Barça will not play in Miami: La Liga announces that the promoter is backing down.
The final decision was made due to the "uncertainty generated in Spain in recent weeks."
BarcelonaA new twist has emerged regarding the match Barça was scheduled to play in Miami this December against Villarreal. La Liga announced this Tuesday that, after talks with the event promoter, it has decided to cancel the match. According to the league's statement, the final decision was motivated by the "uncertainty generated in Spain in recent weeks." The clubs have already been informed, and therefore, the match will be played at the Estadio de la Cerámica on December 20.
La Liga has clarified that it was the North American promoter Relevent who decided to cancel the match. who made this decision. In its statement, La Liga "deeply regrets that this project, which represented a historic and unparalleled opportunity for the internationalization of Spanish football, cannot go ahead. Holding an official match outside our borders would have been a decisive step in the global expansion of our competition, reinforcing the international presence of the clubs, the positioning of the players, and the brand."
The Spanish league had worked hard in recent months to obtain permission from UEFA, FIFA, and the Spanish Football Federation to host a league match abroad for the first time, after years of failure. This seemed to be the right option for La Liga president Javier Tebas, who had encountered pushback from the players, who were staging a symbolic protest at the start of matches by refusing to play for a few seconds. FIFA and UEFA had given the Spanish and Italian leagues permission to take a match from their local tournament abroad this year, a dream Tebas has been pursuing since 2017. The Como-Milan match, scheduled to be played in Perth, Australia, is still going ahead for now.
The promotion company Relevent was in charge of bringing the match to Hard Rock Stadium in Miami. Founded in 2012 by Stephen Ross, a real estate developer also known for owning the NFL's Miami Dolphins, the company invests in television rights and organizes tennis tournaments in Madrid and Miami. With Ross's help, Relevent organizes friendlies for top-flight European clubs in the United States every summer and has signed a deal with UEFA and La Liga to promote soccer. Its goal was to play that match, but it decided to back out just one day before the meeting scheduled for this Wednesday between La Liga and the Football Players' Association (AFE) to reconcile positions. Also on Tuesday, Real Madrid, the club that has most strongly opposed the match, sent a statement to the Higher Sports Council asking that the match not be played abroad. In the run-up to the match between Madrid and Juve, goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois stated that "this match corrupts the competition and does not follow the players' agreement."
The news surprised Barça's board members as they left the Olympic Stadium and Villarreal's board members in the stands during the match against Manchester City. Fernando Roig Negueroles, the club's president, couldn't hide his reaction, as Villarreal was confident they would make a lot of money from the match.
This is the second time the league has been left holding its own. In 2018, when it first officially proposed the game, it ran into opposition from the Federation. This case ultimately ended up going to court five years ago when it wanted to move the Girona-Barcelona match of the 2018-2019 season to the United States, a dispute that was resolved against the employers' association first in a commercial court in Madrid, then in the Provincial Court, and then in the Supreme Court. Now that it seemed the Miami match would be played, the League has seen how the opposition it generates frightens promoters.
