To get an idea of the state of utter despair in which the two fallen giants of Spanish football now find themselves, consider how Barcelona's players spent Wednesday evening.
Once they completed their home match against Almeria, they boarded a plane for a grueling 14-hour flight to Dallas, to fulfill a friendly against a Mexican team and earn the club £4.3 million.
And therein lies the reason why one of continental football's great names – five-time European Cup winner, who left Sir Alex Ferguson a tormented man after playing Manchester United off Wembley just a decade ago – is one of the two driving forces behind a relaunch of the European Super League yesterday, together with Real Madrid. They desperately need some cash.
The demise of these clubs has been as slow as it has been painful over the past five years, with hubris, greed and mismanagement at its core.
It has been a saga of both taking a large chunk of television revenue, destroying the competitive balance in Spain that the Premier League enjoys.
Real Madrid and Barcelona have shown their desperation by pushing ahead with relaunching the Super League
Madrid chief Florentino Perez and Barca supremo Joan Laporta are both in serious need of money for their clubs
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A story about declining visitor numbers. The TV deals are a fraction of those in England. From the rampant spending frenzy in the transfer market of the past twenty years, to the imposition of salary caps that have left Barca in particular in a state of financial collapse.
A European Super League is the apparent liberation from this state of financial purgatory – a way, for both clubs, to regain revenue and relevance in the face of the ruthless dominance of the Premier League, where the best players now seek incredible fortunes.
No sooner had the European Court of Justice ruled yesterday that banning clubs from taking part in a breakaway group was unlawful than we were reintroduced to A22 – organizers of the Super League, not the dual carriageway in Sussex – whose attempts to launching into a storm. of fan protest, two and a half years ago.
Prior to the relaunch, the organizers had clearly spent some time in front of whiteboards with colored markers, as they gave a very clear picture of what their Super League looked like: 64 teams grouped into a Star League, a Gold League and a third-tier Blue League , with promotion and relegation between each division.
No one of consequence seems to make any sense of their escape after mass protests took place in 2021 when proposals were first unveiled
LaLiga's two giants are trying to salvage revenue and relevance after being devoured by the Premier League
But there was an uncomfortable truth. No one of note, apart from Real and Barcelona, seemed to have any appetite for this. The Premier League's so-called 'break-away six' – Super League mainstays last time – certainly didn't, as they were forced to make humiliating apologies to glowering fans for signing up for it in 2021.
German clubs were not interested for cultural reasons. Juventus have turned against the concept since a change in the composition of the board. Paris Saint-Germain will not tolerate this for political reasons. In Spain, Atletico Madrid was the first club to announce that it was not interested. Manchester United also declared themselves eliminated at very short notice. Later, Tottenham, Chelsea and City joined.
It all seemed quite unbearable to the desperadoes of Barca and Real, but still they continued, reinforced by the judgment of the Court of Justice, ignoring the fact that the legal right to disengage is not as important if no one else has it want to do.
A slew of teams have rejected the new format, although Barca and Real Madrid have continued anyway
Madrid chief Perez has insisted clubs must 'control their own destiny'
That's desperation for you, and Barcelona in particular have become very familiar with that lately. They play their matches in the Olympic Stadium on a mountain near Montjuic, while Camp Nou undergoes a much-needed reconstruction.
There is not much interest in this place among fans of the club, who sit third in the table, seven points behind leaders Girona, after a late, narrow victory against Almeria. The turnout is through the roof. The stadium seats 54,000 spectators, but only 35,000 attended an important Atletico visit two weeks ago. There were 34,000 for Almeria.
There was a time when La Liga prided itself on its ability to outwit richer and bigger rivals such as the Premier League, although there wasn't much progressive thinking put into some kick-off times either.
To satisfy the broadcasters, the matches didn't start until 9:30 p.m.; in some cases they end around midnight. In football the 'survival of the fittest' applies and La Liga has been swallowed up by the Premier League.
In Madrid, those advocating for the Super League protest that UEFA has usurped and steamrolled Europe's elite competition, which Santiago Bernabeu himself founded in 1955. Clubs must be the 'masters of their fate', Real Madrid president Florentino Perez emphasized yesterday.
Barcelona was in the final phase. “We want to take our destiny into our own hands,” said Barca president Joan Laporta. Neither wanted to talk about the need to rebuild Spanish club football from within and put their own houses in order.
It's a strange solution that these clubs are now looking for, given the rich appreciation both clubs have for what it means to win the Champions League. Madrid won four of the five Champions Leagues between 2014 and 2018. Between 2006 and 2018, La Liga teams won the Champions League more times than all other European competitions combined.
Trophies could also flow for both in a European Super League, as it looks like they will be the only two big clubs competing for it.