Spanish soccer might lastly cross the Atlantic after the Royal Spanish Soccer Federation accredited a request for Barcelona and Villarreal to play their December LaLiga match in Miami – a transfer practically a decade within the making.
The RFEF board gave the inexperienced gentle on Monday for the groups’ matchday 17 sport to be performed at Exhausting Rock Stadium in Miami on December 20 in step one in the direction of the competitors enjoying an official match overseas for the primary time in its historical past.
The proposal now heads to European soccer’s governing physique UEFA earlier than requiring remaining approval from FIFA – the final hurdle in LaLiga President Javier Tebas’ American dream.
“At its assembly on 11 August 2025, the RFEF Board of Administrators acquired a request from Villarreal CF and FC Barcelona to play their match on matchday 17 of the primary division in the US,” RFEF mentioned in a press release.
“… the Royal Spanish Soccer Federation will submit the request to UEFA to start the method for subsequent authorisation by FIFA for the match to be performed at Exhausting Rock Stadium in Miami on 20 December 2025 …”
LaLiga has been pursuing their transatlantic imaginative and prescient for nearly a decade, emulating the technique employed by the NFL and NBA to ascertain themselves in different markets.
Tebas’ first try got here within the 2018-19 season with a proposed Girona-Barca match within the U.S. that by no means materialised.
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A deliberate Villarreal-Atletico fixture for 2019-20 additionally fell via, with the matter ending up within the courts after the RFEF refused authorisation.
The courts sided with the Spanish Federation, then underneath Luis Rubiales, who was sacked in 2023 for kissing crew participant Jenni Hermoso on the mouth celebrating Spain’s girls’s World Cup victory in Sydney.
There was one other near-miss final season, with a Barcelona-Atletico match nearly continuing earlier than LaLiga pulled again on the final minute to higher construction the venture.
Now, with regulatory boundaries cleared and inside conflicts resolved, the Villarreal-Barca conflict seems poised to lastly ship Spanish soccer’s long-awaited American journey.