Villarreal’s La Liga match with Barcelona in Miami has been postponed, with promoters Relevent saying there was “not enough time” to stage the event.
A relevant statement, first published by Athletics We could read on Tuesday evening: “Relevent has informed La Liga of the need to postpone the match scheduled between Villarreal CF and FC Barcelona in Miami on December 20.
“Given the current uncertainty in Spain, we do not have enough time to properly organize an event of this scale. It would also be irresponsible to start selling tickets without a confirmed match in place.”
Relevent Sports, the event promotion and media rights company co-founded and owned by billionaire Miami Dolphins owner Stephen M. Ross, has a joint venture with La Liga to expand the league’s business in North America and the game was scheduled to be played at the Dolphins’ Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida.
While Relevent described the match as “postponed”, La Liga’s own statement said “the decision was made to cancel” the event, saying it “deeply regrets” the news and calling it detrimental “to the international profile of the entire football ecosystem”.
“LALIGA announces that, following conversations with the promoter of the Official LALIGA Match in Miami, the decision has been taken to cancel the organization of the event due to the uncertainty that has arisen in Spain in recent weeks,” reads the league press release.
“LALIGA deeply regrets that this project, which represented a historic and unprecedented opportunity for the internationalization of Spanish football, could not come to fruition.
“Holding an official match outside our borders would have been a decisive step in the global expansion of our competition, strengthening the international presence of the clubs, the positioning of the players and the brand of Spanish football in a strategic market like that of the United States.
“The project was fully compliant with the regulations of the federation and did not undermine the integrity of the competition, as confirmed by the competent institutions which ensure its compliance, which opposed it for other reasons.
“In a context of increasing global competitiveness, where leagues like the Premier League and competitions like the UEFA Champions League continue to increase their reach and capacity to generate resources, initiatives like this are essential to ensure the sustainability and growth of Spanish football.
“Missing such opportunities makes it difficult to generate new revenue, limits the ability of clubs to invest and compete, and reduces the international profile of the entire football ecosystem.”
In August, the Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) approved the request that December’s La Liga match between Villarreal and Barcelona be played in Miami.
The match was originally scheduled to take place on the weekend of December 20-21 at the Estadio de la Ceramica in Villarreal, eastern Spain.
This would have been the first time a European top division championship match had been held in the United States, although the Spanish Super Cup has been held in Saudi Arabia in four of the last five seasons.
On October 6, UEFA approved in a historic decision the holding of matches of the Italian and Spanish national championships abroad, while reiterating its “clear opposition” to these plans, which, according to it, were granted “on an exceptional basis due to regulatory shortcomings at global level”.
Aleksander Ceferin, president of European football’s governing body, called the decision “regrettable” and said it should “not be seen as setting a precedent” and that “league matches should be played at home.”
Serie A, the top division of Italian football, plans to play a match between Milan and Como in Australia. Discussions have been held regarding the match which will take place in the city of Perth on the weekend of February 7-8, 2026.
La Liga’s controversial proposal has sparked fury and raised questions about the integrity of the league, with Spain’s football supporters’ association, FASFE, joining Villarreal and Barca supporters groups in expressing their “absolute, total and firm opposition” to the plan.
Over the weekend, La Liga teams did not start play for the first 15 seconds of matches after the Spanish Footballers’ Association (AFE) said on Friday that players were unhappy with the league’s plans for the match to be played in Miami. However, those protests were not widely broadcast after the Spanish league asked television networks not to broadcast them, according to several people familiar with the matter.
During the matches in Oviedo and Barcelona, television cameras instead showed the exterior of the stadiums before returning to show the pitch at the end of the 15-second demonstrations.
In other games, the overhead camera would zoom in on the center circle, rather than a wide angle showing both groups of players standing still.
Real Madrid have called on world football governing body FIFA to prevent matches from taking place in Miami, saying it would undermine the “integrity” of La Liga and prove to be an “unwelcome turn in the world of football”.
Glenn Micallef – the European Union commissioner for intergenerational equity, youth, culture and sport – said moving the match would be a “betrayal” of the local communities of Spanish clubs and also called for discussions with football representatives to address this and several other controversial topics in football.
The Spanish league first attempted to stage a match abroad in 2018 with a proposal that Girona’s home league match against Barcelona would be played in Miami. However, this proposal was opposed by the RFEF and FIFA, as was a similar proposal the following year to play Atletico Madrid’s championship match against Villarreal in the United States.
Since then, relations between La Liga and the RFEF have improved. Meanwhile, the possibility of playing domestic league matches abroad has increased after FIFA was removed from a landmark lawsuit filed by Relevent in April 2024.
How the news broke in Barcelona
Analysis of the Barcelona writer Pol Ballus
Hansi Flick was about to leave Barcelona’s media room at the Estadi Olimpic Lluis Companys when the news broke. Barcelona’s communications department knew nothing of the match cancellation announcement, let alone Flick or any of his players.
The news was received with shock within the club. Barca staff initially found it hard to believe, and they were astonished when they received the official statement from La Liga shortly after.
Flick’s press conference after the 6-1 victory against Olympiacos in the Champions League had just finished. Suddenly, everyone in the room forgot about this result and began to react to the complete reversal of a situation that President Joan Laporta had described as “more than assured” just hours earlier.
“For us, it’s such a joy to go to Miami and play in front of all the fans we have there. It’s a way to promote our brand in the United States,” he said Tuesday afternoon at the World in Progress conference organized by Spanish media group PRISA.
Barça players heard the news as they left the stadium on Tuesday evening. Some of them had begun to consider staying in the United States for the holidays after the Miami game, as Flick was willing to give them several days off. Among them, Marc-Andre ter Stegen and Frenkie de Jong had declared themselves in recent weeks against the fact that the match took place outside Spain.
“I don’t like it, it’s not fair for the rest of the teams and for the competition,” De Jong told a press conference in the Netherlands during the international break. Ter Stegen, meanwhile, signed the AFE statement opposing the match.
This is a ridiculous situation, not only for Barcelona but for all parties. Everyone is wondering how La Liga could announce the match and let Spanish football’s numbers reel over it, when not all the knots were tied.
“A major embarrassment for everyone involved”
Analysis by Spanish correspondent Dermot Corrigan
The news that Villarreal v Barcelona was not going to be played in Miami in December came as a huge shock and is a major embarrassment for everyone involved, especially La Liga president Javier Tebas.
Tebas had been planning for years to play La Liga matches in the United States, and it seemed he had finally succeeded, with UEFA giving reluctant approval to the idea, and planning had reached the stage where tickets were about to go on general sale for the match at Hard Rock Stadium.
Even though there was a lot of opposition to the match, including symbolic protests from players at many La Liga clubs (including Barcelona) and loud howls of dissent from Real Madrid, it looked like Tebas and those planning the match were going to succeed.
Earlier on Tuesday, just hours before the news broke, Barca president Joan Laporta defiantly spoke to reporters after his pre-match meal with Olympiakos president Evangelos Marinakis ahead of their team’s Champions League group match in Montjuic.
“Real Madrid can say what they want and will do what suits them,” Laporta said. I am president of Barcelona and we will play in Miami on December 20.
The news that the match will now take place at Villarreal means that Laporta – and also Tebas – have been left with a lot of egg on their faces.
