Should FIFA, football’s global governing body, allow domestic matches to be played overseas? What appears a simple question is actually fairly complex.
Many football fans, particularly the so-called “legacy fans” who regularly attend matches, are naturally appalled by the idea of Villarreal and Barcelona playing their La Liga match at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami, rather than in Spain.
Real Madrid are unhappy, too, releasing a statement that objects on the grounds of a fair league competition. “The integrity of the competition requires that all matches take place under the same conditions for all teams,” the club said, referring to the risk of “affecting sporting integrity” and saying this could be “a turning point in the world of football”. They argue that FIFA should not approve the match if every club in La Liga has not also approved it, presumably partly worrying that what would have been a tough away game for Barcelona would now, instead, be a match played in a neutral (and more lucrative) venue.
But should we expect FIFA to intervene at all in this situation? In these times of polarisation and knee-jerk reactions, it’s sometimes worth considering that just because you strongly dislike something, it doesn’t necessarily mean it should be prohibited. Is it the job of FIFA to determine whether this proposed fixture should take place?
The current legal situation takes some unravelling. Back in October 2018, when La Liga first declared its intention to hold a match in Miami, the FIFA Council debated the issue and subsequently announced it “emphasised the sporting principle that official league matches must be played within the territory of the respective member association”.
Then, in February 2020, a FIFA press release stated it had “endorsed the principle set out by the FIFA Council that official domestic matches should take place on the territory of the member association concerned”.
But after a challenge from Relevent, a U.S.-based company that organises friendly matches, later in 2020, FIFA clarified that “endorsement” had never become official policy. “No such regulations were ever submitted to the FIFA Council or approved by the FIFA Council, and no such regulation is pending for consideration,” said FIFA chief legal and compliance officer Emilio Garcia Silvero. The October 2018 announcement, it transpired, was merely “guidance” rather than “policy”.
Then, last year, FIFA formed a working group to “review and recommend potential changes to the FIFA Regulations governing international matches”. Matches like the one being proposed in Miami involving two foreign sides are classified by FIFA as an international match and approval is required from the association the clubs belong to (Spain), the association of the country where the game will be played (United States), and FIFA itself, as is the case for all international matches. To approve this match, then, FIFA would be going against its own council’s guidance, but not against its official policy.
Really, this all comes back to what FIFA is actually all about. It was formed in 1904, but it didn’t actually get around to organising anything of particular substance for another quarter of a century when the World Cup was formed. Until then, as David Goldblatt wrote in his seminal history of the game, The Ball Is Round, “its work was overwhelmingly concentrated on the necessary paper shuffling of regulating international football… deciding who could play with who, and when.” And now we can add a third ‘w’: where?
FIFA’s main job, like that of every comparable global governing body, is developing and promoting the sport. Sure enough, in Gianni Infantino’s ‘strategic objectives’ for the 2023 to 2027 term, he outlined his three main focuses as “to organise competitions, to develop football, and to expand FIFA’s presence across the world”. Whatever problems one might have with Infantino, there are few quibbles to be had there.
FIFA is, ultimately, a body dedicated to the internationalisation of football. And let’s not forget there have been several previous debates where the internationalist approach in football was deeply unpopular. For long periods, associations — including those in England, Spain and Italy — had a strict ban on foreign players participating in domestic league competitions. Other national sides banned their own players if they played their club football overseas (a rule which is still in place, as it happens, in English rugby union). These debates are from a bygone era, but national borders have become increasingly less important in the structure of football.
And if the core problem here is that matches will be taken away from clubs’ traditional locations — and more pertinently, their traditional fans — that is on the clubs themselves and, in the case of Villarreal versus Barcelona, the Spanish federation. And really, the issue — and Real Madrid’s objection — is not simply that the match would be played overseas, it’s that it wouldn’t be played at the Estadio de la Ceramica. If Villarreal and Barcelona had decided that they could generate more revenue by playing the match in, say, Seville, it would also compromise the integrity of the league structure. But it probably wouldn’t be an issue for FIFA.
However, FIFA does have a duty to protect individual nations from their own domestic football matches being overshadowed by the travelling circus of La Liga matches, and it is right that its current rules insist the relevant association must approve any matches being played on its soil.
And that is the most important thing here: if FIFA changes its rules and takes away the notion that a ‘host nation’ would have to give its explicit approval for a match like this to take place in its country, that would completely undermine its members, and that should prompt a huge backlash.
But if Barcelona, Villarreal, La Liga and the United States Soccer Federation are all happy for this match to take place in Miami, there is no particular reason FIFA — by its very nature an internationalist body — should stand in their way.
(Top photo: Flor Tan Jun/Getty Images)
