It has been called the biggest existential threat to European football since the ill-fated Super League. Now it is on the verge of becoming reality and the implications will be far reaching if, as widely expected, La Liga and Serie A are given permission in the coming weeks to host domestic games abroad. The sport risks being ripped from its fabric should Barcelona and Villarreal be allowed to break the mould and stage a top-flight fixture in Miami this December.
The topic has dominated discussion in football’s corridors of power recently and, at the heart of a complex and deeply emotive problem, the immediate equation is simple. If Uefa’s executive committee agrees to the plans when it convenes in Tirana on Thursday the final say will be down to Fifa, probably at a meeting of its council on 2 October. The global governing body would be unlikely to put up opposition and the question, at that point, will be just how earth-shattering a precedent has been set.
In some cases, Uefa’s chiefs will cast their votes after considerable soul-searching. The Guardian understands they will be asked to approve the La Liga and Serie A games – the latter a match between Milan and Como that would be played in Perth, Australia, next February – on an exceptional basis rather than to wave through the blanket concept of foreign-based fixtures.
One executive committee member, the German football league supervisory board chair, Hans-Joachim Watzke, has stated his opposition. The Bundesliga, he said this week, would not be following its peers in upping sticks. Others may seek further information before deciding on a stance.
There are no illusions that, even if permission is granted only for these individual cases, this genie can be squeezed back into the bottle. Nobody could consider that realistic having heard the Serie A president, Ezio Simonelli, say last month that he would have liked to play the league’s entire first round on foreign soil.
But the ground has been cleared for Uefa to sign off the games currently proposed. Blocking them could, senior figures believe, require a change to its statutes that cannot be made in short order. Even then, the settlement agreed with Fifa by the US-based promoter Relevent Sports last year, dismissing the global governing body from a lawsuit contesting its policy banning league games from taking place overseas, has left legal wriggle room at a minimum.
If Europe’s football authorities are serious about opposing such a fundamental uprooting of the game’s principles, it is worth pointing out they have had plenty of time to act. Even if the Premier League’s “39th game” died a slow death in the late 2000s, La Liga and Relevent first showed their hand when attempting in 2018 to stage a match between Barcelona and Girona in Miami.
That move was blocked by Fifa, leading to the suit filed by Relevent. It is hard, though, to overlook the bond forged between Uefa and Relevent since then. Relevent was awarded the global commercial rights to Uefa’s club competitions for the 2027-2033 cycle this year and has made no secret of its desire to push past some of football’s more conservative ways. Some onlookers have wondered whether two parties with diametrically opposed views about staging games abroad would really enter into business.
Regardless, the likelihood is that football will once again be required to find reactive solutions to a long-burning hot potato. In May 2024, Fifa confirmed a working group would be created to review the rules governing potential relocation of domestic league games. The following October it predicted the group would make recommendations “in the coming months”.
So far no outcomes have been reached; the group is understood to have met twice, in January and June, with an as-yet unconfirmed third date lined up this month. Initially Fifa had promised supporter organisations would be represented but in fact they are not included in its 15 members. Those to have been selected include the president of La Liga, Javier Tebas, and representatives from the US and Saudi federations. Daniel Sillman, the chief executive of Relevent, is also among those tasked with forging proposals that will shape football’s future.
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A revised set of regulations is not expected until the end of this year, a timeline that could yet slip. By then La Liga, Barcelona and Villarreal will probably have written their new chapter in Florida. All parties profess an enthusiasm to impose limits on the number of matches a league can transport abroad, as well as the number a single territory can host, but those restraints will have to be imposed after the horse has bolted. There is also concern, voiced by figures with knowledge of the legal implications, over how enforceable such measures could be.
Could direct action by supporters change what appears an inevitable course? The immediacy of the situation has not yet cut through in England, probably because the Premier League’s current position is that they have no intention of following La Liga and Serie A. Perhaps there is fatigue, too, bred by the consistent prioritising of corporate imperatives over the forces that have forged the game’s soul. Football Supporters Europe, however, has released a statement against the proposals that has been signed by more than 500 fan groups from 28 countries. Their voices have so far been sidelined from the discussion.
The logic used by proponents of exportable domestic football states foreign markets and fanbases have swelled to the extent everyone deserves a sample of the product. That ignores the fact the product is, to a large extent, the country and culture in which it is rooted. It also neglects to consider that offering a match to 65,000 supporters at Miami’s Hard Rock Stadium is unlikely to energise an entire nation. The financial considerations driving the Spanish and Italian top flights, dwarfed by the Premier League’s power, are clear; rather than address the cause, the appetite is seemingly to barrel on and risk irreversible harm.
This week the European commissioner for intergenerational fairness, youth, culture and sport, Glenn Micallef, warned, in an opinion piece published by several outlets, that the plans put the European sport model at risk of collapse. “Taking competitions away from [the fans] is not innovation but a betrayal of trust,” he wrote. Micallef was promptly accused by Tebas, in a lengthy social media post, of jumping on this issue while staying silent on matters such as the Club World Cup and state ownership. Tebas claimed bringing a match to fans in the US “does not break tradition … it projects it”. Time may very soon tell who is correct.
