by In November 2021, Florentino Pérez stood before the assembly of members and, to a standing ovation, declared that someone should remind Uefa who Real Madrid are, promising that they would not give up their fight for the Super League. They would go it alone if they wore it.
Two years later, he stood in front of the club’s 14 European Cups, a show of strength even though he stood alone, and said that “freedom” had won. So was football, according to Pérez. “Our destiny is in our own hands,” he said. The ruling from the European court of justice was “before and after”, he continued.
“Florentino always wins,” said league president Javier Tebas, repeating a foreign line he admires. This time, the president of Real Madrid was in fact, although the judgment did not show support for the Super League project, which Tebas was keen to emphasize. He had come, Pérez claimed, in the face of threats and pressure; he has repeatedly projected Madrid as the saviors of football and the victims of those who run it, whose dark power he has held.
As a pioneer, too: there was a certain irony in remembering that Madrid played a central role in building the European Cup. Madrid released a five minute video showing images from their European history, the most famous of all, accompanied by Berton Braley’s poem The Will to Win.
The president of Barcelona, Joan Laporta, was the only and perhaps unexpected bedfellow of Pérez in this whole process, continuing with a more conciliatory tone that he has adopted in recent months. “Barcelona’s position does not go against the Spanish league completely,” he said.
In Spain, the two giant clubs are powerful political institutions that account for 60% of football fans according to government figures, but a much higher percentage of partisan media coverage when there was no massive backlash against the Super League. It’s lost on no one that it was English fans who brought the whole thing to its knees.
Sometimes that comes with a hint of jealousy, maybe even a sense that some undefined purity has been lost. But many of those fans in Spain don’t care what happens to the rest of a league that doesn’t have the economic power of the Premier League and has, in any case, come to see itself as the de facto Super League. . They only pay much attention to the authorities that their clubs are aligned against and that they see as violating are not trusted: league, confederation, Uefa.
Supporters of Madrid and Barcelona are far more inclined to welcome the risk of relegation, or even collapse, to the domestic competition than, say, supporters of Manchester United or Liverpool. Lean towards that paper their clubs that meant this ruling was projected as a victory, perhaps more definitive than it will prove. In the last few months the construction of the ruling in Spain has tended to be projected in similar terms: a victory in court would make the Super League happen.
On the TV channel La Sexta, Antonio García Ferreras opened his editorial by announcing the “bombs”: “The Super Contract has been won”, it was “before and after”, and “Uefa’s monopoly is over”, their cozy silver. club broken up. Madrid and Barcelona were the only ones to keep going and were protected, despite the threats. Oh, and games will be free. García Ferreras was Real Madrid’s communications director and is among Pérez’s closest allies.
“I bet you 25 dinners that there won’t be a Super League in two, six or eight years,” Tebas said in one interview. He previously described the project as the kind of thing you come up with to get drunk in a bar at 5am. On Thursday he extended that to 6am; they are all “drunk” he said. He had a busy day which suggested that he was not as sure as he said: a glorious, controversial presence anyway, there were tweets, statements, interviews, press conferences.
His position was strengthened by the response across European football. Madrid and Barcelona had the assumption that some of the biggest clubs really support them privately and once they had won the court case, when the new project was presented, the Super League would certainly be revived . But that didn’t happen.
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La Liga mobilized quickly, aggressively. Atlético Madrid and Sevilla issued statements saying they wanted no part of it. All the Spanish clubs playing on Thursday night will do so while carrying the anti-Super League slogan: Earn it on the field. All except Real Madrid, of course. La Liga TV channels will push that message during broadcasts. That will not be seen as a common reaction, even if there are statements against the Premier League from national supporters groups; rather, it is an institutional message, one interested party against the other.
This may not lead to a Super League but it changes the balance of power. That in itself is worth it for the two big, power-sharing backs. This week Laporta was not so much a breakout as an opportunity to watch Uefa.
“Our destiny is in our own hands,” insisted Pérez, having won his first victory. “Our right to propose and modernize the organization of competitions that attract fans from all over the world has been fully recognised. Today, free Europe has won again. Football and its fans also win. Today, law and justice, truth and freedom, have submitted themselves to the pressures we have had for over two years. Today will mark and before and after; it’s a great day for the history of football and the history of sport.”
Madrid and Barcelona still stand alone but they are Madrid and Barcelona. Uefa had been reminded of that.
