Spain’s Sporting Foes of La Liga and Football Federation Likely to Agree On Daily Matches to Finish Season

SPAIN’S sporting foes of La Liga and the Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) are likely to agree on matches being played daily to finish off the season.

Games were suspended because of the State of Alarm in March, and now La Liga are looking to return on June 11 with the Sevilla derby, after the go-ahead to resume was given by the Spanish government last weekend.

La Liga and the RFEF have had a stream of recent serious clashes over fixture scheduling, playing La Liga matches in America, and the RFEF running a new Supercopa format in Saudi Arabia.

One of those disagreements was a decision taken last season by the RFEF to veto Monday night La Liga action because it was not in the interest of supporters.

That’s despite the fact that Monday games have been played for years, and La Liga had a schedule to maintain not just for their clubs, but also for TV companies around the world who had paid millions of euros for broadcast rights expecting a match at the start of the week.

La Liga launched a court challenge, but lost to the RFEF yesterday (May 26), but have announced their intention to launch an appeal.

The legal move was made last year, and one of the very few upsides of the coronavirus pandemic has been the fact that Spain’s sports minister, Irene Lozano, managed last month to get La Liga president, Javier Tebas, and his RFEF counterpart, Luis Rubiales, to agree to join forces to help the sport in the wake of the pandemic.

That included setting procedures for a return to training, as well both bodies making sizeable donations to charities and sportspeople hit by the health crisis.

It’s with the slightly more amiable atmosphere between La Liga and the RFEF that the federation decided today (May 27) to issue a statement that understandably supported the ruling of the court.

They added though that they would not block any La Liga move to stage matches in the Primera and Segunda divisions every day in order to get the season finished as soon as possible.

The RFEF said in a statement: “The federation wishes to show its goodwill and will do its part to facilitate the season being completed without any problems, upholding the spirit of harmony it committed to at last month’s meeting with La Liga.”