The secrets behind the Super Cup sportswash
Favouritism of big two sets dangerous precedent for major competitions
e are here because of the money,” said the Barcelona manager, Ernesto Valverde, bluntly this week, although given that he was holding his weekly press conference in Saudi Arabia, it would have been perverse to argue otherwise.
The Spanish Super Cup is the latest sporting export to the kingdom, an innocuous pre-season Community Shield-style tradition pumped up to a four-team competition and sold to the highest bidder. As it turns out, Spanish champions Barcelona are already on their way home, beaten 3-2 by Atletico Madrid in Jeddah on Thursday, and the final will be between the Madrid side and city rivals Real today.
Where to begin with this miserable pursuit of the riyal for a trophy no one cares about, in a country frantically trying to sportswash its reputation?
The Spanish supporters of the four clubs, including Copa del
Rey winners
Valencia, have already indicated their feelings on the matter. Valencia brought just 26 fans with them, enough to fill the places in a Champions League squad. Atletico brought 50. Barcelona (300) and Real Madrid (700) have claimed more but only about 20 are expected to have travelled from Spain or Catalonia – and the rest from local fan clubs.
The president of the Spanish football federation RFEF, Luis Rubiales, who brokered the three-year €120 million (£102 million) deal with Saudi Arabia, responded to objections to the country’s human rights record in much the same way as Eddie Hearn did before the Anthony Joshua title fight there last month. Which is to say, he claimed that sport could change the country, without offering any clear evidence of how that might happen.
“There are countries where being born a man or a woman is not the same,” Rubiales reflected, sounding very much like his mind was still on that €120million contract. “We can change the situation if we flood them with equality,” he added. Further chuntering included: “They’ve asked us to transform the country. This will be the Supercopa of equality!”
Quite how three pseudo-friendlies have changed Saudi society, only Rubiales will be able to tell us, although the concession that women would be able to attend the games has been paraded by the RFEF as if it were the Super Cup trophy itself. The RFEF has got previous for this: a forerunner of the Super Cup it created in the 1940s was named in tribute to Eva Peron, wife of the Argentine president of the time, when Spain was under a fascist dictatorship.
What is its excuse this time? The answer is money, and also a disturbing shift in the way that qualification for elite football competitions is organised. Under normal circumstances the Super Cup would have been played last August between Barcelona, the champions, and cup winners Valencia, but having signed such a big contract, Rubiales had to find a way to include Real Madrid.
Inconveniently they failed to win either trophy, or reach the cup final, or even finish second in the league. In the end, Real – ahem – “qualified” on the not-at-all spurious basis that they were semi-finalists in the cup. But what of Real Betis, the other beaten semi-finalists? Rubiales and the RFEF decreed Real qualified ahead of the Seville club because they were founded five years earlier. Good news for Notts County, but very much interpreted in Spain as a stitch-up in favour of one of the big two. That was bad enough, but when it came to the division of the spoils, it got even worse.
The RFEF decided that Real and Barcelona would each have guaranteed earnings from Saudi of €6.8million, for Atletico it would be €3.8million, and Valencia – who, to recap, are the cup holders – just €2.8million. The merit payments are €800,000 for beaten semi-finalists Barcelona and Valencia, who lost 3-1 to Real on Wednesday; €2million for the runner-up and €2.8million for the winner. Even if Atletico win today’s final, they still earn less than Barcelona did for turning up and losing. Valencia are sufficiently angry that they participated only under protest and plan to sue the RFEF.
What Evita would think of it all, we can but speculate. Rubiales, who has allocated a further €16million of the contract to the RFEF, says that the revenue is divided on the murky basis of “historical reasons”, which constitute 75 per cent of the carve-up. In a nutshell, those historical reasons appear to be that Real Madrid and Barcelona have historically always demanded a greater share of the revenue for broadcast rights. Without a bigger share, they would not have agreed to ship Lionel Messi, Sergio Ramos et al to Jeddah.
It is the sinister “historical reasons” that some European clubs, under Juventus chairman Andrea Agnelli, are seeking to deploy to reshape the Champions League and Europa League post-2024. They want a closed shop in which the biggest names participate ad infinitum, regardless of how far their standards have slipped on the pitch. This abhorrent zombie tournament idea has been given its first trial run in Saudi, where any excuse would have been found to include Real Madrid.
A glance at Real’s accounts will tell you that their revenue for overseas games, competitive or otherwise, for the financial year 2018-19 was €113million, but a shortfall of €4million was projected for 2019-20.
That would have been on the assumption that there would be no Uefa Super Cup or Fifa Club World Cup – until Saudi came along and the RFEF fixed it for its biggest club to earn some very easy and very questionable money.
Even if Atletico win today’s final, they still earn less than Barcelona did for turning up and losing