if you noticed, but Florentino Pérez, the fast-talking and even faster-spending president of Real Madrid, has raised the spectre of a European Super League consisting of the continent’s biggest and richest clubs.

Pérez’s immediate objective is to persuade Michel Platini, the Uefa president, to guarantee the presence of Europe’s marquee names in the Champions League, but has threatened to push for a breakaway league if his proposals are rejected.

“We have to agree a new European Super League which guarantees that the best always play the best — something that does not happen in the Champions League,” Pérez said on Saturday.

Some will dismiss Pérez’s comments as those of a man with a mouth even larger than his ego, but the financial rationale of a breakaway league has grown since it was last seriously considered in 1998 under the auspices of Media Partners, a Milan-based marketing company. As Stefan Szymanski, of the Cass Business School in the City of London, put it yesterday: “The economic imperative for a European Super League is probably stronger now than at any time.”

Pérez did not suggest that the top clubs should boycott their domestic leagues, but there is little doubt that the profits accruing to the Super League would be greatest if its members were to do so. Think of it like this. If you have just forked out £180 million on Cristiano Ronaldo, Kaká and Karim Benzema, how best do you recoup your investment? Is it to have these global superstars strutting their stuff against the likes of Osasuna, Getafe and Jerez, teams towards the bottom of La Liga, or against Manchester United, Bayern Munich and AC Milan?

The same logic applies to the Barclays Premier League’s “big four”. Would Chelsea make more cash playing regularly against Wigan Athletic and Hull City, as at present, or against Barcelona and Inter Milan in a Super League?

The problem with the status quo — speaking commercially now, and God knows that club bosses see the world in such terms — is simple: Europe’s top teams play against each other too seldom. A Super League replacing the existing European and domestic fixtures would allow Europe’s best teams to play against each other twice a week, providing them with huge additional income.

Why else have American owners piled into the Premier League? Why else do they think they can drive up profits when the Premier League collective bargaining structure is squeezing maximum value from the television rights? Why else are they confident of increasing turnover when match-day and merchandising revenues seem to be maxed out?

Two words resolve an otherwise unresolvable conundrum: “biding” and “time”.

These owners have not said it in so many words, but is it credible that they have not considered the financial potential of a breakaway league operating on the model of the American conferences, where the likes of George Gillett Jr, Tom Hicks and Malcolm Glazer cut their teeth? Could they have failed to factor in the prospect of a group of top European clubs operating a closed shop protecting them not only from irksome competition but opening the door to market restrictions that could transform profitability?

The Premier League has not delivered surging profits over recent years, despite surging revenues, largely because most of the new cash has gone to the players. According to Deloitte, the accountants, wages topped £1 billion for the first time last season. This has been great news for Bentley showrooms, but has left many owners with precious little to show in dividends.

American sporting franchises, in contrast, turn in vast profits through operating salary caps that prevent the players from pocketing all the loot. Why have the European football leagues failed to follow suit? Because the fragmented jurisdiction means that nobody wants to be the first to take the plunge. If, say, the Premier League adopted a salary cap before others, the outflow of talent to foreign clubs could be calamitous.

A Super League would obliterate this problem in a flash. The clubs could even use the extra profits to subsidise ticket prices for fans and still have enough to pay for new private jets for the owners.

But wouldn’t the top players lose out? Not necessarily. So long as the new revenues delivered by the Super League are as vast as economists predict, the clubs could operate a salary cap along American lines without compromising wages. Players’ salaries would be far greater than in rival football leagues, which is all that really matters.

You doubt the maths? Well, consider that United take about £51 million from their share of the Premier League television rights (it would be far more if the league did not operate its admirably egalitarian revenue-sharing scheme). Barcelona get about £92 million and AC Milan £97 million. This may sound a lot, but what would happen to these figures, when added to other income streams, if these teams were playing against each other regularly rather than against often inadequate opposition within their own domestic competitions?

We get an idea by looking at the Champions League. Can it be denied that the value of its television rights consists, in large part, in the prospect of watching Europe’s best teams clashing in the latter stages of the competition after the less competitive group matches? But suppose these clashes were to form the staple of a new Super League. When you do the numbers, it is nigh on impossible to avoid the conclusion that revenues would soar.

The commercial logic of a European Super League looks unanswerable, however depressing that may sound to those devoted to the English top flight with its history and traditions. So long as the regulatory issues can be surmounted, it is difficult to see how a new breed of club owners will be able to resist the temptation.

Fifa and Uefa, of course, could threaten any players joining the breakaway with ineligibility for the World Cup and European Championship, but one imagines that, when it came to the crunch, some kind of compromise would be found.

Mock Pérez all you want, but the European Super League is a question of when, not if.