I see UEFA are allowing Barcelona and Milan to play matches outside their respective countries. Next seasons opener Bohs v Rover's in Berlin or New York
I see UEFA are allowing Barcelona and Milan to play matches outside their respective countries. Next seasons opener Bohs v Rover's in Berlin or New York
UEFA arenlt allowing it though, They have no grounds on whicb they can stop it. So they're begrudingly just saying it's ok in an attempt to retain some relevance/link to the decisions.Originally Posted by Shinkicker
This is going to become a regular thing, despite UEFA's nonesense claims of no precedent.
Or the Brandywell?
UEFA has no way of stopping it, at least under their current regulations as they stand. However, they might be able to bring in a new rule.
For in the past when they've tried bringing in rules opposing eg a Super League, or player transfer restrictions, they've come up against the EU, who've weighed in in support of such proposals.
But this case could be different, because the EU Commissioner for intergenerational fairness, youth, culture and sport [sic], Glenn Micallef, recently spoke out against the Villarreal/Barca/Miami game, describing it as a "betrayal" of local fans:
“My position is clear: European competitions should be played in Europe,” Maltese national Micallef said, speaking exclusively with The Athletic at the European Commission’s offices in Barcelona.
“Playing domestic league matches outside of Europe is a betrayal of the local communities and fans to whom these clubs owe most of their successes. To our citizens, it is more than just a competition, it’s about community, friendship, family.”
https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/668...onboarded=true
I'm not so sure - "regular" maybe in the sense of one or two games a season (only), but not widespread. For tbh, the only Spanish teams who could guarantee to draw a decent crowd and TV/Media interest overseas are Barca, Real Madrid and (possibly) Atletico Madrid. And Real are on the record as being completely opposed to the idea.
No-one outside their own home town/league is going to be in the least interested in overseas matches between eg Elche, Levante, Osasuna, Getafe or Oviedo etc, while Barca (Atletico M?) can't play all their away games outside Spain, either - esp if they're having to compensate (i.e. bribe) the "home" club and their fans for trips to USA/Far East/Gulf each time as well.
And i suspect that much the same applies to Italy/Serie A, where only Juve and AC Milan have huge overseas profile and support to match that of Barca/Real/Bayern/PSG/Man U/Liverpool etc.
Similarly, fan-owned clubs in Germany will certainly NEVER permit such an idea. While in England, even if some PL clubs were considering paying rent and travel expenses etc to stage games away from the large, hugely expensive home stadia which they're all building*, they got such a kicking over the ESL breakaway, plus the earlier proposed "Game 39", that I really can't see it happening there. Never mind that the new Government Regulator for football would undoubtedly move to prevent it.
So my own prediction is one or two overseas games each season for La Liga/Serie A until the novelty wears off and Barca and Juve have to admit that it will never be the massive Lottery win they need to catch them up with the Premier League, both finance and playing wise.
And that's if the EU doesn't weigh in to prevent it.
* - Why pay to rent overseas stadia, training facilities, charter flights and hotels etc to play eg in New York or LA, when you're already paying off the mortgage on your own super duper big stadium in London or Manchester. Which is before having to refund all the ST holders, and face the wrath of the fans generally, plus having your players return jet-lagged and knackered to play their next PL or Europeamn game a few days later?
Last edited by EalingGreen; 08/10/2025 at 1:24 PM.
The EU can complain - and rightly so in my view. But what can they do about an event happening out-with their jurisdiction? I suspect the answer is nothing.
'Regular' is not the same as 'frequent'.
But as mentioned - how?
I guess you may ask all of this to the NFL teams who are now regularly (bit not frequently) playing fixtures in European cities like Dublin, London and Munich. It's obviously worth the hassle.
As a minor aside re logistics - I suspect the European teams would just leave a local fixer/contractor/agent to sort things like accommodation, flights etc for them. They're big commercial organisations with plenty of staff to do it for themselves otherwise anyway. The same clubs go around the world every off season playing games like the Harlem Globetrotters as it is already. I don't think it's credible to suggest that they'd find it a pain to do all that for a competitive fixtures, when they already do it for pointless friendlies and 'tournaments' every Summer.
Not sure, but Barcelona/Spain and Milan/Italy are both within their jurisdiction and they've not been shy in interfering in Football before.
NFL and Football are two completely different sports, with different requirements and set-ups, so cannot be compared.
For one thing, Football has long been a ("the"?) world sport, with domestic leagues in just about every country, while also maintaining international competition, both club and NT etc. Whereas NFL is pretty much solely USA, meaning that if they are to expand, they have to pursue what you might call "missionary work" with games overseas. The logical extension of this, if it ever happens, will be NFL Franchises abroad (London? Munich?). No-one is seriously suggesting that Barca or Milan etc are planning on something similar abroad.
While the set-up is also completely different. Football already has a severely crowded calendar, without the need to be playing "home" matches abroad. By contrast, the NFL schedule sees team playing just 17 regular season games each. This used to be 16 (8 x home, 8 x away), meaning the that having expanded, there was space in the new calendar for a few of these new games to be abroad i.e. extra, not instead of. In fact, the whole NFL season comprises just 272 games a season, with only 7 of those abroad. By contrast, the Premier League stages 380 domestic league games a season for instance, plus Cups, Europe etc.
Indeed amongst American team sports, NFL is very much an idiosyncratic outlier, since we don't see MLB, NBA or NHL following their example. Meaning that Football and NFL are not so much comparing Apples with Oranges as Aardvarks with Onions!
It's nothing to do with logistics, rather it's a question of finance and scheduling. Take Spurs for example. They've spent a billion quid on a new stadium, financed by a 25 year(?) mortgage. Every PL game they play, they take in £3m in matchday receipts alone. Why on earth would they forego that to play a game in NYC or LA etc, where they'd have to pay to hire a stadium, training facilities, hotels and flights etc, while leaving their players and staff exhausted and jet-lagged etc in mid-season, with WHL sitting empty all the while. And that's before they had to refund their 42k Season Ticket Holders 19th of the cost of their ST, plus put up with all their other fans furious at not getting to see the team play in their traditional home. (Same applies to all the other PL teams building or rebuilding huge new stadia i.e. most of them).
Whereas Barca and Milan are only pursuing this idea out of (financial) desperation. That is, they're struggling to expand their own operation domestically, while the PL is disappearing over the horizon both financially and playing-wise, both home and abroad. Meaning that those clubs' only hope of catching up is to try somehow to exploit overseas media/TV/Sponsorship markets with experiments like this. But I wonder how much appetite there will continue to be in USA or Oz for such games once the novelty has worn off.
All of which is without having to face competition, in USA at least, from MLS, which is growing all the time.
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