Spain selling the Supercopa to Saudi Arabia is just the start

With RFEF taking the Supercopa to Saudi Arabia this week, the door could be opening for La Liga matches abroad and more globalization of the game.

It was only a matter of time before Spanish soccer went on the road for a competitive fixture.

What was more surprising was that Saudi Arabia, not Miami, welcomed the global superstars of Atletico Madrid, Barcelona, Real Madrid and Valencia this week. After all, solid plans for a La Liga game to be played in South Florida had been tabled in each of the last two seasons.

Of course, whether or not the Supercopa de España is truly competitive is down to individual interpretation. While it may now have the format of a somewhat-fledged tournament, with semifinals and a final, it was traditionally Spanish football’s equivalent of the Community Shield, a ceremonial curtain-raiser before the real stuff starts.

Nonetheless, there is certainly a wider significance to the hosting of the 2020 Spanish Supercopa outside Spain, following on from Tangiers’ hosting of the 2018 edition of the competition. At a time when world soccer finds itself at a critical juncture, when the sport risks being ripped from its roots and communities, the matches being played in Saudi Arabia this week set a precedent for others set on globalization to follow.

In the immediate term, La Liga will now be emboldened in their plans.

In both 2018 and 2019, La Liga’s efforts to host a regular season fixture in Miami were thwarted by the RFEF (Spanish football’s national federation). Two years ago, the division signed a long-term marketing contract with Relevant Sports, the organizers of the International Champions Cup who have designs on changing the European soccer landscape, and these proposals to take Spain’s top flight to the States looked to be the first product of that arrangement.

La Liga will make similar proposals again, and when they do, the RFEF will have less of an argument to fall back on having moved the Spanish Supercopa to Saudi Arabia themselves. While La Liga must have reacted with a degree of vexation to the RFEF’s hypocrisy on playing competitive games outside Spain, this will now give them leverage for the next time.

At the center of this tug-of-war is a power struggle between Javier Tebas, La Liga president, and Luis Rubiales, RFEF president. The two men have very publicly aired their personal grievances with each over the past year or two, clashing on everything from Monday-night fixtures to kick-off times. The RFEF has even urged Tebas to resign while the La Liga chief has labelled Rubiales unfit to run Spanish football’s national federation. It’s civil war.

Which ever way things pan out, there are likely to be ripples felt across European soccer.

The Premier League once proposed a so-called “39th game” to be played abroad, but the zeitgeist at the time was never accepting of such a concept. If La Liga succeeds in arranging a fixture in Miami, or anywhere else around the world, other leagues might follow suit.

“I know there have been rumblings but football these days is an industry,” Barcelona manager Ernesto Valverde said ahead of his side’s Spanish Supercopa semifinal against Atletico Madrid. “The reason why we are here and why we were in Morocco is because the authorities are looking for more sources of income.

“It’s not the same thing as playing at home, but here we are. If I could choose, I would prefer the old format, but it’s the federation that makes these decisions.”

Valverde is right, the scheduling of competitive fixtures abroad isn’t a notion based on soccer, but it is a central part of Spanish soccer’s overarching ploy to raise itself to the levels of the Premier League as the global game’s predominant division.

Atletico Madrid, Barcelona, Real Madrid and Valencia are all in Saudi Arabia this week, but this is a path that could eventually take them to Miami and around the world.