The Athletic FC.

Welcome to the Athletic FC podcast with me, Ayur Akem Wellere.

Barcelona was set to play Villa Real in Miami in December.

That's now been cancelled.

Today, we explain why.

With us today, we have our La Liga writer, Dermot Corrigan. We've also got Matt Slater for an extra bit of spice as well.

Right, Dermer on Tuesday, Adam Crafton broke the news. Villarreal versus Barcelona in Miami on the 20th of December has been cancelled.

How on earth did we get here?

Hey, yeah, great work by Adam to break the news. And it came as a shock to everybody. Even the barso players who were just on their way out of this stadium didn't know about it. Flick was doing his press conference. It was just broke after the press conference. He couldn't even be asked about it. It was complete shock. La Liga have been trying, you know, as we've talked about before, for years to try and get a game to be played overseas.

It looked like it was falling into place to play Vireal against Barcelona in Miami.

They had got a grudging green light from UEFA, seemed to you moving ahead.

But protests started to mount within Spain about it and relevant the organizers and the Liga between them.

They decided that they just didn't have enough time to get everything done over the line by December 20th when the game was going to go

ahead. Yeah, for sure. Well, let's find a little bit of humour in this situation because back in

August, Matt, along with Adam Kraft, we were talking about this match going ahead and it

prompted this line from you. I'm afraid the winds are blowing in One Direction here.

I'll send you some One Direction songs and I can make a gag about One Direction, but I don't.

So this is all going to happen.

I'm afraid.

Sorry.

I mean, you've had some time now.

Any One Direction songs up your sleeve, mate?

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