Supercopa a money grab, plain and simple

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This article was published 10/01/2020 (2396 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

As gimmicks go, the 2019-20 Supercopa de España is unabashed. Set to wrap up on Sunday with a Madrid Derby in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, the annual competition (England’s Community Shield and Germany’s DFL Supercup are those country’s equivalent events) has been a public relations fiasco, although the Royal Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) will nevertheless deposit a rights fee of US$157 million.

Saudi Arabia beat out fellow bidders China and Qatar, and the auction left no doubt as to why the Supercopa — traditionally held in Spain at the outset of the season, although last year’s installment took place in Morocco in a sort of trial run — was transplanted in the Arabian Peninsula.

“The bottom line is football has become a business, and as a business it looks for income,” remarked Barcelona manager Ernesto Valverde on Wednesday, as per the BBC. “That’s the reason we are all here.”

“We all” refers to Valverde’s own side as well as Valencia, Atletico Madrid and Real Madrid. Now, the point of the Supercopa is, or was until the Morocco match, to pit the Primera Division champions and Copa del Rey winners against one another in the Spanish football season’s curtain-raiser. It’s a format common throughout Europe.

What the RFEF has essentially done is create a tournament out of that match, sell it to the highest bidder, stage it mid-season and extend its middle finger to fans back home. Oh, and they’ve also had the audacity to package the thing as a sort of human rights crusade, symbolically insisting in the tender that women be allowed to attend the games. (Symbolic because it’s already been the case for two years.)

Sometimes it’s so easy to be cynical that you have to double-check yourself to make sure you’re not just being an unbearable grump. Double-check completed: nope, still ridiculous.

Contextualization actually makes it worse. The Supercopa de España was awarded to Saudi Arabia last February, when fallout from journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s murder inside the country’s consulate in Turkey was still fresh and a rightful scratch to the seemingly teflon reputation of crown prince Mohammad bin Salman.

MbS, as he is known, is now gleefully laundering the Khashoggi killing in the soap that is European football.

So should Saudi Arabia and other countries that have failed the human rights examination of the western gaze be disqualified from hosting high-profile events? Certainly not. Such a moral test is one few places, including Canada, would fail to or just barely pass. But when the world is watching, a critical eye must look closely as well. Even a cynical one. And no private organization, such as the RFEF, should play at being the arbiter of social progress.

Perhaps ironically, not everyone is watching the Supercopa. Spanish state broadcaster RTVE, which typically shows the matches, wanted nothing to do with it. And of the 48,000 tickets allocated to the four clubs, only 1,075 were sold. Exactly 25 Valencia fans have travelled to Jeddah for a competition they entered by virtue of winning the Copa del Rey, and they should have been able to watch one of the two home-and-away contests at the renovated Mestalla.

Unfortunately, and not just for them but for all football fans, Valverde is right. Clubs and leagues will chase down money wherever it can be found. They don’t even need their own fans to attend games. And in the absence of credible alternatives, a hereditary monarch with blood on his hands will do in a pinch.

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• Real Madrid should have never been participating in the Supercopa de España, but they’ve been using the competition as a springboard for the rest of the season. Isco, Toni Kroos and Luca Modrid scored in their 3-1 semi-final win over Valencia — players Los Blancos will need continued improvement from if they’re to challenge on all fronts over the next few months.

• Atletico Madrid scored two late goals to upset Barcelona 3-2 in the other semifinal. Once again they demonstrated an ability topple very good teams — something Liverpool will need to keep in mind for the last 16 of the Champions League.

• Despite Barcelona’s share of first place in La Liga, manager Valverde is highly unpopular and the collapse against Atletico will have done nothing to improve that. His future may well be discussed at a board of governors meeting on Monday, and while he seems to have the players on side he’ll be nervously looking ahead to matches against Granada and Valencia.

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Twitter @JerradPeters