On 21 October, La Liga, Spain’s top-flight professional league, made an official announcement that the plan to stage one of the La Liga matches in Miami has been cancelled.

The proposal, put forward by Villarreal CF and FC Barcelona, sought to stage their La Liga fixture in the United States. It was approved by the Royal Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) in August, and in October the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) also gave its consent. At the same time, UEFA approved a separate proposal from Italy’s Serie A to stage AC Milan v Como 1907 in Australia.

Since the proposal to move the December fixture between Villarreal and Barcelona to Miami became public, it has provoked strong opposition from across the football world.

Most notably, Villarreal supporters — who stood to lose one of their eagerly anticipated home games — voiced their outright opposition. They warned that the proposal would set a dangerous precedent and sever the club from its roots. In response, supporters’ organisations in Spain and across Europe issued a strongly worded statement, criticising such proposals for reducing sport to “an entertainment product detached from clubs’ traditions and their communities” (Football Supporters Europe).

Opposition was not limited to supporters alone. Other La Liga clubs, managers and players also expressed their opposition. In mid-October, following UEFA’s approval of the proposal, protests were staged at all of theLa Liga matches. After the referee blew the whistle for kick-off, all the players stood motionless for 15 seconds in a silent demonstration of resistance.

Confronted with this backlash, La Liga entered discussions with the US-side promoter responsible for the proposal and ultimately announced that the match would be played as originally scheduled, on 21 December in Villarreal.

Under FIFA regulations, domestic league matches are, in principle, to be played within the territory of the relevant national football association. However, it is widely argued that enforcing this rule has become increasingly difficult since the promoter responsible for the Miami proposal challenged it in court and reached a settlement with FIFA in April last year.

Why, then, are such proposals being advanced? The answer lies in the desire of La Liga and Serie A to generate revenues comparable to those of the English Premier League.

The Premier League has established overwhelming financial power through a self-reinforcing cycle: attracting global stars, selling broadcasting rights worldwide on the strength of that star power, and reinvesting the resulting revenues to recruit yet more elite players. In order to compete, La Liga and Serie A see overseas fixtures as a means of boosting popularity and increasing revenue.

Europe’s football market is already close to saturation. For further growth, La Liga and other major leagues are compelled to explore new markets with strong commercial potential, such as North America, Australia and Asia.

This time, the La Liga proposal was abandoned in the face of fierce opposition from supporters and players. Yet the drive to open up “new markets” is unlikely to fade. Within the next few years, it is entirely possible that matches from La Liga and other leading European competitions will be staged on a regular basis in countries such as the United States, China PR and Japan.

Some fans may welcome such proposals. However, their long-term consequences could place domestic top leagues — the primary engines of each country’s football culture — in a difficult and vulnerable position.

This situation bears a striking resemblance to the imperialism of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when Western powers pursued their own interests through colonial expansion, showing little respect for local populations or their cultures, which existed largely to be exploited.

American football clearly has its own goal: to nurture a strong domestic league and build a deep-rooted, thriving football culture. Allowing European competitions — including La Liga — to advance proposals that treat American fans merely as targets for commercial gain may be defended as “free economic activity,” but in reality, it undermines that objective. I believe such proposals should not be allowed.

Football is a global game, and international exchange is an essential part of it. But if we fail to respect and protect the football cultures of other countries, that exchange cannot genuinely contribute to people’s well-being.

Written by OSUMI Yoshiyuki (Football Journalist)

*This article was originally posted on the Japan Football Association Newsletter, “JFAnews,” November 2025 edition.

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