Barcelona’s Miami La Liga match is anything but ‘good for football’

It’s been an uber-competitive week for the award of the dumbest thing said by an official in football.

Former Romanian international turned UEFA delegate Florin Prunea called Jurgen Klopp a “circus” act and one who was “chewing bricks with his teeth”.

FIFA supremo Gianni Infantino removed his nose from Trump’s arse just long enough to say that ‘yes sure Mr. President, you can move World Cup games despite rules very clearly saying you have no right to do so’.

But even then, the dumbest thing said this week has been uttered by the Spanish football federation president Rafael Louzan.

Spain is not averse to some bizarre statements. Javier Tebas is never too far away from a microphone, with the openly Madrid-supporting president of La Liga (that seems odd) always more than happy to point the finger at Barcelona, or if he really wants to stick the boot in, Manchester City and PSG.

But while he may decry the state-funded clubs for their unlimited pools of money, the league’s latest plan makes it pretty clear he would happily do the same if the shoe was on the other foot.

Matchday 17 of the La Liga season sees Barcelona travel to Villarreal for a regular league game — except they won’t be making the 250km trip south; they instead will go 7,500km west until they reach Miami.

This fixture, first announced earlier this month, has been a long time coming. The Supercopa de España – Spain’s version of the Community Shield – has been played in Saudi Arabia since 2020. Barcelona have played four pre-season friendlies in Miami, and their most famous player of all time currently calls the Florida city home.

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It is also clearly an idea ripped from other sports, most obviously the NFL, which has taken games to the UK, Germany, Brazil and Ireland with Spain and Australia set to host some in the future.

But the reason why the groundwork was laid is unanimous across Europe: Fear of the Premier League.

Research by Deloitte showed that for the 2023/24 season, the average revenues generated by a Premier League club were €7.26 billion. In comparison, La Liga and the Bundesliga are at €3.8 billion. Serie A clubs are at €2.9 billion, while Ligue 1 is the lowest at €2.6 billion.

Tebas has often warned that the Premier League bubble will burst, but in the meantime, England’s top flight has hoovered up the best talent and managers on offer. It is not just the big boys either; this transfer window saw a newly promoted side sign the number nine from four-time Champions League winners Ajax.

The Premier League problem has been growing for decades now and the outsiders looking in made an attempt to cut the head off this particular rattlesnake in 2021 with the European Super League, a practically closed-shop competition for Europe’s elites and one that would guarantee the 12 founding members a steady income. It was billed as clubs becoming disillusioned with UEFA but the real motivation was to make this the new Premier League. It blew up in their faces spectacularly and cost many executives their jobs.

But even after the protesting fans had returned home, La Liga and Serie A have been looking for ways to bolster their incomes ever since. The announcement of the Villarreal–Barcelona game in Miami came a few days after the Italian football federation sanctioned a Serie A match between Milan and Como to be played in Perth, Australia – just 13,700km from where it should actually be hosted.

Which leads us back to the Spanish football federation president Rafael Louzan. In his defence of the Miami game, Louzán described it as “good for football”. He even went as far as saying it was a “reward” for overseas fans of “the Spanish La Liga matches”. But at what point is it no longer Spanish?

Setting aside the sporting concerns that Villarreal are losing a home game and both sets of players have two long-journey flights added to their schedule, Louzan’s argument falls down very quickly.

Louzan is trying to paint a narrative that this game is not because the clubs and the league want a payday, but instead because they want to “reward” the fans who support the club which, let’s be honest, is bollocks. They are doing it because the US is one of the biggest markets in the world, and ahead of the World Cup next year, executives across the world want their piece of the pie.

And is it “good” for Perth Glory to have their local fans contemplating going to support them in an away game or stay at home to watch Milan? What good does it do the A-League to have these big European teams come over and put their competition in the background? How is it good for Villarreal fans who have been going to El Madrigal for years to now have to watch a ‘home’ game on TV? What about the bars and restaurants around the city and Milan that will have one fewer weekend of matchday fans coming through their doors?

La Liga and Serie A will point towards the NFL as justification, but the culture around the two sports could not be more different. Since the NFL formed in 1920, 20 teams have moved to entirely new cities, and the size of the country means that teams travelling huge distances is the accepted norm.

And with respect to the European League of Football, American football has no real presence in Europe besides the NFL. Football is played everywhere, and there is a real argument that having Barcelona or Milan drop into these areas and scoop up all the fans is not “good for football” and actually very bad for the teams already there trying to grow an audience.

The ease with which this has been passed through is also concerning. In a bizarre world where they are somehow the good guys, Real Madrid are the only ones to have put up any real opposition, saying it would lead to a “before and after” for football. UEFA and FIFA have been their ineffective selves by saying it’s the jurisdiction of someone else and out of their hands. UEFA president Aleksander Čeferin tried to claim it does not set a “precedent”, which is simply not how precedent works.

All of this takes us back to what Madrid first said of a “before and after” moment for football. It may never happen in the Premier League or the Bundesliga where fans tend to be more vocal in their complaints, but it feels like the first step on a slippery slope where this becomes the accepted norm.

That leads us to an existential question: What even is a football club if not a representative of its community? The majority of Barcelona fans that attend the Miami fixture may never have been to the city, never seen the Camp Nou or know what it means to be a Catalan.

Football should be about representing the fans and people that made the club what it is and it’s pretty hard to do that when they are 7,500km away. So sorry Louzan, this may be good for your bank balance, but don’t try and convince us it’s good for football.

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