The once-ambitious plan to stage a match La Liga between FC Barcelona and Villarreal CF in Miami has been shelved. La Liga and promoter Relevent Sports blame “uncertainty in Spain” and “insufficient time” to pull off the event. While that might sound like a logistical hiccup, for the players and the home supporters in Spain, this cancellation feels like a breath of fresh air.

From La Liga’s leadership vantage point, it seems that letting go of this match is regrettable. They view the United States as a strategic growth market and argue that skipping opportunities like this one limits clubs’ ability to generate revenue and stay competitive globally. Their statement makes no secret of that ambition: brand expansion comes first.

But football is not just about branding, and the pushback reflects more than nostalgia. This fight wasn’t about resisting growth. It was about resisting a business model that might erode the very foundation of fair competition, disregard local fan sentiment, and the health of the players themselves.

Player fatigue: a risk worth avoiding
Make no mistake: the players are probably glad this idea fell through. For clubs like Barcelona and Villarreal, competing on multiple fronts already demands everything. Dropping in a 7,200-kilometre round-trip flight with multiple time zones in December would have been an extra burden. Barcelona manager Hansi Flick and midfielder Frenkie de Jong voiced discomfort with the proposal. Medical research on travel, fatigue and injury risk is crystal clear: long-haul flights in peak season are anything but trivial. The cancellation gives these elite athletes one less variable to worry about.

A win for fairness and for fans at home
Then there are the supporters. Many fans of Villarreal were facing the prospect of losing a home fixture, swapped out for a neutral venue. The home-and-away structure isn’t there for aesthetics: it underpins competitive balance. As Real Madrid keeper Thibaut Courtois pointed out, home matches carry real weight, and altering the rules mid-season without full consultation opens the door to questions about integrity. Had the Miami game gone ahead, Barcelona would be playing one less away game and Villarreal one less home game. That affects the entirety of La Liga, too.

So where do we stand?
Yes, La Liga forfeits a potentially lucrative overseas venture. Yes, there’s still a tension between global ambitions and local traditions. But today, the bigger win lies in reaffirming that the “locals” matter: the season-ticket holders, the weekend travelers, the ones who turn up rain or shine for their club. The cancellation sends a message: expansion should not come at the expense of the core competition.

And it shows you that the players ultimately hold the cards. It may have ultimately been them who forced the issue with the unusual, but powerful step of protesting by not playing at the beginning of La Liga matches last weekend. The message was clear: without us, there is no league at all.

This doesn’t mean that La Liga won’t try to host a game in Miami again. It seems that in this case, La Liga made decisions where all the teams and players and fans did not feel as though they were consulted and their voices heard. Perhaps the uprooting of La Liga matches to other countries is inevitable, one way or another, and there are certainly some positives to it. But in order for such a plan to succeed – if it ever will – it has to do so with a more thorough process in which all concerns from all involved parties are heard, and compromises reached ahead of time.

Of course there’s also the alternative that the clubs, players, and fans have drawn a line in the sand that will never be crossed. It’s one thing to host the Spanish Super Cup outside of Spain, and it’s quite another to host a La Liga match in a different country.