Barcelona and Villarreal aren\u2019t playing each other in Miami after all.<\/p>\n
LaLiga announced Tuesday<\/a> that the Dec. 20 game had been canceled because of \u201cuncertainty that has arisen in Spain over the past few weeks.\u201d Players across the league were unhappy with LaLiga\u2019s decision to host a game in the United States and staged protests during the most recent league match weekend.<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cLaLiga 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,\u201d the league said. \u201cHolding 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 United States.<\/p>\n \u201cThe project fully complied with all federative regulations and did not affect the integrity of the competition, as confirmed by the competent institutions responsible for ensuring compliance, which opposed it for other reasons.\u201d<\/p>\n The cancellation came less than two weeks after LaLiga said on Oct. 8 that it was pushing ahead with its first-ever league match outside of Spain. Real Madrid, Barcelona\u2019s chief rival and a team consistently at odds with LaLiga on a host of issues, opposed the plan, and Barcelona coach Hansi Flick even stated his opposition to the idea.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n Players didn\u2019t play for the first seconds of their games over the weekend in opposition to the Miami match. When the first protest happened Friday afternoon as Real Oviedo played Espanyol, LaLiga\u2019s video feed of the game cut to an outside shot of the stadium instead of showing the protest.<\/p>\n LaLiga\u2019s player union said in a statement that it was protesting \u201cin a symbolic fashion to denounce the lack of transparency, dialogue and coherence of LaLiga regarding the possibility of playing a game in the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n The match\u2019s cancellation also means that Hard Rock Stadium officials can avoid a potential college football headache, too. The first round of the College Football Playoff begins with one game on Dec. 19 and three games are held on Dec. 20. Miami is 5-1 and currently No. 9 in the rankings. If the Hurricanes qualified for the playoff and were ranked between No. 5 and No. 8 in the College Football Playoff selection committee\u2019s final rankings, they would be in line to host a playoff game.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Barcelona and Villarreal aren\u2019t playing each other in Miami after all. LaLiga announced Tuesday that the Dec. 20…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15668,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[5008,13480,4375,13478,123,125,124,12441,13479,9578],"class_list":{"0":"post-15667","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-miami","8":"tag-barcelona","9":"tag-espanyol","10":"tag-getty-images","11":"tag-laliga","12":"tag-miami","13":"tag-miami-headlines","14":"tag-miami-news","15":"tag-real-madrid","16":"tag-real-oviedo","17":"tag-villarreal"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15667","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15667"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15667\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15668"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}