If there was a moment that defined La Liga's fourth failed attempt at Miami, an image that explained why it all went wrong, then perhaps this was the moment it all ended. On Tuesday evening, Spanish television broadcast reactions to the news from the Estadio de la Ceramica stadium live and without filters.
The cameras caught someone feeling rejected and disrespected, treated as if he didn't matter. This time it was someone who was supposed to be on the league's side, but now turned out to be the epitome of poor planning and poor communication, a lack of focus that led to the project's collapse.
In the frame was Fernando Roig Negueroles, chief executive of Villarreal, which was scheduled to be the home team at Hard Rock Stadium on December 20. Sitting in the stands with a cigarette in his mouth, he looked at his phone, where a statement had just dropped out. Now it was official and public: La Liga will not go to Miami.
Roig stood up, paced, casting incredulous glances at some of those around him and accusing glances at the screen. For a moment he looked like he was going to throw his phone away; instead, he spoke about it with anger. He shrugged dramatically, gestured while leaving a voicemail, and then hung up with a furious thumb swipe.
Villarreal already knew the game was cancelled, but not everyone else, including the players and coaching staff, did. The league knew about it for at least five hours, Relevent promoters told the league it was being canceled because they had not been given guarantees it would go on.
Barcelona, game at 18:45. finished against Olympiacowhen the application arrived. Villarreal, who played at 21:00, learned about it 15 minutes before kick-off, but asked not to announce it yet. And so it was officially announced in the middle their game against Manchester City.
“It's completely disrespectful,” said their coach Marcelino García Toral. On Wednesday the club expressed its “deep dissatisfaction with La Liga for its poor management of the match”. Roig said, “We're exhausted… for no reason.” La Liga has made an enemy of its most loyal ally.
Javier Tebas, league president, said he was grateful for Villarreal's cooperation and commitment: they and Barcelonathey did it without thinking about themselves, but about the league, the development of Spanish football.
They became defenders of the project, which was not without problems, and sometimes even with loss of face, which was now even more significant. Not least when Roig Negueroles said Villarreal were not making money from the game, although Joan Laporta continued to insist that Barcelona were, saying last Sunday that revenue from Miami would offset the need to play twice at the 6,000-seat Johan Cruyff Stadium.
Unlike Barcelona, Villarreal refused to play at home. Unlike 18 other teams, they had to cross the Atlantic. Like all 20 of them, they watched their players take part in protests about how it was all organized. They also saw a protest from a group of supporters and had to intervene to persuade the supporters' clubs association to support it. They promised fans they could go for free or get significant discounts on season tickets.
Although, to their relief, they failed to amass 25,000 subscribers, they did amass almost 4,000. Charter flights and crew proved virtually impossible – especially since, despite repeated requests, they never received a guarantee that this would be done. On Wednesday, Villarreal said they were considering an exit.
Roig Negueroles' reaction to this brief rebellion by the supporters' club, in both tone and content, did not help. With astonishing candor he called it incomprehensible and unacceptable, saying that the supporters' club contributed €22,000 a year (about £19,100) while Villarreal's football schools and American projects brought in nearly €2 million.
Villarreal became the bad guys and they didn't even get paid for it, defending a project that didn't protect them in return. They were ignored and not consulted. The organizers of the game to which they gave themselves, their allies, could not give them this small thing.
No wonder Roig Negeroles was furious. On Wednesday evening, Villarreal released an angry statement saying they wanted to “express their deep dissatisfaction with La Liga due to the mismanagement of the organization of the match to be played in Miami against Barcelona on December 20th.”
This all sounds familiar: if Miami's plan fell apart, it was not just because of how La Liga operated, but because of what it did. This is the way of Tebas. “This cannot be done,” said the president of the Spanish State Sports Council (CSD), José Manuel Rodríguez Uribes, on Wednesday.
“Apart from a small formal issue, everything is practically decided,” Tebas said at the World Football Summit on October 8. “We can say that on December 20 in Miami there will be an official La Liga game, points will be on the line.” But 13 days after the announcement, La Liga had to announce that this would not happen.
A permit is required to transport the game to the United States. This time, unlike the previous one, La Liga was supported by the Spanish federation RFEF, which is no longer governed by Luis Rubiales, with whom Tebas was at war. This, in turn, contributed to UEFA permissionwho said through gritted teeth that he doesn't like it, but he can't stop it – at least not until the legal framework is changed in his favor.
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Relevent won a lawsuit against FIFA to provide it with legal support to organize the game. The European Commission spoke out against this, but Tebas, always optimistic, said that he had nothing to do with them, considering them unimportant. Concacaf as well as US Soccer should have been formally consulted, but when Tebas declared the game a reality, they did not. At that very moment, small details became larger.
AFE, the Spanish players' union, was also not consulted. As for fan groups, forget about it. (It was a pleasant surprise that the packages offered to supporters were generous and that this problem was resolved). Every Division I game this past weekend had players refusing to play for the first 15 seconds. Not, as is suggested, because they were determined to block the Miami game, or even because they were against it. Atlético captain Koke said on Tuesday, even after he knew it was all over, that if there were conversations and the players were convinced of the project they would support it, making the failure to consult them an even bigger mistake.
No one said it would be easy, but it shouldn't have been this difficult, an unnecessary obstacle in their way. There were no conversations, no negotiations; questions asked by AFE were not answered; they were excluded from the entire process; and that their requests for a meeting were rejected, at least initially. The players were then put under pressure and warned that there could be “unpleasant consequences” if they went on strike. “All we ask is transparency,” Espanyol captain Leandro Cabrera said.
Instead, when the players stopped, the television coverage moved off the field and outside the stadium. The commentators had to read out a message to the world, something that had never been done before. Over the weekend the coverage changed slightly, the league realized it had backfired and the attempt to cover it up only increased awareness and resentment, Streisand's own effect in Spanish football.
Censorship and manipulation Thibaut Courtois called it. “I don't know why you're surprised; he's been like this, doing things like this for a long time. I said after the Club World Cup that I've never seen a league president in any sport talk like him.”
The opposition became more determined, not against the game, but against the way it was being imposed on them. The Clasico will take place on Sunday.
“Without players there is no football,” AFE chief David Aganzo said on Wednesday, pleased that they and he – often seen as weak – had demonstrated their collective strength. But there is something deeper, more mechanical. The league may have managed to bypass the players, the employees who owe their existence to their bosses, to their clubs. They may have been able to back them into a corner and still get what they wanted, but there was no permission.
There was also a familiar enemy. Systematically opposed to almost everything La Liga offers, and with President Florentino Perez the target of almost endless attacks from Tebas, Real Madrid have defied the project. They did it alone and on the grounds that it affects the integrity of the league: Barcelona loses an away game and gets a “home” game, the Hard Rock is sure to be full Blaugranas.
Madrid wrote two formal complaints to the CSD demanding the game be cancelled. They applied what Tebas called “political and media pressure.” The CSD, which still had to give a final result as Concacaf and US Soccer had done, requested more information from the RFEF.
And time passed, days passed. With 24 hours left before tickets went on sale and still no guarantees, Relevent could wait no longer: the potential legal liability for canceling 65,000 tickets was too great. And then it was all over again.
This is the fourth time La Liga has attempted to stage a game in the US since 2018, but Barcelona-Girona, Villarreal-AtléticoAnd Barcelona-Atlético played in Spain. Villarreal-Barcelona will also be there.
“We were close this time,” Tebas insisted, vowing, “We'll try again,” but close wasn't good enough, the opportunity was lost, and if they were going to try again, it had to be done differently.
“In the future, if an idea like this comes up, it should start with the premise that there is dialogue, agreement and full transparency,” Uribes said, “unlike now,” it goes without saying.
Tebas once bet a journalist $10,000 that Barcelona vs. Girona would play in Miami, but he lost then and he lost now.
