Tuesday, December 14, 2021
After UEFA breakdown show
Real rages over “lie” and “shame”
In the Champions League draw, Real Madrid will first be drawn against Benfica Lisbon and then against Paris St. Germain. The breakdown not only causes new lots, but also plenty of trouble and new fire in the fight of the Spanish giant against UEFA.
Great excitement at Real Madrid. According to media reports, the Spanish giant is massively upset. The reason: the repetition of the Champions League draw. The La Liga club describes the reason given by UEFA for the renewed draw as a “lie”. Officially, however, only the silence booms. In a brief statement, Real’s director of institutional relations, Emilio Butragueño, described the process as “surprising, regrettable and very difficult to stand”.
The reason for the excitement, which, according to media reports, is almost moving in the direction of conspiracy theories, is a simple one: Real Madrid consider the repetition of the draw to be not entirely legal. Why? Well: The Spaniards were first drawn against Benfica Lisbon, but after the drawing has been repeated, the White Ballet now has to take on Paris St. Germain, one of the favorites for this year’s title.
As is well known, the first draw was canceled due to “technical problems with the software of an external service provider”. Twice, Giorgio Marchetti, UEFA’s deputy general secretary who chaired the draw ceremony, had made simple mistakes. That caused great amusement in the social networks, massive annoyance at some clubs and the decision to re-draw at UEFA. Pure chaos, which was belittled by UEFA with “technical problems” and which is now causing trouble for the clubs again.
“It is a lie”
Especially at Real Madrid, who were not affected by the mistakes in the first draw. Their game was already drawn when the disaster struck the show. The lots were clear: Real against Benfica, not against Paris. But instead of just drawing the remaining 14 teams against each other, UEFA repeated the complete draw. Real should have protested against it, without any success. After Paris had pulled a huge chunk out of the lottery pot, Los Blancos couldn’t take it anymore. A little, of course, because apart from Butragueño nobody commented on all of this via official channels, but the flood gates for were long open. The displeasure was just put to the press. She accepted it gratefully.
“It’s a lie that it was a software bug,” quote the usually very well informed Real correspondents for the US broadcaster ESPN: “It was a human error, starting with the second pairing. Our draw was legal. ” The Spanish sports newspaper “Marca” also came up with similar insights. “Scandal”, “unacceptable”, “fraud” and “shame” were only some of the reactions behind closed doors. The paper immediately saw a new “episode in the war between Real and UEFA”.
The war, which is actually a dispute, revolves around the idea of a super league, promoted by Real boss Florentino Pérez, among others. That briefly caused a stir in the football landscape in April. At that time, twelve European top clubs from England, Italy and Spain tried to compete with the Champions League with a competitor product. Under the pressure that was built up by UEFA, other clubs, fans of the participating clubs, but also political actors, the league finally broke up within a few hours.
To this day, however, Real Madrid, the crisis-ridden FC Barcelona and the Italian top club Juventus, which is slowly building up a financial scandal, are resisting. The Superliga is considered to have failed for the time being, but the risk of another attempt is still considered a given in European football.