Can FIFA And UEFA Be Trusted to Stand Up For Domestic Football?!
All football fans should remember the date of October 6th 2025, when UEFA made the most UEFA of decisions, by allowing La Liga and Serie A permission to hold one domestic game overseas during this 2025/26 season, whilst simultaneously making it known that they disapprove of such a move. To clarify, Barcelona will now be allowed to play their 'home' league game against Villarreal, in December, in Miami, a mere 4700 miles away from the Nou Camp, where the game should be played. Meanwhile, AC Milan will 'host' Como in February, with the San Siro being replaced with a venue in Perth, Australia, and just 8500 miles separating the Rossoneri from their usual home.
In their statement to announce the approval, UEFA continued to walk this diplomatic tightrope by reiterating "its clear opposition to domestic league matches being played outside their home country”, and then passing the buck over to FIFA. Their reasoning being that the regulatory framework of FIFA is not currently clear and detailed enough. All of which sounds like UEFA were too cowardly to draw their own line in the sand over the issue and are hoping that Gianni Infantino and co. will come running to the rescue, a theory that won't inspire too much confidence in those of us who have followed the greedy narrow-mindedness of FIFA in recent years.
As for the main antagonists in this story, La Liga and Serie A, it is a move that they have been clamouring for for several years now. Their motivation has been, and remains, purely financial, as they seek to compete with the wealth dominance that the Premier League has established over the past quarter of a century. It's an argument that was echoed by Como when they released a club statement on the matter, as their PR machine rolled into action to counter the naysayers. Dramatic phrases were readily utilised, such as how this move could help secure "the survival of the league itself".
The statement also mentions how the aim is to "restore Serie A to the glory it enjoyed in the 1990s". A noble sentiment in itself, but one that glosses over how difficult the mid 1980s to the mid 1990s was for English football. In other words, Serie A are so fixated with trying to combat the financial power of the Premier League, that they appear to have forgotten how when Italy was the place to be for the world's greatest players and we were all tuning in to Football Italia, it didn't lead to English football capitulating. Popularity is relatively cyclical and domestic football leagues are too entrenched in our cultures to simply wither in the face of competition. A cursory look at the average league attendances across Europe this century, and further back, will show you that.
It doesn't take much imagination to consider who the main drivers are for playing league games across the other side of the world. One suspects that there is a significant overlap between those clubs in Spain and Italy that were so keen on the 'European Super League' (ESL), and the people vouching for this diabolical idea. Yes, the major English clubs also had their grubby fingerprints all over the 2021 proposal, but they all vastly underestimated the reaction of ordinary fans and the lifeblood of their sporting institutions. In hindsight, it feels like the ESL was a trap laid by Florentino Pérez and his fellow conspirators. On the one hand he was looking to get Real Madrid parity in wealth with the Premier League clubs, whilst in reality the latter had little to gain from the venture and only succeeded in damaging their reputations.
It can hardly be a coincidence that the plan to play domestic league games abroad would, just like the creation of an ESL, critically undermine the sporting integrity of those competitions. As soon as any club experiences a fundamental alteration like this to their schedule, it will lead to a Pandora's box situation. For example, if Barcelona were to lose to or draw with Villarreal in Miami, and then Real Madrid win La Liga by one point next May, might Joan Laporta try to sue on the basis that having played one less home game, and therefore having one less fixture with the advantage of vociferous home support, was the cause for the title being decided how it was?!
Likewise, as improbable as it is at this time, the fallout and allegations would be just as damning if The Yellow Submarine were to drop points in Miami and then get relegated at the end of this season. Instead of a concern over losing home advantage, Villarreal may claim that issues with the longer journey and preparation for an away game of this magnitude were detrimental. Perhaps they could argue about their difficulty in adjusting to a change in climate! Regardless of whether or not it might just be a convenient excuse, having ad hoc domestic league games played abroad would allow clubs to (legitimately) question how fair the whole competition really is. When every team can no longer say that they must play each other at their respective grounds, the beautiful game would be setting the dangerous precedent of casting doubt on the sporting integrity of a league campaign.
These pressing concerns shouldn't be that difficult to comprehend, and yet football fans are faced with some of the most prominent leaders in the game either sitting on the fence, procrastinating or actively promoting this. What should be absolutely clear is that Aleksander Čeferin, and especially Gianni Infantino, need to get the UEFA and FIFA houses in order and put an end to this insulting own-goal before a legal precedent is set. Once again football is being damaged by the insatiable greed of club owners who are neglecting their roles as custodians.
The worry is that Infantino won't realise how important it is to stamp down on this alarming threat to the domestic game. After all, the FIFA president has become an increasing menace himself, with his aggressive promotion of the bloated FIFA Club World Cup and the embracing of an expanded World Cup that looks set to become a severely diminished version of the once elite international tournament we've all loved. Clearly there's no one brave enough within the FIFA dictatorship who's willing to give Infantino a shake and explain to him that more doesn't always mean better!
Yet here we are, having to hope that the man who has never heard of the phrase 'too much of a good thing', will do the right thing this time and put a stop to the nefarious power-brokers within European football. Wanting to compete with the Premier League is one thing, but if Infantino, and Čeferin, fail to act, they will be enabling La Liga, Serie A and any other leagues that jump on the bandwagon to slowly start eating themselves.
In their statement to announce the approval, UEFA continued to walk this diplomatic tightrope by reiterating "its clear opposition to domestic league matches being played outside their home country”, and then passing the buck over to FIFA. Their reasoning being that the regulatory framework of FIFA is not currently clear and detailed enough. All of which sounds like UEFA were too cowardly to draw their own line in the sand over the issue and are hoping that Gianni Infantino and co. will come running to the rescue, a theory that won't inspire too much confidence in those of us who have followed the greedy narrow-mindedness of FIFA in recent years.
As for the main antagonists in this story, La Liga and Serie A, it is a move that they have been clamouring for for several years now. Their motivation has been, and remains, purely financial, as they seek to compete with the wealth dominance that the Premier League has established over the past quarter of a century. It's an argument that was echoed by Como when they released a club statement on the matter, as their PR machine rolled into action to counter the naysayers. Dramatic phrases were readily utilised, such as how this move could help secure "the survival of the league itself".
The statement also mentions how the aim is to "restore Serie A to the glory it enjoyed in the 1990s". A noble sentiment in itself, but one that glosses over how difficult the mid 1980s to the mid 1990s was for English football. In other words, Serie A are so fixated with trying to combat the financial power of the Premier League, that they appear to have forgotten how when Italy was the place to be for the world's greatest players and we were all tuning in to Football Italia, it didn't lead to English football capitulating. Popularity is relatively cyclical and domestic football leagues are too entrenched in our cultures to simply wither in the face of competition. A cursory look at the average league attendances across Europe this century, and further back, will show you that.
It doesn't take much imagination to consider who the main drivers are for playing league games across the other side of the world. One suspects that there is a significant overlap between those clubs in Spain and Italy that were so keen on the 'European Super League' (ESL), and the people vouching for this diabolical idea. Yes, the major English clubs also had their grubby fingerprints all over the 2021 proposal, but they all vastly underestimated the reaction of ordinary fans and the lifeblood of their sporting institutions. In hindsight, it feels like the ESL was a trap laid by Florentino Pérez and his fellow conspirators. On the one hand he was looking to get Real Madrid parity in wealth with the Premier League clubs, whilst in reality the latter had little to gain from the venture and only succeeded in damaging their reputations.
It can hardly be a coincidence that the plan to play domestic league games abroad would, just like the creation of an ESL, critically undermine the sporting integrity of those competitions. As soon as any club experiences a fundamental alteration like this to their schedule, it will lead to a Pandora's box situation. For example, if Barcelona were to lose to or draw with Villarreal in Miami, and then Real Madrid win La Liga by one point next May, might Joan Laporta try to sue on the basis that having played one less home game, and therefore having one less fixture with the advantage of vociferous home support, was the cause for the title being decided how it was?!
Likewise, as improbable as it is at this time, the fallout and allegations would be just as damning if The Yellow Submarine were to drop points in Miami and then get relegated at the end of this season. Instead of a concern over losing home advantage, Villarreal may claim that issues with the longer journey and preparation for an away game of this magnitude were detrimental. Perhaps they could argue about their difficulty in adjusting to a change in climate! Regardless of whether or not it might just be a convenient excuse, having ad hoc domestic league games played abroad would allow clubs to (legitimately) question how fair the whole competition really is. When every team can no longer say that they must play each other at their respective grounds, the beautiful game would be setting the dangerous precedent of casting doubt on the sporting integrity of a league campaign.
These pressing concerns shouldn't be that difficult to comprehend, and yet football fans are faced with some of the most prominent leaders in the game either sitting on the fence, procrastinating or actively promoting this. What should be absolutely clear is that Aleksander Čeferin, and especially Gianni Infantino, need to get the UEFA and FIFA houses in order and put an end to this insulting own-goal before a legal precedent is set. Once again football is being damaged by the insatiable greed of club owners who are neglecting their roles as custodians.
The worry is that Infantino won't realise how important it is to stamp down on this alarming threat to the domestic game. After all, the FIFA president has become an increasing menace himself, with his aggressive promotion of the bloated FIFA Club World Cup and the embracing of an expanded World Cup that looks set to become a severely diminished version of the once elite international tournament we've all loved. Clearly there's no one brave enough within the FIFA dictatorship who's willing to give Infantino a shake and explain to him that more doesn't always mean better!
Yet here we are, having to hope that the man who has never heard of the phrase 'too much of a good thing', will do the right thing this time and put a stop to the nefarious power-brokers within European football. Wanting to compete with the Premier League is one thing, but if Infantino, and Čeferin, fail to act, they will be enabling La Liga, Serie A and any other leagues that jump on the bandwagon to slowly start eating themselves.
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