October 21 – Spain’s LaLiga has officially cancelled its proposed Villareal-Barcelona regular season match in Miami on December 20 after “conversations” with its US promoter Relevent Sports, and citing “uncertainty that has arisen in Spain over the past few weeks”.

Opposition to playing the game in Miami had met with widespread condemnation from football’s stakeholders globally and in the last few days from the Spanish player’s union and individual players who said the match would have damaged the competitive integrity of the league in favour of Barcelona as Villareal is a tough away game for any team in the league.

In a remarkable attack on the governing bodies of countries outside Spain, LaLiga said: “The project fully complied with all federative regulations and did not affect the integrity of the competition, as confirmed by the competent institutions responsible for ensuring compliance, which opposed it for other reasons.”

The statement is at best a mis-leading half truth, in that the game was never fully sanctioned. While the Spanish FA (RFEF) meekly gave its sanction and UEFA ‘reluctantly’ did the same, neither the US Soccer Federation (USSF)or Concacaf, the two most important governing bodies covering the game in the US, where LaLiga and Relevent needed local permission to play, had not given their go-ahead.

LaLiga president Javier Tebas had said to the world’s media at a conference 10 days ago that getting the sanctions was purely an administrative process.

His comment was immediately met with a terse statement from Concacaf saying that the application had to go through due process and that it was conducting a review that involved consulting all of its stakeholders, as well as those in other regions. That process would be completed before any decision would be made, said Concacaf.

While the USSF had remained silent on sanctioning, Concacaf had neither declined or approved the application but had remained focussed on football’s eco-system both in its own region and member nation, where focus is on growing domestic leagues, their clubs and regional club competition. Thought was also being given to the impact and future consequences for stakeholders outside the Concacaf region.

UEFA’s decision to sanction the match was made on the basis that FIFA’s rules lacked legal clarity and hence felt pressured into sanctioning a game they didn’t want to. FIFA is currently undergoing a legal review of its statutes in this respect.

In its statement LaLiga also pointed the finger at the Premier League and UEFA and its Champions League (for which UEFA currently has Relevent as its new sales partner), saying that they “continue to expand their reach and ability to generate revenue, initiatives like this are essential to ensure the sustainability and growth of Spanish soccer.”

The difference is that neither the Premier League or UEFA are trying to play games in the US backyard for commercial gain. LaLiga is essentially admitting that it has been unable to compete on an equal footing commercially with its own product in the broadcast media market.

“Holding an official match outside our borders would have been a decisive step in the global growth of the competition, strengthening the international presence of clubs, the positioning of players, and the visibility of Spanish soccer in a strategic market such as the United States…” said LaLiga.

“Renouncing such opportunities hinders the generation of new income, limits clubs’ capacity to invest and compete, and reduces the international projection of the entire Spanish soccer ecosystem.”

LaLiga had put tickets on pre-sale for the December fixture. No figures have been released on how many tickets have been sold, but the assumption is that it is not enough to continue to battle through the discontent of football’s North American and global opinion.

Renouncing such opportunities hinders the generation of new income, limits clubs’ capacity to invest and compete, and reduces the international projection of the entire Spanish soccer ecosystem.

In a separate statement, Relevent said it had informed La Liga of the need “to postpone” the match, arguing that the uncertainty in Spain had left “insufficient time to properly execute an event of this scale”.

For Relevent it is perhaps a fortunate end to what was increasingly looking like an uncomfortable problem, and a potentially growing conflict of interest, taking into account their new Champions League contract with UEFA

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