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The dream of watching one of Europe’s top soccer teams play a competitive league match in the U.S. died abruptly Tuesday night, only two months before FC Barcelona was scheduled to take on Villarreal CF at Hard Rock Stadium.
While the U.S. regularly hosts summer warm-up tournaments featuring the best teams from across the Atlantic, those games are about as meaningful as NFL preseason matchups, maybe even less so. So when LaLiga, Spain’s top soccer league, announced a regular-season contest in Miami, South Florida soccer fans were ecstatic.
But thanks to overwhelming complaints from Spain — including Barcelona players — and a faltering timeline, co-promoters LaLiga and Relevent Sports opted to cancel the game completely.
“LaLiga deeply regrets that this project, which represented a historic and unparalleled opportunity for the international expansion of Spanish soccer, will not be able to move forward,” league officials said in a statement posted on the LaLiga website. “Holding an official match outside our borders would have been a decisive step in the global growth of the competition, strengthening the international presence of clubs, the positioning of players, and the visibility of Spanish soccer in a strategic market such as the U.S.”
Barcelona issued a similar statement lamenting the lost opportunity to expand its already worldwide fanbase: “The club is grateful for the unconditional support and affection of our fans in the USA and regrets deeply that they are denied the opportunity to see an official game in their country.”
That said, the overseas game was decidedly unpopular in Spain. Over the weekend, players agreed to interrupt every league match for a moment of protest.
The date also complicated matters; Saturday, December 20, is only a day prior to a Dolphins home game, and it’s also the date of a Miami football Hurricanes home game if the team reaches the FBS playoffs.
The soccer match would have marked the first-ever Spanish league game outside of Spain. Moreover, LaLiga would have been the first of Europe’s top five national leagues (England, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain) to hold a league game in another country. Playing a competitive match in the U.S. has long been a top priority for the Spanish monolith, with league president Javier Tebas telling ESPN last year that he hoped to make it happen during the 2025-26 campaign.
LaLiga first tried to stage a match in Miami in January 2019, pitting Barcelona against Girona FC, but backed down after facing opposition from opposition from soccer’s governing bodies in Spain and Europe.
