In England, France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Scotland … in first, second or even fourth division. More than 430 groups of supporters from 27 countries launched a joint operation, “Keep Football Home” this Wednesday in opposition to the Liga project and the Serie has to relocate two championship games in the United States and Australia.
Thus, the Villarreal-Barcelona match is expected to compete on December 20 in Miami (United States), while Ac Milan-Côme could compete in Australia in early February 2026, in the city of Perth. “The idea of making players cross to players, staff, supporters and all others for a“ home ”match is absurd, unaffordable, and irresponsible environmentally,” protests the Football Supporters Europe (ESF).
Claiming “more than three million supporters” represented, these organizations fear that a possible green light from UEFA, expected on September 11, will open “a box of Pandora with unpredictable and irreversible consequences”. “Each club, each national team, each group of supporters around the world could see their team being relocated to the other end of the world, for a match or more,” said their press release.
Obviously a financial issue
If the Spanish Super Cups and Italy are already held in Saudi Arabia, after previous editions in China, Morocco, Qatar and Libya, the championships and their round-trip matches, the heart of the continental tradition, still resist this trend. But La Liga has been trying since 2018 since 2018 to have meetings in the United States, headquarters of its trading partner are sports. As for Serie A, it highlights the impossibility of using the San Siro stadium for the 24th day of the Italian championship, since the legendary Milanese speaker will host the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics on February 6.
However, the commercial argument is not far away: it is also a question of “making new public football excellence in Italian football discover the competitiveness of the system and generate resources having a positive impact on the entire movement”, argued the Italian organization on August 27. If it was enough until then to oppose the relocations the rules of FIFA, the worldwide launched on May 15 a “working group” to revise them – forced in this sense by an agreement signed in 2024 with raising to settle an anti -competitive procedure.
The captains of opposite liga clubs
Hence the observation drawn up Wednesday by the boss of UEFA, Aleksander Ceferin, with the newspaper Politico : “We are not happy [des projets de délocalisation]but we have little latitude from a legal point of view if the two federations agree. “Regulatory, the subject therefore became a political, with the entry in the running of the European Sports Commissioner, Glenn Micallef:” Delocating competitions abroad is not an innovation, it is betrayal, “he said last week on X.
In Spain, the project also comes up against the opposition of the union of footballers and all the captains of the first division – including Villarreal and Barcelona -, who castigated “the lack of dialogue and information” of the Liga. Finally, Real Madrid denounced in mid-August a “risk of falsification of competition” and its principle of round-trip matches: with its planetary stars, Barcelona can indeed expect to be acclaimed in Miami as if he were playing at home.
