{"id":208289,"date":"2025-10-08T05:08:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-08T05:08:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/208289\/"},"modified":"2025-10-08T05:08:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-08T05:08:10","slug":"serie-a-plan-to-play-game-in-australia-is-crazy-absurd-milans-adrien-rabiot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/208289\/","title":{"rendered":"Serie A plan to play game in Australia is \u2018crazy, absurd\u2019 \u2013 Milan\u2019s Adrien Rabiot"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Adrien<\/p>\n

Adrien Rabiot has criticised Serie A’s plans to play a match in Australia Alexander Hassenstein\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

AC Milan midfielder Adrien Rabiot has described Serie A\u2019s plans to schedule his side\u2019s league game against Como in Perth, Australia as \u201ccompletely crazy\u201d and \u201creally absurd\u201d.<\/p>\n

The Italian top flight is not the only league aiming to move a regular-season match abroad, with Spain\u2019s La Liga hopeful of staging December\u2019s scheduled game between Villarreal and Barcelona in Miami, Florida.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s completely crazy,\u201d Rabiot told Le Figaro<\/a> when asked of the Serie A\u2019s plan of playing the February match in Australia. \u201cThen there are financial agreements to ensure the league has a certain level of visibility, but all of this is beyond our control.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s crazy to travel so many kilometres to play a match between two Italian teams in Australia. We have to adapt. As always. There\u2019s a lot of talk about schedules and player health, but all of this seems really absurd.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Monday,\u00a0UEFA \u201creluctantly\u201d approved the requests<\/a> from the Italian and Spanish domestic leagues to stage matches abroad while reiterating its \u201cclear opposition\u201d to the plans.<\/p>\n

European football\u2019s governing body said it had granted the approval \u201con an exceptional basis amid regulatory gaps at global level\u201d and insisted the decisions would not \u201cset a precedent\u201d.<\/p>\n

In August, the Italian league said<\/a> that its plans to play Serie A games in Australia would \u201cintroduce new audiences to the excellence of Italian football\u201d and would lead to \u201cincreased visibility and popularity worldwide\u201d for the division.<\/p>\n

Serie A said that these benefits would be \u201cin return for a small sacrifice required of the Milan and Como fans\u201d.<\/p>\n

No regular-season league matches in European football have previously been staged abroad, with UEFA\u2019s approval now initiating the procedures for FIFA, the body overseeing world football, to grant authorisation for the fixture changes.<\/p>\n

The German Football League (DFL) has ruled out moving any Bundesliga matches abroad, while England\u2019s Premier League considered playing a round of fixtures known as the \u201839th game\u2019 outside of the United Kingdom in 2008 but faced huge backlash from supporters and opposition from FIFA.<\/p>\n

\"Connections:\"Connections:<\/p>\n

Oct 8, 2025<\/p>\n

Connections: Sports Edition<\/p>\n

Spot the pattern. Connect the terms<\/p>\n

Find the hidden link between sports terms<\/p>\n

Play today’s puzzle<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Adrien Rabiot has criticised Serie A’s plans to play a match in Australia Alexander Hassenstein\/Getty Images AC Milan…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":208290,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[119362,594,6090,34640,403,99,1794],"class_list":["post-208289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-associazione-calcio-milan","tag-france","tag-international-football","tag-serie-a","tag-soccer","tag-sports","tag-sports-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=208289"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208289\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/208290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}