Setback for Tebas as Spanish FA reveals its own away-day plans for Supercup
MADRID: The Spanish football federation appears to have undermined the league’s ‘export match’ by announcing plans to take the season-opening Super Cup abroad with four teams engaged in two semi finals and a final writes KEIR RADNEDGE.
RFEF president Luis Rubiales, in office only since last May, confirmed: “The next Super Cup will be played outside of Spain with a ‘final four’ format.”
Last year the federation turned the clash between the league champions and the Copa del Rey winners from a two-legged tie into a single game played in Tangier, Morocco, where Barcelona beat Sevilla 2-1.
Rubiales is a fierce opponent of La Liga’s plans to play Spanish top flight games abroad and his organisation welcomed FIFA’s decision to prohibit LaLiga staging a game in Miami last month between Girona and Barcelona.
Javier Tebas, head of the LaLiga, has continued to seek support for the plan.
The federation will meet no such opposition from the world federation given that Italy has long set a precedent by staging its own supercup from north Africa to China.
Rubiales also stated at a news briefing that Spain, despite suggestions to the contrary, had no intention of pressing ahead with a potential 2030 World Cup hosting bid in partnership with Morocco.
Spain would only take a bid forward, possibly with Portugal, with the full support of European federation UEFA. This is unlikely given that UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin believes that the most persuasive contender from Europe would be a cohosting bid from the Britain and Ireland.
Earlier this month Ceferin welcomed Rubiales on to the UEFA executive committee.
############
“The next Super Cup will be played outside of Spain with a ‘final four’ format,” Rubiales said at a news conference on Tuesday, without giving details of where the games would take place.
ADVERTISEMENT
Rubiales, who became RFEF president in May 2018, broke with tradition last year by turning the traditional season curtain raiser between the La Liga champions and the Copa del Rey winners from a two-legged tie into a single game played in Tangier, Morocco, where Barcelona beat Sevilla 2-1.
Rubiales is a fierce opponent of La Liga’s plans to play Spanish top flight games abroad and his organisation blocked a proposal to move a game between Girona and Barcelona last month to Miami.
Barcelona withdrew from the proposed Miami game, citing a lack of consensus over the idea, although their president Josep Maria Bartomeu said earlier this month he would like to see La Liga host three games a season abroad. (Reporting by Richard Martin Editing by David Holmes)
Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Sponsored video by
