La Liga president Javier Tebas on Tuesday claimed that resistance to the controversial plans to hold a Spanish top-flight game in the United States is “cultural”.
The match between Girona and Barcelona on January 26 is scheduled to be played at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami, despite strong opposition and fears that the Catalan giants would effectively be gifted an extra home game.
The two clubs involved support the idea, but Barca’s arch rivals Real Madrid reportedly protested to the Spanish FA over the matter last week, while the country’s players’ association and football federation have both rejected the proposal.
“There is resistance, but it’s not really a surprise for me. There’s a cultural reason, it’s a story of bureaucracy, because it’s new,” Tebas said at sports marketing conference Sportel in Monaco.”It’s a bit like video refereeing — the football family rejected it for years and all of a sudden at the World Cup in Russia we realised that it was fantastic.”
