For a second straight day, protests by La Liga players against staging a regular-season game in Miami, Florida, in December were censored or not fully broadcast for television audiences.
The television feed of Barcelona’s home game against Girona switched right before kickoff to an exterior view of the stadium, which only showed part of the field from a distance. That impeded home audiences from seeing the teams’ players standing still for the first 15 seconds in opposition to La Liga’s plan to hold the Barcelona-Villarreal game across the Atlantic on Dec. 20.
The broadcasts of the initial moments after kickoff of the day’s other three games — Sevilla-Mallorca, Villarreal-Real Betis and Atletico Madrid-Osasuna — focused closely from directly above on the center circle, instead of taking a wide angle of the field.
Photo: Reuters
Barcelona’s and Villarreal’s players joined the protests even though they were exempted by the Spanish soccer players’ association, which organized it.
“We were not part of the [protest], but we felt that we needed to follow along out of respect for our fellow professionals,” Barcelona midfielder Pedri Gonzalez said after his team’s 2-1 win.
The players’ union announced the protest plans on Friday, saying that all the captains of the top-flight teams supported it.
The play-by-play commentator on Saturday did briefly mentioned the protest, in contrast to Friday when it was completely censored from the broadcast of Oviedo-Espanyol. For that first protest, TV audiences saw only the exterior of the stadium for the first 25 seconds after kickoff.
The union said the symbolic action was to protest the “lack of transparency, dialogue and coherence of La Liga regarding the possibility of playing a game in the US.”
Spain’s soccer supporters association, the Federation of Spanish Football Supporters’ Clubs and Shareholders, applauded the players’ protest against what it called “La Liga’s obsession with going forward with its demented plan to rob our communities of soccer.”
The league says the game would be good for promoting Spanish soccer globally.
Coaches are also against the Miami match.
Barcelona coach Hansi Flick said the game adds unnecessary extra travel to their already packed schedules.
Real Madrid coach Xabi Alonso called the Miami game “an adulteration of the competition” when asked about it in a news conference on Saturday.
“The protests are positive because they represent what many clubs feel,” Alonso said.
Barcelona president Joan Laporta backs the move, saying it represents an opportunity to further push into the US sports market.
La Liga president Javier Tebas has defended the game as a key to boosting “revenues in the mid to long-term” and increasing the value of his competition’s television rights, which lag behind those of England’s Premier League.
The Dec. 20 match would be at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, home of the NFL’s Miami Dolphins.
Tebas said the league plans to make an international match an annual event.
La Liga has tried and failed in recent years to get a game abroad. If it succeeds this time, it would be the first major European league to do so, even though federation-organized events such as the Spanish Super Cup and the Italian Super Cup are now held in Saudi Arabia.
Italy’s Serie A is also planning to move a Feb. 8 match between AC Milan and Como to Perth, Australia, saying the San Siro would not be available after hosting the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics two days earlier.
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